St Luke's Church
Poulton Crossroads

The Vision

We have a dream of a new St Luke's: a new building to replace both the present Church building and the Memorial Hall. A new Church that will be our home as a worshipping community and a resource for the community. We have called the project Poulton Crossroads.

Our Thinking

This is not something we have come to quickly or lightly but only after careful discussion and much prayer. We have two reasons why we would like to do this.

The Problem

In the first place our buildings, whilst not in poor condition, require considerable amounts of money to run and maintain. The congregation is small and has limited financial means and it is not certain how long we can continue to maintain our present buildings. At the moment about £10,000 needs to be spent on the building with another £30,000 to be spent in about 10 to 15 years time, apart from on-going routine maintenance. The nature of our present buildings means that maintenance costs will always be high. Our fear is that in the end we will not be able to afford to keep the Church running and will have to close. We believe that a new building with low running and maintenance costs offers the best hope for preserving a Church in this part of Poulton for the foreseeable future.

The Community Project

In the second place, we have been thinking hard about our mission as a Church in the light of Jesus' command to love your neighbour as yourself. We are, and will continue to be, a spiritual resource for the community but we feel that because the area has considerable levels of social deprivation we should also engage with the physical needs of the local community.

After thorough research we propose that the Church should
provide the community with the following:

• Parent and Toddler's Group
• Drop in facilities that offer:
  1. Support for the elderly (including weekly luncheon club)
  2. Mental Health Support
  3. Family Support
• Facilities/rooms that can be hired by community

We believe that the construction of a new purpose-built Church and community building on the existing Church site would best enable us to serve the community in this way.

The Cost

The construction of a new Church building is an expensive business - of the order of £400,000. Some of that may come from selling off our spare land to a developer, some of it must come from the congregation, and, realistically, most of it will come from outside sources and fund raising.

We can all play our part

That is our vision, our dream, if you like and the members of the Church here at St Luke's have pledged £92,000 in support of the project. We invite you to be part of that dream and work with us to make it come to pass. First, by praying, for that is vital for the success of our project; second by contributing financially to it. If you would like to know more or make a contribution to our project then please contact the chairman of our Redevelopment Committee: Jack Halfpenny