Building to Serve: The Branch

In the last couple of years at St Mary's, God has been extending our vision to serve the town in an exciting, ambitious and creative way at a time of substantially increasing need for many within our community...

Acanthus Clews, Banbury-based architects are project managing the redevelopment of 16 Market Place.  

Philip Sharman, an experienced engineer and project manager is coordinating the redevelopment of The Branch, on behalf of The Branch Trust.

Georgina Orchard, our Campaign Director, is leading the fundraising campaign.   A large part of her role focuses on approaching grant making trusts, local philanthropists and local businesses, inviting them to join us on this journey. 

Fundraising

To achieve this vision we are breaking down our fundraising into different chunks for different target audiences.  We were amazed by God’s provision at our Church Gift Day where the target of £300,000 was reached and then surpassed!  We have also been extremely blessed by the support of local philanthropists, businesses and grant making trusts. The combined generosity of all of these contributors has already taken us beyond 75% of our fundraising target (October 2021), enabling us to continue making plans for starting work early in 2022.

The Vision

The vision for The Branch has been developed in consultation with local Statutory and Voluntary agencies including West Oxfordshire District Council, the wider community including the Town Council and the church family. Further information about The Branch can be found at thebranchtrust.org website (which was developed with the generous support of BrandCooke).  If you would like to receive quarterly updates about the development of The Branch please sign up for The Branch Trust newsletter on their website.  

We are grateful for the strong support of Chippy News in providing a mechanism for keeping the wider community up-to-date with progress on the campaign by inviting regular articles from us.  

Prayer
This project has prayer at its foundations.  We have established a weekly time of prayer when we specifically lay this project before God, seeking his guidance and provision for the vision he has given us to serve the people of Chipping Norton.  Please do come and join us, Mondays 12 to 1pm. This is currently taking place online using Zoom.  Please contact Georgina for more details.

We have also Set a Watch of prayer at 6am and 6pm when members of the church family gather on zoom to listen to God and submit our plans to him.   For more information contact the church office.

We are seeking to encourage the people of the church (and also the town) to become integral parts of this vision, Living Out God's Love to serve even more widely in our community.  

If you have any questions or suggestions about how to support the campaign either practically or financially, or have specific questions about the details of the project please do contact Georgina on georgina.orchard@stmaryscnorton.com.  She will be delighted to hear from you