Acomb Methodist church will celebrate 60 years in its present building and 280 years of Methodism in Acomb in October 2024.   We finally delivered the last few aspects of our 50th Jubilee Project in 2023 and took some time to reflect on who we now are, as a church and community and ask ourselves where is the future now leading us.

We are delighted we have become a more diverse church. We now welcome friends drawn from different ethnic backgrounds, people who self define as LGBTQ, neuro-diverse…. well, lets just say, we rejoice in the rainbow people we are becoming!

We love the fact that we are encompassed of all ages, and intergenerational worship has emerged, as well as youth work, and our extended community now welcomes several groups from babies, through to those supported in their later years by Age UK.

We hadn’t particularly planned to embark on any further building development, but circumstances have dictated that we arent quite done yet, with bringing the church into the 21st century.

So as we celebrate our Diamond Jubilee, we find ourselves with three projects before us:-

• Our Net Zero Scheme
• Upgraded Fire Protection
• Bungalow Refurbished for Social Housing

The Netzero project encompasses a new roof, with a 44kW solar array, insulation and double glazing for the sanctuary, which will both reduce our utility bills, but also make us a net exporter of energy.

The fire protection is pretty self explanatory, fitting a new fire alarm, detectors and smoke sealing the fire doors.

Our now unused formerly caretaker’s bungalow is to be refurbished and let through the Yorhome scheme which provides social housing in York.

We’ve been fortunate to have raised substantial grant funding against the Net Zero scheme, have used our reserves for the fire system, but are now fundraising for the remaining monies to match fund grants of £35K. Ideally, we need £23K to take out a loan to start the bungalow, but then a further £12K over the next two years.