St Peter’s Church, North Tawton

St Peter’s is the CofE parish church in North Tawton and is a vibrant, bible-based church passionate about growing links to the wider community and serving them in numerous ways whilst also not shying away from our desire to worship God in all areas of our work. Over the last couple of years, we have seen amazing growth across all areas of our church from outreach activities to those attended regularly on a Sunday in addition to a strong cohort of children and youth.

In September 2020, St Peter’s employed Wez Cutler as our new Parish Worker, to oversee the development of our youth and children’s ministry – a role that has now grown into whole church leadership, children and families ministry, and men’s ministry. This came out of a need during a year of vacancy (without a vicar) between September 2021 and September 2022 to take over some of the responsibilities of our departing vicar.

After that year in vacancy, we were joined by Revd David Spence and his family in September 2022 to bring our ministry team back up to full strength. We have seen God at work in so many areas and feel truly blessed to be part of such a thriving church community and look forward to what the coming months and years will bring.

We feel that now is the time to invest more into the ministry that we have seen grow over the last couple of years. Our vision has been to create a church community of deep rooted faith across all our age groups and then branch out into the wider community to serve and witness to them.

Wez has developed strong links with many in our community, including the local primary school and young families linked to it, as well as supporting community ventures and activities raising the profile of the St Peter’s within the town. There appeared for a while, to be some disconnect and a lack of desire for collaboration between the church and those outside, but we are working hard to continue building meaningful relationships with families and individuals and looking for ways to support and serve them.

There is always more that can be done, and a lot of that cannot be done without time and effort put into people – journeying with them, listening to them and being like Jesus in our friendships with them.

So far, it has seen people stepping into church (sometimes for the first time), when otherwise they wouldn’t, and is changing the perspective, at least locally, that the church is there to help them.

So, in essence, it’s more of the same. Seeing where the need is and reacting to it.

At the moment, we are keen to look at ways of serving the young people in the town by developing regular youth groups as well as looking to support the school more by helping within year 6 lessons. This does two things, it meets a clear need within the school for more classroom assistance in KS2, but also creates opportunities to grow relationships with the year 6 students before they move on to secondary school, where it would be harder to do this.

We are also keen to develop a working relationship with a local Christian project working with secondary schools in the area, partnering with them to help young people with the transition from primary to secondary and then continuing support within their new setting.

St Peter’s Church is located within North Tawton, a small town on the edge of Dartmoor. It is a rural community of about 1,900 people, but is home to a wide range of people from various backgrounds. Many people work in the surrounding area, but others choose to commute to the larger towns and nearest city, Exeter – about half an hour away.

Our town has most of the shops/venues you’d expect – Primary School, Pharmacy, Pubs, Art Gallery, Café, Spar, Post Office,  Hairdressers, Town Hall, Community Centre, Park and Sports Clubs.

Most children attend the local primary school up to year 6 and then head to Okehampton College (approx. 20 minutes away) for Secondary School and Sixth Form. A handful of young people attended other local colleges instead.

There are always different events running throughout the year – in particular, music, drama and art are very well supported and encouraged.

As is to be expected, country living is a bit different to being in a city and isn’t for everyone, but our town is welcoming and kind and is a place where being anonymous isn’t really an option, but because of that, people know you and you know them – relationships are different – often deeper, meaning a real community spirit is much more present and active, which is really special.

Here are the different groups and activities across all areas of our church ministry:

Children and Families:

Weekly Sunday Club during services for ages 0-9

Toast Church for ages 0-7, once a month with puppets, songs, story and toast

Toddler Group every Thursday

Yearly events such as firework evenings, easter egg hunts and holiday clubs

Yearly nativity where over 200 local people attend

Weekly Assemblies in the local school

Termly visits to church by school children

Monthly family services

Youth:

Weekly Sunday Group (Rooted) during services for ages 10+

Monthly Youth Group for church youth (Re:Fresh)

Weekend Away

Day trips throughout the year

Youth band (hopefully starting soon)

Church:

¾ services with band led worship, ¼ organ led

Homes Groups

Men’s Breakfast

After Eights women’s ministry

Worship evenings

Termly courses

Prayer meetings

Church Family events – picnics etc…