Ministry Team

Team Diary
Thought for the Day

New Year’s Resolutions often take on a kind of fantasy shape: that of pretending that all in the garden is rosy, that we can simply remake our lives and wave away the scars of the battles we have survived, and whose memories still haunt our dreams. What can we do that is better? To launch into a New Year we need to let go. That’s not to say we don’t remain cognisant of what we have lived through. But we can wear our fading scars without shame, and without letting them keep us in the trenches we have already survived. We have mourned our losses, and we will do so again. But if we have survived thus far, let’s hear the call to live, with joy and celebration, while life endures.

[Maggi Dawn - http://maggidawn.com/battle-on/]

We are eight parishes (Bardwell, Barnham, Euston, Fakenham, Honington with Sapiston, Ingham with Ampton & Gt & Lt Livermere, Ixworth with Ixworth Thorpe, Troston) with eleven church buildings in the Ixworth Deanery of the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. We are situated in a rural part of north Suffolk and midway between two major East Anglian towns, Bury St Edmunds and Thetford. The Blackbourne Team was established by a Pastoral Scheme in 1992 as an amalgamation of three existing benefices.

Our aim is to Worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to teach the Bible in a way that is relevant to everyday life, to enable people to grow in faith, understanding and love, equip people to serve and to offer people the opportunity to meet with Jesus and discover forgiveness and new life.

Where are we?
The Team takes its name from the Blackbourne River, which rises near Ixworth and crosses into Norfolk from the parish of Euston, there to be swallowed into the Little Ouse. The river was a vital element in the farming scene of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries since it powered no fewer than five mills, one of which still grinds corn.

The villages within the team are served by a wide variety of minor roads and lie mostly between two A-class highways running more or less south to north, one coming from Bury St Edmunds and the other from Ipswich, meeting at Thetford over the county boundary in Norfolk. The Icknield Way long-distance footpath crosses the Team area at its northern end and there are many other footpaths along historic routes linking ancient settlements.