Mission is central to the life of St George’s, and has many aspects, so we have two church teams that make mission a priority. One team, Mission Faith, works on sharing our faith with others, evangelism and outreach, while the other, Mission Service, concentrates on trying to share God’s love in service to the community, our local area and the wider world.
Mission Faith
The Mission Faith team explore ways we can enable others to express their own faith, ways to share faith and grow in faith. We have organised faith sharing events including an evening with a former Bishop of Tewskesbury. An explaining faith course has been run and a series of faith stories were published in the magazine. New ideas are always welcome and being explored. Rooted in prayer, proclaiming the Good News of the risen Lord Jesus and encouraging the whole community in faith, both within and outside the walls of the church, is the mission.
Contact is Rev'd Andrew Hill.
Mission Service
We are involved with a number of charities both locally and nationally:
We support Traidcraft and run a stall in church once a month.
Contact is Debbie Jones
From 2015 for three years, St George’s committed to supporting the Zoe Project in Zimbabwe through Tearfund’s Connected Church scheme. The project works through local churches to help children orphaned by AIDS. Zimbabwe has the highest number of orphans per capita in the world and children in this situation are at much greater risk of dropping out of school, becoming victims of abuse and living in extreme poverty. Zoe trains local churches to support them practically, emotionally and socially, organising kids’ clubs and running livelihood training in skills such as farming and livestock care. Contact is Peter Smout
We support Christian Aid, in particular by organising a house to house collection during Christian Aid Week. In 2016 this collection, together with a soup lunch organised through Churches Together in Cam, Dursley and District raised over £1,000. The money went to help people in some of the world’s poorest countries to break out of the cycle of poverty and to help themselves.
We also get involved in Christian Aid’s campaigns, for example on tax justice, as well as putting on special events to for example ‘send a goat for Christmas’. We follow the Christian Aid Lent and Advent material which gives a daily reminder of the poverty and opportunity across the world and which stimulates us to pray, act and give. Contact is Martin Gregg
We support The Children's Society. Children from Cam Hopton School and church collect money for this charity and bring it to our Christingle Service at Christmas.
We support the local branch of the Stroud District Foodbank, which supplies emergency food to those in need in the Cam and Dursley area. Church members help run the local branch and volunteer at the twice-weekly drop-in centre in Dursley. We collect donations of food via a box in church to be delivered to the Foodbank warehouse in Stroud.
A partner organisation runs Kid’s Stuff, which supplies baby and children’s equipment to those in need, and a Furniture Bank, to which we also contribute.
The Vale Community Hospital League of Friends
We are members of our local hospital's League of Friends and support their fund-raising activities.
Litterpicking
We try to improve the environment for local people by running litterpicks around the parish, using equipment borrowed from Stroud District Council.