This parish is in West London. We are extremely diverse. We have a lot of need in our community and as a church we are intercultural. And so we have people from lots of different nations, different cultures who come together for intercultural worship on Sunday, as well as having different language congregations. I’m just excited by how many people are coming into the church and how God is working in the lives, particularly those who are Christians from Iran. Iranian ministry is really flourishing. We baptised 14 Iranian Christians on Sunday last week and had 28 confirmations. And so it’s just wonderful to see God at work in their lives and how they find peace when they come here.
So when I first heard about the Ephesian fund, I assumed it was for churches who could pay more than their parish share or common fund. And we’re one of those churches which is in quite a deprived area that wasn’t able to. But I discovered that by using the Ephesian funds. We could pay what we could to the diocese and we could also receive from other churches who were able to pay more and to be generous. And so we were absolutely delighted when the diocese received a bit of top up anonymously from another church in the Ephesian Fund to actually help pay for our ministry expenses here in Hounslow.
What I’d say to my fellow clergy is that using the Ephesians Fund is really simple. The diocese still gets your money, but it has a wrapper on it that says I want this to be used for those churches who have the same theological convictions. It means that we can still support the growing churches, those who are really serious about spreading the gospel, the true gospel, and not selling it short.
