Churches November 2025

PCC Meeting

The next PCC meeting will be on Wednesday 12th November at 7pm.

St Helen's Contact Details

Revd Elaine Jones revelainejones@gmail.com 07521 106158

www.mitfordandwansbeckchurches.com

People can also get in touch via the Benefices administrator at 

Wansbeckvicarhelp@gmail.com or on 01670 943414.

Their hours are Monday 9.00am - 5.30pm, Tue and Wed 9.00am - 1.00pm.

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Other Sunday services by arrangement, information thereof being available from our Contact below.

For our other group meetings, please see the Group Activities sections.

Visitors are always very welcome to all our events.

Contact Ian Pagan 788263 idpagan@btinternet.com

Website: www.longhorsleymission.org.uk

Thought for the Month

Do you feel you were overshadowed by your brother or sister? We were reminded of the Sharp family last October in a packed church, St Andrew’s Hartburn. John became the vicar of St Andrews after studying at Cambridge, yet the best known nationwide is Granville Sharp who in 1750 followed older brothers William and James to apprenticeships in London. William Wilberforce described him as leading the way to ending of the Slave Trade, Thomas Clarkson commended Granville for being the first who did not just write about the evil of slavery, he actually did something about it.

In his early days in London Granville was a failure. He gave up his apprenticeship and went to work at the Board of Ordnance in the Tower of London. A chance encounter with an ill and starving slave, Jonathan Strong, led Granville to his life’s work of fighting slavery. Initially he worked to make it declared illegal in this country, achieved through his legal work in the Somerset case. In 1772 the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, declared that slavery ‘can never be supported’ in this country. In order to defend himself from the claims of the slave-owners that he had stolen their slave Granville added the study of law to that of Greek and Hebrew. We don’t find Granville resenting two elder brothers going off to university to which his father could not afford to send him. Instead he made as much use of the family connections as he could, following in the footsteps of the Quakers and attacked the slave trade and slavery itself. 

When he needed to study law in order to defend Strong and Somerset brother William provided him with a home and an income. Brother James, an engineer, appeared in court with him. Remember the apostle Paul could not have achieved the planting of the early church without the support of men like Timothy and women like Lydia. Granville and his siblings were deeply Christian. In 1787 he supported the new Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade for the rest of his life. He wrote important pamphlets attacking Slavery and supported setting up a refuge for freed slaves in Sierra Leone.

‘Am I not a man and a brother’ is the famous slogan used by the Society and used as propaganda by Josiah Wedgwood on his pots. Paul appeals to Philemon to treat his runaway slave as he would Paul himself. This attitude helped to end slavery. What difference would it make if we loved our neighbour as ourselves and worked with others, rather than moping around feeling jealous and unloved?

Martin Light, Longhorsley Mission

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