Jubilee Churches Festival 25 May - 5 June 2012

Bishop Colin Fletcher

Introduction from Rt Revd Bishop Colin Fletcher, Bishop of Dorchester:

Welcome to the Jubilee Churches Festival 2012 website.

After the great success of our Cotswold Churches Festival in May 2011, where more than 110 churches of every denomination and from five different Diocese became involved with our celebration of church life across the Cotswold region, we have decided to concentrate our efforts for 2012 around the Jubilee period at the end of May, early June. Churches have long been at the centre of community life across our towns and cities, and especially in our rural areas. What better way could there be of celebrating Her Majesty, The Queen’s, 60 years of devotion to the service of this country than having our churches at the heart of these great national celebrations, in the same way as Her Majesty’s deep and abiding faith has shone through her life as our monarch.

This website is designed to give churches help and advice in their planning and ideas for the Jubilee celebrations. It also gives them a chance to register their plans, so that visitors to the site can see what the churches have organised. If you are looking for inspiration, then a quick glance at the Cotswold Churches Festival gallery will show you what churches – large and small – got up to.

If you are a member of the clergy or have been delegated as the principle contact for Jubilee Festival activities at your church, then please follow the links to REGISTER your church, so that we know that you are planning to be involved. Don’t worry if you haven’t finalised the details of everything that you have planned. You can always add this information in the months ahead. By registering, however, it gives us the chance to keep in contact with you on a regular basis with help, advice and encouragement.

To help you, this website includes extracts of presentations given at the conference we staged to launch the Festival plans in October at St Mary’s Church in Witney, and in the Resources section, there is a lot of information for you to download or useful links to help you in different aspects of your preparations.

We hope that as many churches as possible will join us in our celebrations and help make the Jubilee Churches Festival a huge success.

Complete Presentation

Sections

Introduction

Churches and communities working together. The role of Town and Parish Councils (Peter Biggs)

What can we learn from the Cotswold Churches Festival

Role of the Churches (Bishop Colin)

"The Big Lunch" (David Gambier)

Church Beacons (Ian Robertson)

The National Service (Bishop Colin)

Some distinctive angles on some possible Jubilee Churches Festival themes.