Mission
Our outreach both locally and further afield
Local Mission
Downing Place seeks to witness to the Gospel in practical ways in our local community of Cambridge. We do this sacramentally through our worship on Sundays, and practically by supporting a number of local organisations and charities in Cambridge. We have recently appointed a Pioneer Minister, the Reverend Alex Clare-Young who will work mainly in the ‘night time economy’ of bars, restaurants and clubs surrounding Downing Place.
Following our return to the refurbished Downing Place building, we resumed hosting the Group Therapy Centre, as well as various Anonymous groups who have a long connection with the Church. We continue to seek new partnership opportunities and are identifying areas of need within the local community, discerning how we might best use our premises and resources to serve our neighbour.
World Mission
World Church & Public Issues
The World Church and Public Issues group encourages Downing Place’s involvement with the wider world. We have links with charities, churches and communities throughout the world. In recent years we have supported Churches, schools, aid projects and local development, sometimes through personal connections, in Guatemala, Ghana, Israel/Palestine/ the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and widely elsewhere.
We also keep our congregation informed about ecumenical activities in this country and internationally. We organise a World Church Weekend each year, and we run exhibitions and educational initiatives about national and international issues. We promote overseas aid charities such as Christian Aid and the URC’s own Commitment for Life. The Church’s monthly magazine, Place Matters,devotes a special issue from time to time on subjects such as climate change or homelessness.
Projects We Support
Commitment for Life
The United Reformed Church’s programme for international justice
Downing Place United Reformed Church actively participates in the national URC’s social justice programme, which enables local congregations to pray, advocate and take action for vulnerable people.
Read more about the programme and how to support it; and set up a regular or one-off donation on our Commitment for Life page.
Children seated on chairs donated by the Church, send greetings and thanks to our members.
Our link with the Sally May Pre-school originated with a chance encounter by one of our members with Marian Koroma, who started the school in 2016.
Marian, who is originally from Sierra Leone, but has lived in Cambridge for 11 years, says ‘I went on holiday and found the kids, and realised that I needed to do something. We are a Christian school, we believe in the Christian ethos. The school is my vision and my passion.’
Our Knit One Give One group regularly donate knitted garments to the School; and our Cherry Hinton Road Tuesday Fellowship host speaker meetings and raise funds.
Cambridge Blind Mission
Throughout February this year we collected money for CBM – Cambridge Blind Mission, a charity which works to transform ‘the lives of people with living with disabilites, their families and the communites in the poorest places of the world’.
We are proud to say that our community gave £1600 to this cause. Thankyou to all those who gave so generously.
As you’ll see we received a certificate, and letter from CBM after we sent the donation to them. In the letter they thank us for enabling people across the world to recevie the vital treatment they need.
Address
Downing Street,
Cambridge
CB2 3EL
Registered Charity Number
1131462
Downing Place URC
Downing Place is a community of people who seek to take God seriously through worship, study and service that are responses to the living, dying and rising of Jesus Christ and rooted in his teaching.
