Bradwell St Barnabas – About Us
Welcome!
At St Barnabas we feel privileged that the church and its churchyard have been part of community life in Bradwell for many generations. We treasure our connections with the community, through traditional services such as Christmas and Remembrance, as well as through activities like Community Cafés, Ladies’ Fellowship Group and the popular St B’s Baby Group.
Whether you have just moved to the area, are a visitor to the village or have lived in Bradwell all your life, we hope you will feel welcome at St Barnabas. We meet most Sundays in church for worship, and share our Vicar, Louise, with St Peter’s, Hope and St Edmund’s in Castleton.
Our worship style is fairly traditional; most services include communion. However we have introduced a Worship Together service on the first Sunday of each month, that is short, relatively informal, and encourages interaction. This service is still evolving, and we’d love your feedback. We also have one service a month, on the fourth Sunday, that is a Benefice Celtic based service, which takes place outdoors from April to September and indoors in chilly months.
We seek to extend a warm welcome to all those who visit, whether joining us for worship or simply taking time to enjoy the peace and tranquility of St Barnabas during the week. We pray that all those who visit will find something of God in our church community, in the building itself or in its surrounding grounds. The church is open every day from 10am-4pm.
We feel strongly that St Barnabas belongs to everyone, as God welcomes all. If you have suggestions about how we could improve our service and witness to the community, or could better meet your needs, we would love to hear from you.
If you would like to receive our Benefice weekly newsletter via email, which contains details of services, news and notices, please email Jane (Churchwarden) on: churchwarden.stb@gmail.com or phone 01433 621172.
You can also use the links below to find out details of our service times and all our events.
Monthly letter from our Vicar.
Louise’s Monthly Message – November 2026 Being Prepared
As I look around the vicarage garden, it is full of preparation for difficult times ahead. Trees
dropping their leaves, squirrels burying food, many plants dying back and, as our wildlife camera
shows us nightly, at least three hedgehogs urgently feeding up before hibernation. The natural
world is preparing to survive the rigours of winter. And on our news not long ago, we have had
government advice urging us to prepare for potential hardships caused by cyber attacks or the
climate emergency.
Scientists and politicians seem to speak of two strands of preparing for the impacts of the climate
and biodiversity crises. Politicians seem to focus on how we might be able to ‘become more
resilient’ to some of the effects. While for at least four decades, scientists have been urging us to
take steps to reduce the risks by lowering the emissions that are causing global warming, as their
research shows consistently that the consequences of ‘life as usual’ are potentially unsurvivable.
Yet although most of us know we need to make changes, many of us struggle to do so.
Historically Christianity has taught many, and conflicting, views about being prepared for what the
future may bring. Bible passages such as Jesus’ words about ‘do not worry about what you will eat
or what you will wear’ (Matthew chapter 6, verses 25ff) have been used to justify a ‘God will take
care of it all’ attitude which negates human responsibility. Some strands of spirituality foster an
attitude of ‘just appreciate the present moment,’ which can be used to promote a similar disregard
for the impact our actions have on others. Yet throughout Christian history, running through all of
Christian teaching has remained Jesus’ key commandment to ‘love our neighbours as ourselves,’
together with parables such as the Good Samaritan, teaching us that however broad our concept
of ‘neighbour’ is, God calls on us to broaden it further.
Whether or not we include our non-human neighbours in our personal definition of ‘neighbour,’ all
the major Christian aid agencies and charities identify the climate emergency as a major cause of
poverty world-wide, currently undoing decades of progress to improve the lives of the world’s
poorest people. For me, all of these statistics are important, but what is far more important is that I
believe our call to love our neighbour means, in essence, seeking to live kindly, and only taking
what we need, or what we can take without causing harm to any.
So for me the big steps are important; looking at what I eat, reducing my energy use, changing my
energy supplier, looking carefully at how I use my money. But for me the little steps are important
too: ensuring all left over food is eaten not thrown away, trying not to buy things I don’t need,
wearing clothes and using appliances until they wear out, crushing tins and cutting plastic rings to
ensure they don’t harm wildlife, moving snails and slugs off paths so they don’t get trodden on, and
so on. My guiding principle, which grows out of my Christian faith, is to seek to try to live kindly and
to tread lightly through this life.
My prayer for us all this month is very simple; it is that we would all seek to do more good, and
seek to avoid doing harm.
Yours in Christ,
Louise Petheram
rev.louise.p@gmail.com 01433 621918
If you would like to sign up to receive the regular newsletters from churches and Christian groups
across Hope Valley, please go to
https://mailchi.mp/f29b1286b3df/2t1gk3uwy2
or email me and I can sign you up.
https://mailchi.mp/f29b1286b3df/2t1gk3uwy2
or email me and I can sign you up.
.