It’s the end of an era for St John’s Church this weekend as the congregation meet for the final service at their Granville Terrace building before moving out to make way for its sale.
The congregation voted to leave their listed building at a special meeting in May – you can read A Little Bit of Stone’s report from then here. From next week the congregation will be worshipping at Walton Priory Middle School while the church building is sold and a permanent new home found.
The church had been fundraising for years to raise £750,000 to repair its community building, an effort that was suspended earlier this year because of the scale of the problems with the church itself, meaning the total amount needed to stay at the building was £1.75 million.
Rev Neil Adams said in May when the decision to sell the building had been taken: “For many years the congregation at St John’s has struggled to maintain the premises adequately – and it has been estimated that the cost of renovation would exceed the value of the property. We would need to spend almost a million pounds on essential repairs, and much more than this to modernise the building fully. Like almost everyone else, our overheads are stretching us to breaking point – and we simply cannot afford to keep the building on.
“We believe that the people are the Church not the buildings – and the great news is St John’s is growing and thriving and is looking forward to living out its calling as the faithful people of God in its community.”
The West Midlands Synod of the United Reformed Church is selling the building. It is not known what will happen to it if and when it is taken on by new owners.
Make sure you visit A Little Bit of Stone tomorrow for a special post by Stone Historical Society chairman Philip Leason on the history of St John’s Church in Stone.
