Community & Wider World
In our community, we partner with local groups, charities, and initiatives to meet needs, bring hope, and build lasting relationships. Beyond our borders, we support missions, relief efforts, and outreach projects that share the good news of Jesus and help transform lives.
Churches Together in Woburn
Woburn Sands and District
ECO CHURCH
Churches Together in Woburn, Woburn Sands and District
Churches Together comprise the local churches of Aspley Guise, Aspley Heath, Battlesden with Pottesgrove, Eversholt, Husborne Crawley, Milton Bryan, Ridgmont, Woburn and Woburn Sands. We have worked together to support our local communities for longer than 50 years.
We organise joint public worship for events such as Good Friday and Remembrance Sunday. We hold joint services for the Week of Christian Unity and the World Day of Prayer.
Our local magazine, Christian News [follow the link to read the latest edition online] provides news and views from churches and the wider community, including local schools as well as information on local services such as doctors, transport, library and halls for hire. It includes contact details for the huge variety of organisations, clubs and societies.
We study together during Lent and Advent. During the school summer holidays we provide a 5-day long Christian Holiday Club which caters for approximately 60 young people.
Churches in our area are positioned at the centre of many positive activities and projects which have recently included building a school in Sierra Leone, through collaboration with Action Aid, helping a village in Bangladesh, and setting up and running a Winter Night Shelter for homeless people [see link]. Other projects include Love Woburn Sands and Print Cellar
Love Woburn Sands
Love Woburn Sands is a community programme run by the local Churches Together group, of which St Michael’s is a member. The overall project aims to promote good community through a number of projects organised to provide support and education for people of all ages within Woburn Sands and surrounding parishes. Many people are helped in a variety of ways through the various services provided and you are able to play an active part through volunteering.
Follow the link to the Love Woburn Sands website to see how you or others may benefit and to explore how you can make a difference through volunteering.
Contributions to Milton Keynes Food Bank
Sadly even in a relatively wealthy city like Milton Keynes, many individuals and families find themselves in need of support from the Food Bank. This need will increase this winter as hardship and unemployment result from the current pandemic.
So please give generously to the Food Bank. Only non perishable and in-date items please.
You can find a list of needed items in the church porch or via the website:
You can drop your contributions into the box located in the porch of St Michael’s church, or in the local Woburn Sands CO-OP store.
If you or someone you know needs help, then call the Food Bank helplines
01908 565852 to discuss your situation in confidence (10.00 – 4.00, Monday- Friday)
Caring for the Homeless
Unfortunately there are many in our society who fall through the net; they may find themselves either homeless or in insecure accommodation for a variety of reasons.
We are delighted that last December, following the pandemic, the Milton Keynes Winter Night Shelters were able to open once more. Our guests tell us what a lifeline it is to have somewhere safe and warm to sleep, as well as the real comfort provided by the kindness and compassion of our
St Michael’s and Refugees
In recent years more than 50 million people have been uprooted from their homes and seek refuge. Less than 1% of these come to Britain, while over 80% of refugees remain in neighbouring countries, with the hope of returning to their homes.
Others take long and difficult journeys escaping the devastation of war, famine, natural and man-made disasters. When people have left their homes, families, and familiar surroundings they are grateful for welcoming hospitality and compassionate concern shown to them in a place of sanctuary.
Britain has provided sanctuary over hundreds of years to refugees from religious persecution, war and oppression.
Here, in Milton Keynes, we have over recent years settled 90 people from the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme. St Michael’s parishioners have been generous in their practical support for families who have been resettled, but there is still more to be done and once this current pandemic is under control, we can open up a discussion as to a future role for St Michael’s and Woburn Sands.
Who welcomes the stranger shall welcome the Lord
In June each year St Michael’s celebrates Refugee or Sanctuary Sunday, at the end of International Refugee Week in June. Refugee Week is an annual festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees. In 2020 our theme was “Imagine” – many of us have been imagining a different kind of world once this pandemic is over.
A prayer
Lord, you said whoever welcomes a stranger shall welcome the Lord into their homes and heart. Help us to invite a stranger into our homes, so they will be a stranger no more as we welcome you into our hearts.
World Day of Prayer
The World Day of Prayer is an international ecumenical Christian women’s initiative. It is run under the motto “Informed Prayer and Prayerful Action,” and is celebrated annually in over 170 countries. The movement aims to bring together women of various races, cultures and traditions in a yearly common Day of Prayer. Women are encouraged to become aware of the other countries and cultures and no longer live in isolation. They are also encouraged take up the burdens of other people, to sympathize with the problems of other countries and cultures and pray with and for them.
On the first Friday in March, a world-wide service is held, designed each year by Christian women from a different country. St Michael’s together with our friends from local churches, St Botolph’s in Aspley Guise, St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, and the Methodist Church Woburn Sands celebrate at a service held in one of these churches.
The service for the World Day of Prayer 2026 will be held in St Michael’s at 7.00 pm on Friday 6 March. It was prepared by Christian women living in Nigeria. Where women are made to work from sunrise to sunset. They have created a service reflecting on the theme, “I will give you rest,” which speaks to our need for peace and solace, drawing on their faith and experiences in this world filled with struggles and anxieties.
To find out more follow the link to wwdp.org.uk
OTHER ORGANISATIONS WE SUPPORT
We support a number of Missions and Charities in St Michael’s, by our giving and our prayers. When able, we also invite guest speakers. We have given to the following charities: The Children’s Society, United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), The Church Army, Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), the Milton Keynes Food Bank, Love Woburn Sands and the MK Women’s Refuge.
Over the last ten years our Church has supported the Banana Box Trust which supports many of the schools and hospitals in North Malawi. Each year we raise money to send uniforms, educational books, sports equipment and writing materials to both Secondary and Primary Schools . We also have some wonderful knitters who make blankets and baby clothes that are sent to the hospitals. One of our Church members has been able to visit several times and has seen the benefit our donations have made .
As a church we help towards the cost of transport, as all items are boxed and sent up to Dundee and then by container and finally delivered to the schools and hospitals in North Malawi.
To learn more about The Banana Box Trust please contact Valerie Symon or follow the link to www.bananaboxtrust.org
