Some members of the St Mary’s church family may not be aware that alongside our mission partners, we support a number of gospel organisations. As you will see from the short summaries below these organisations either aid teaching of the gospel message, or training and support for those in or entering gospel ministry work.

1. South Central Gospel Partnership

The South Central Gospel Partnership is a group of evangelical churches in the south central region of England working together to promote the gospel of Christ. This includes strengthening and planting churches and training leaders. Their mission statement is to advance the Christian faith predominately but not exclusively within the loosely defined area of the south central region of England, by strengthening and planting churches and by training and supporting existing and potential leaders.

The primary means of achieving this purpose is through running Bible training courses and conferences that enable people to better understand, apply and teach the Bible. These courses and conferences are open to all who wish to attend and have been attended by a number of members of the St Mary’s church family over the last ten years including our apprentices. The ministry training courses are run either one day a week during term times for one or two years, or as Saturday courses. They cover all aspects of theological training including exegesis and exposition, the role of music in worship, the importance of seeing the whole Bible (old and new testament) as evidence of God’s overall plan for salvation.

Our donations contribute towards the provision of the conferences and training which relies heavily upon the contribution of volunteers to teach and lead.

For further information: South Central Gospel Partnership

2. Church Pastoral Aid Society – Ventures

CPAS as a charity has been in existence for about 190 years and has the stated aim of serving churches to help every person hear and discover the good news of Jesus Christ. This mission is expressed through three main areas of activity:

  • leadership training for church leaders
  • appointment of parish clergy as the largest patron in the Church of England
  • Christian residential holidays for young people, through Ventures, Falcons, and School Ventures.

St Mary’s donations go towards supporting the third of these areas – the running of the CPAS Venture holidays which aim over a five year period to run up to 380 Venture holidays catering to about 3,455 children per annum – and hopefully bringing in 5,500 different children over that five year period.

For further information: Church Pastoral Aid Society

3. Christianity Explored

Christianity Explored should hopefully be familiar to most of our church family, as we regularly run the various courses developed by this organisation to encourage those searching and to build up new Christians in their faith.

Their objective is to advance the Christian faith in accordance with the statement of beliefs incorporated within its constitution, particularly by:

  • the worldwide promotion of the Christian faith according to the Bible
  • the worldwide promotion and teaching of all aspects of the gospel of Jesus Christ and Christian living
  • the worldwide promotion of evangelism.

To achieve these objectives involves arranging, producing, and promoting training courses, conferences, workshops, resource centres and lectures and related materials.

They commission, produce, publish and distribute the Christianity Explored and other leaflets, books, magazines, articles, DVDs, and other multimedia relating to the objectives. These are for use around the world in multiple different languages. In addition, they train representatives in the UK and abroad who in turn train others to use the resources appropriately and effectively.

For further information: Christianity Explored

4. ReNew

ReNew is a charity set up in 2017. The main activity of ReNew is the provision of an annual conference that is organised to serve church leaders and leadership teams (men and women, paid and voluntary) from across England, with the aim of pioneering, establishing and securing healthy local Anglican churches inside and outside the Church of England.

ReNew has regional groups that meet across the country between the annual conferences to advance the gospel in their region. Regional leaders from these groups meet several times through the year to be supported and equipped in different areas to further the ReNew agenda.

The aim therefore is to strengthen church leaders and church congregations in the great commission.

For further information: ReNew

5. Oak Hill Theological College

Once again, hopefully Oak Hill will be familiar to many of our church family, as a number of our present and recent staff have studied there. It is a theological college that was founded in 1932 as an evangelical institution rooted in the foundational truths of Christianity to train people for gospel ministry. They train men and women from a wide range of denominations and countries running both full time residential and part time courses.

For further information: Oak Hill Theological College