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We offer daily services and a cultural programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate
Sunday 3 May 6pm
Soul at Saint James is a Gospel music service with the incredible, Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir.
Friday 15 May 7pm – 9pm
An open evening where the LGBTQIA+ community and allies can ask clergy honest questions about queer and trans identities in Christian faith.
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word.
We offer hospitality to people going through homelessness and speak out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
St James’s strives to advocate for earth justice and to develop deeper connections with nature.
We aim to be a place where you can belong. We have a unique history, and the beauty of our building is widely known. Our community commits to faith in action: social and environmental justice; creativity. and the arts
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
It costs £5,000 each day to keep the doors of St James’s open to all who already need us.
A reimagined St James’s realised. A redesigned garden, courtyard and new building capacity—all fully accessible— will provide beautiful spaces for all as well as improving our environmental performance.
Whether shooting a blockbuster TV series or creating a unique corporate event, every hire at St James’s helps our works within the community.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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Steven Lancashire reflects that his lifelong spiritual and creative journey—shaped by mentors, theology, art, and the St John’s Bible—continues to inspire him to seek hope, compassion, and transformation in a divided world.
From my teenage years I’ve feel I’ve been on a very privileged spiritual and physical journey, full of encounters and discovery which have nourished me along what, at times (and not least now), has been a rocky road of development. The number and range of encounters are far too numerous to list here but I will just mention the importance of Donald Reeves in the 70s, Peter Challen from then until now and discovering Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations. I’ve opened in this way because I think context is vitally important. I believe every one of us here at St James has amazing stories – and everyone of those stories has an important context.
I consider myself a “dabbling” theologian and artist. Sitting at the feet of Cecilia Goodenough and learned the importance of spending time and grappling with Biblical text and engaging with symbols and art. Thus, when I encountered the calligraphy and art of the St John’s Bible I found it awesome (I noted that young people I used to work with used the word “Wicked” to describe something amazing!) The words written in a very different (and unimaginable for me) context 2 – 3,000 years ago and the art (often called illuminations) refreshed my journey and charged my curiosity. Susan Spink’s short books on the art have been very helpful in unpacking the amazing symbolism of the illuminations (similar to the way the works of Joseph Campbell did many years ago). This involves both quietly sitting and contemplating and taking action, in meetings and in the streets (I saw some wonderful political art outside Tate Modern on 7th March and then went marching to the US Embassy). Struggling to discern how to build trust and love, cherish the in between, to create hope, live with paradox and promote both/and rather then either/or are daily challenges for me and I expect for all of us. Promoting our common humanity, love and compassion in the midst of so much divisiveness is the over-riding task. I’m delighted to say that each day I come across individuals and groups and domestic and international initiatives that give me enormous hope. I live in hope that what I often feel are drops of hope in the sea of divisiveness, will come together as a wave and then grow into a tsunami which will result in the transformation I think we desperately need in our political and economic systems. In the 70s I was introduced by a friend who described himself as a jobbing theologian”, to the idea of Three Gear Mission: the need to connect the intimate (one to one relationships) with the corporate (systems relationships) and the global (cosmic relationships).
If you haven’t encountered one of the (seven) volumes in the side chapel at St James, I encourage you to do so. My hope is the calligraphy and illuminations will encourage your curiosity and they will prove helpful and inspiring aids on your pilgrimage of exploration and development into the future, helping you journey with your mind, heart and feet. St James shares the seven volumes with St John’s Waterloo and they sometimes can be found in the bookshop at St Martin’s in the Fields.
