Methodist Heritage Update / Request

Hello,
Olivia here! I am the Heritage & Collections Officer for the Church and in recent months I have been working on a new Methodist Heritage website. Giving our existing site some well-deserved TLC, a new look and more pages to provide inspiring examples of how local churches can celebrate and share our stories, historic spaces, objects and archives, for mission and evangelism.

‘Heritage’ can be defined as anything deemed worthy of conserving for future generations and all of our churches have stories to tell whether they were built in the 1800s or last week. But for the Church, we preserve our heritage as a tool for mission, not for its own sake. Some examples of this could be: helping to secure the future of a historic church building for visitors to encounter our story and our worship, organising an event or publishing a photo book to celebrate an anniversary that explains the historic presence and current work of a church in a community – these are all examples of churches working to preserve and celebrate their heritage and history but also use it to engage in contemporary mission.

There is a lot of great work like this happening around the Connexion, and I’m looking for particular examples of churches that have produced and effectively used the following for mission:

Exhibitions and displays: Exhibitions or displays in churches that tell the history of the church and, hopefully, lead on to promote the current work of that community.

Events: Events to celebrate or mark a historic event.

Books: Books produced by churches that document the contribution of church in their area.

Commissioned Artwork: This could be stained glass, banners, paintings, wooden model of churches and more…

Commemorative service: Model orders of service for heritage occasions, e.g., special services that mark the anniversary of church building, or Windrush Day / Remembrance Sunday / International Women’s Day and more…

Website: Examples of websites that tell a heritage story, perhaps history pages or about particular leaders in the church who made a difference.

Tours: Churches who offer tours of their building or local area; a great opportunity to share who we are and what we believe. 

I would be very grateful if you could please contact me at threlkeldo@methodistchurch.org.uk with any examples and photographs.