What a load of rubbish!

Shine! is Churches Together in Bishop’s Stortford’s community festival. We had the first one last year and it was such a success that we are repeating it this autumn. We want this year’s festival to be even bigger and better than last year. If that’s to happen we need you to

• get involved,

• put the dates in your diary now 

• think and pray about what you can do.

• Email us at seniorminister@stortfordbaptist.org with –

 Areas you think need tidying up.
Community projects that you think we should be getting involved in.
Requests for further information or to offer help

Shine!  is based on a simple idea – the Church is at the heart of our community and community is at the heart of church life. British town and village life has been built around churches and today the Churches in Bishop’s Stortford are vital centres for the local community. We want to celebrate that and encourage others to value the community in which we live. We’re going to do that by offering leadership to the local community in building up community values. We want to let our light shine and we want to help everyone to work together to make Stortford shine. Recent events in our society make this even more urgent.

In 2008 many bags of rubbish were collected by volunteers making a visible difference to our town.

Shine! isn’t just about picking up litter though. In Shine! 2008 many people made time to get to know their neighbours just a bit better. They held coffee mornings, organised barbecues and had other social events that helped them build relationships with the people around them.

Shine! runs for a week in September during which there are two major events planned:

Saturday 19^th September                Make Stortford Shine    

A day for cleaning up our environment, our neighbourhoods and taking on some community projects.

Saturday 26^th  / Sunday 27^th September    Get to know your neighbours           

A weekend to encourage people to get to know the people who live around them by organising

something big like a barbecue or street party,

or something  small like morning coffee or afternoon tea.