St George’s Church in Kidderminster was recently a winner in the National Churches Awards run by the National Churches Trust. St George’s won the 2022 Nayler Award for Excellence in Church Maintenance, run in partnership with the Pilgrim Trust, beating other churches from across the UK.
This award aims to shine a light on the people who look after local churches and help ensure a future for their place of worship. Maintenance is traditionally seen as a routine task and is an activity that is celebrated or rewarded. But throughout the year, it is thanks to volunteers that church buildings are kept in good condition and serious problems kept at bay. Helping with maintenance is always rewarding and is also often fun.
St George’s church has an active maintenance team and has developed an app for use on mobile phones to help carry out surveys of the building. Judges praised the way the team dealt with looking after rainwater goods, their excellent record keeping and the sharing of maintenance knowledge with other local churches.
When asked about the best thing about being involved in church maintenance, the team said:
“The sense of belonging, the camaraderie and fellowship, and the easy way that people relate to one another are very important. There is a sense of pride in working together to improve our beautiful building and its churchyard. Several very close friendships have developed through membership of the team. We also feel a great sense of achievement and pride when we are invited to help other churches with their baseline surveys. To date we have helped six churches and worked with two others to encourage their efforts.”
The church receives a prize of £5,000.
