The Spire is the parish magazine of St James's Church and has developed over the years in both style and production and has been widely acclaimed as clear, accessible and informative. The magazine is distributed free, but each year there is an appeal for voluntary contributions. It is produced nine time a year, with three issues each covering two months. Have a look at the current Spire.
The cost of the magazine is paid by the PCC, which sets an annual budget, but this is, in effect, largely offset by voluntary donations. The Spire aims to have as wide a variety of material as possible, including not only church notices and reports but also articles reflecting the lives of parishioners, the wider community and national or global issues. Besides the magazine’s necessary factual content - who to contact for particular needs and how to find them, days and times of services, etc. - there are features which are helpful or interesting to as wide an audience as possible.
Each issue, six hundred and fifty copies are delivered to the many volunteer distributors, all around the parish and beyond, who deliver the copies to houses in the parish. Copies are also sent out each time by post to a wide variety of people - past clergy, former parishioners, local churches, the Bishop of Kensington and Archdeacon of Middlesex, as well as the local newspapers, schools and hospitals. There is now also a growing group of people who receive their copies by email. If you would like to do this please see below.
The distribution was reviewed some years ago and as a result more copies were placed in the High Street, at the Post Office, library, Medical Centre and dentist with the response being "outreach at its best". Then followed another successful year and the distribution rose so much that copies sometimes ran out. With the PCC approval we now have an extra 50 copies making 700 for our usual distribution and in church. It was then decided that we should try to deliver the Spire to every house in the parish as a trial. The PCC agreed that we could print extra copies of each edition to make this possible.
The Spire Team
The magazine is produced and distributed by a group of parishioners, the Spire Team, who believe that good communication is essential to the understanding and spreading of the Christian faith.
Receive the Spire by Email
To receive the Spire by email sign up here.
Find out more
2019 Appeal Letter (document)
The History of the Parish Magazine
Annual Parochial Church Meeting Reports (these documents contain the annual reports of the various church teams or groups associated with St James's Church. Scroll down the document of the year you are interested in to find the report you want)
Magazine Covers
Magazine Archives
All the old magazines have been scanned and added to a Magazine Archive in the St James's archives and are recorded here. The quality of the scans vary and correspond to the quality of each original magazine: 1884-1899 | 1900-1919 | 1920-1939 | 1940-1959 | 1960-1979 | 1980-1999 | 2000-2019 | 2020 - 2039
Contact
Janet Nunn on 020 8979 6325
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The team hard at work |
Two Spire copies |
Sorting for delivery |