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During the election campaign, and before he became Prime Minister, Keir Starmer MP told us about his favourite church, St Martin’s Church, in Gospel Oak, London.

Opening your building up to the public is a great way of welcoming visitors into your church. And by tying it into a local heritage open day event, you could end up attracting many more people into your building. Ebrington Presbyterian church took part in a Heritage Open Day for the first time last year and managed to get their entire church and community involved. Here’s how they did it and the success they had.

Finding volunteers to help keep your church open and able to serve your community can be difficult. But support is out there to help you to not only recruit new volunteers, but to keep them engaged with your church. Ruth, from St Hilda in Redcar, shares some advice that helped their church attract volunteers.

We all hear about a church being open, but what does it really mean? Who gets to come into the building and when? And what for? St Stephen on the Cliffs church in Blackpool shares with us why their building being open is a vital part of the life of the church – even in the midst of a large building project. 

Churches, chapels and meeting houses are the guardians of generations of local history. This amazing heritage is too precious not to be shared and enjoyed by all. Let us head to Northern Ireland, where the team at Strabane Church of the Immaculate Conception share how they turned their historic church into a visitor destination.

When the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) church outgrew the buildings, they were renting, they bought an abandoned church. The disused building has been transformed into a thriving community church. And this is just stage one of the journey.

St Michael Church in Llanfihangel y Creuddyn in Wales got turned down for a large grant that would help save their tower. But being rejected ended up being the best thing for the church and the local community. Find out what happened next.

Claire Walker, Chief Executive of the National Churches Trust, shares highlights from 2023 and how, together, we can help keep churches open and in good repair in the new year and beyond.

Find out how winning the Friends Award at the National Church Awards will help South Stoneham St Mary in Hampshire fix their failing roof.

The National Churches Trust responds to news of the planned church closures in Wigan.

Find out how a project in Northern Ireland is helping to keep churches in good repair and open for all and what its grant increase means for the nation.

With the future of a growing number of churches at risk, Sir Philip Rutnam, Chair of the National Churches Trust, has been speaking out on the importance of protecting this amazing heritage.