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Organ Appeal At St Giles we hear sounds from the organ that our predecessors, including Byron, Shelley and John Soane, have heard for more than three hundred years. This historic organ urgently needed sympathetic restoration more>

I am very grateful to the Churchwardens for arranging a surprise celebration on Whit Sunday to mark the exact tenth anniversary of my collation as Rector of St Giles. It was such a surprise that I nearly missed it myself to undertake archidiaconal responsibilities in another parish. I am very grateful to the people who came and generously contributed.

Anniversaries offer an opportunity to take stock and to look forward. At St Giles during the past decade we have done our best to make God’s love, revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, present with us in the power of the Holy Spirit known to the people who live and work in the parish and pass by St Giles. Our aim has been, and continues to be to make the church, which stands as a symbol of our Christian faith more visible, more accessible and more welcoming. This is a continuing challenge.

We have worked as a team on this, and I am enormously grateful to the churchwardens – Peter Whitfield, John Metcalfe, Jill Hutchings, James Dunlop and Thomas Hardin, to the PCC officers, James Dunlop also as treasurer, and Leslie Baldwin and now Thomas Baldwin as secretaries, to Associate Rectors, Richard Haggis and Julian Davies, and two outstanding Directors of Music, Robin Walker and now Jonathan Bunney, and last, but by no means least, Mark Hodgin as Verger and Parish Clerk, for their many and varied contributions to forwarding the mission of the Church at St Giles.

The little things that we have done have perhaps been the most important in making St Giles more visible, more accessible and more welcoming. The posters on the railings, the doors being open, the leaflets that Richard and Julian have written and Mark’s splendid printing, have contributed a great deal to making St Giles and our worship more visible and accessible. Having sidespeople on duty before services has contributed to the welcome. Coffee after Sunday morning services have helped the congregation to get to know one another better and to meet visitors. The bellringers have played their part in making St Giles more audible locally.

Daily Morning and Evening Prayer in church, nearly always with at least a small congregation, have given a focus for deepening the spirituality of members of the congregation, and to making the church itself feel like a focus of prayer. Moving to having the Holy Communion as the main Sunday morning service has also helped to deepen and focus the sacramental life of the congregation. Jonathan’s splendid work with in establishing a voluntary choir for Evensong has transformed Sunday evenings at St Giles. We have occasionally offered hospitality to other Christian groups to use St Giles for different sorts of worship, most notably our Christian Goth friends in Asylum. We have had services to give thanks for special anniversaries for couples, for companies and organisations. People come to St Giles to have their babies baptised, the be married, and to give thanks and pray for those who have died.

We have offered hospitality, and gained income, by encouraging the use of the church for all sorts of musical and literary events, and so brought many more people into church, who may be reminded about what the Christian faith is about. The Vestry House is now also extensively used by a wide variety of community groups.

In addition we have spent a lot of money, redesigning the lobbies, separating the Vestry House form the Church, providing disabled access, rebuilding the organ, refurbishing the bells, and renewing the Vestry House roof.

Much has been done, and much remains to be done. St Giles is going to be one of the major ‘hubs’ of London when the new Crossrail station opens in 2017. Already the local landscape has changed with the completion of Central St Giles opposite the church. There will be more redevelopment as the recession ends. Smart new restaurants are moving in to Central St Giles. There are 153 new flats on that site and vast high quality office accommodation. St Giles is changing, and people influencing the changes are keen to include us in discussion about the future of the area. We need to be alert to new ways of propagating the Gospel and promoting Christian knowledge, as our predecessors were in their generations.

Bill Jacob

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