Alternative service group win Church Times award

On Monday evening St Peter's group 'the hill' received a national award in London.

The national Church of England newspaper the Church Times gave six awards for various categories to churches who have diverse schemes to help raise understanding of environmental issues.

'the hill' won the award in the Celebrating Creation category.

They received a prize of 500.

The core group of six use imaginative means to challenge and stimulate. The first hill service was concerned with rubbish and how the community could live more sustainably.

A second, held at St Michael's, featured on substance abuse - our use and misuse of the precious natural resource of water.

The third -Retail Therapy - will be staged at the C Side cafe on Friday, December 7 to coincide with Bexhill's Christmas late-night shopping.

Six Bexhill businesses have agreed to participate and the event will visit them before returning to its starting point.

The winning group comprises the Rev Daniel Smith, his wife Zoe, environmentalist Barbara Echlin, Jason Newton, Ros Clayton and Jim Truscott.

The church of St Mary le Bow in Cheapside was packed for Monday's award ceremony. The Bexhill team knew they faced strong competition.

Jim Truscott said later: "We are very pleased because it is recognition for a lot of hard work that we have put into this over a period.

"The services take a lot of planning and organisation.

"We had no idea really what competition we faced. We didn't know how many other churches or organisations were going to enter.

"We had been quite pleased with the services that we had put together. But we didn't know whether it was something that would please the judges.

"Then we were told that the category we had entered had attracted the most entries...

"The idea for 'the hill' came out of a conversation about trying to put together something a bit different; trying to do something which would attract people who don'r normally go to church.

"We wanted to do it in a non-threatening way. It had to be something that people outside of the Church could relate to without being worried having to go to a formal church service.

"We really wanted to speak to people in a language which they could understand.

"For the rubbish service we set up a number of installations and we wanted people to think about how we are a race handle our planet.

"We wanted to get them to think about how we had treated the planet - whether this had been 'rubbish' as it were and also how seriously we were thinking about how we treat it in terms of what we throw away; whether our response in terms of recycling is enough."

Referring to the planned Retail Therapy, he said: "We are coming down off 'the hill' into the town. We are going to get people to shop. We want them to look at the whole issue of shopping from an environmental point of view. You cannot look at shopping without thinking about ethical shopping."

Six town centre shops are taking part in Retail Therapy. Shoppers will be encouraged while they seek their purchases to spot the hidden messages in each store.