Isleworth Congregational Church
Twickenham Road, Isleworth, Middlesex, TW7 7EU, United Kingdom
by Phil Andrews The first issue of The Congregational, the bi-monthly A5 community newsletter produced by the Friends of Isleworth Congregational Church, has been distributed to 1,000 dwellings around the locality. My special thanks go out to Bridget and Rayne, who assisted with their delivery. There isn’t a great deal of information that can be […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews A Special Meeting held on July 14th involving Church Members, members of the congregation and guests took the bold step of venturing to imagine the unimaginable – the possible discontinuation of our poorly-attended Sunday evening service and its replacement with new activities which might better reach out to the wider community and […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews This well-known adage, often erroneously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, was actually coined in an 1831 speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay, the famed British historian and Whig politician. When the Whigs (the forerunners of the Liberal Party) took office under the leadership of the Earl Grey, Britain was a fractious and turbulent place. […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews I was fearing the worst when our much-heralded Brainstorming Meeting on April 6th was about to commence. It had been called to discuss the future and indeed the very survival of our Church, and yet it appeared only five people had felt motivated to attend. And yet, probably no more than fifteen […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews In meeting after meeting we deliberate over how we can reverse the natural decline in the size of our congregations, and of our membership. I say “natural”, because people leave us for all sorts of reasons – moving home, immobility and (sadly but inevitably) even death. And the simple fact is that […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews A just-about-quorate Annual Church Meeting in November 2022 heard the various reports of the various outgoing officers and elected, or one should say re-elected, a team of three deacons to serve the Church for the coming year and our various already-serving officers. Recurring fears over achieving a quorum would abate somewhat later […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews A little while ago, when “preaching” to a small congregation at the Church (I prefer the term “speaking” in consideration of my relative lack of theological grounding) I gave a 500-word address between hymns on the subject of “Why Do Some Christians Fear Change?”. It is hard to say whether or not […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews Those of us who attend services at Isleworth Congregational regularly tend to take the format pretty much for granted. But what might the passer-by, who routinely walks past our Church building on a Sunday morning or evening, think is going on behind our austere, imposing portals? Or for that matter what would […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews A visitor to our Church building some months ago tried to explain to us a concept which his own Church had had some success in pursuing. The word he used to describe it was “circles”. The idea was a relatively simple one. We on the inside of the Church are few and […]
Read on...by Phil Andrews Our January Church Meeting attracted the grand total of four people. Three of them were deacons. Even if my tentative suggestion that we reduce the quorum at Church Meetings from eight to six had been put to a vote and carried, we would still have been inquorate in January. February’s showing was […]
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