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We offer daily services and a creative programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
We are delighted to announce that from 6 Jan until early Apr 2025, work will take place to reinstate the church’s South Door onto Jermyn Street, part of Sir Christopher Wren’s original design.
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 aspire to be a home where everyone can belong. We’re known locally and globally for our unique history and beauty, as well as faith in action, creativity and the arts, and a commitment to social and environmental justice.
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.
The work of St James’s, it costs us £5,000 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us.
New walkways, a restored courtyard and re-landscaped gardens will provide fully accessible, beautiful spaces for everyone to enjoy as well as improving our environmental performance.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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Associate Priest, Mariama Ifode-Blease, explores how time and our motivations shape our knowing of God.
What motivates us to do what we do? Is it our deep values, hidden self-interest, an inherited sense of obligation, a thirst for justice and doing what is right? In my recent epic quest to learn to drive, and in between stalling and starting, and saying all the prayers I can as I navigate roundabouts, I have found myself asking this question about motivation many, many, times.
Our motivations can, of course, be at the surface of our thoughts and actions (the opportunity to drive to the local supermarket and fill my boot with crisps!). Some can be a bit deeper (relieving my husband from driving duty and being able to help and support family). What is clear is that we need to make the time to identify our core (and not so core) motivations to enable a level of self-awareness that can only be helpful, to us and others.
It has been so tempting to burst into that Carrie Underwood 2005 hit “Jesus take the wheel”. Yet, as a Learner Driver (emphasis on “learner” here), even I know that I have to hold on to the wheel and not absolve myself of the responsibility that such agency brings. God knows that there is a healthy balance to be struck between giving things over to God and also asking God for how we can do things better as human beings. I am a firm believe in a God that is there in the passenger seat and also outside on the driver’s side saying “I’ve got you”. We still need to keep our eyes on the road towards human dignity and collective purpose, moving forward steadily, and with a deep recognition that this isn’t just about us. “Due regard for other road users”, my instructor keeps telling me. And I get that. I really do. I also understand that while we can most definitely focus on doing our part, this is an interconnected system in which the responsibility for safety is shared.
Last week, Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) was identified as a ‘national emergency’ here in the UK, the notion of how we keep individuals and communities safe is front and centre. I am not an expert practitioner or someone who is currently working in this field, but it seems to me that there has to be a whole societal effort to eradicate such violence. An emergency needs a pretty immediate and direct response. You don’t see the lava exploding from a volcano under which you live, flowing down towards your home, and hold an umbrella. And the Church has a place in being responsive and immediate. How can Church be a friend to women? What relationship does Church have to misogyny? And what are the deep and surface-level motivations behind this relationship? What St James’s has taught me is that to be a friend in the model of Jesus Christ, you have to show up. Be visible, be present, be love.
And so, there I was last week in my driving lesson, plodding along at 15 miles per hour, when I heard my instructor’s voice saying that I was too slow for the road that I was on. Being too slow can be as dangerous as being too fast. Church of England take note. As Christians, the direct access to an all knowing, all loving God, can often beguile us into thinking that time can bend to our will. Educated to be ‘masters of our own destiny’, time becomes something, sometimes, we feel we can control. Until life happens when we’re busy making other plans. And then we are at the mercy of time, for our bodies and souls to heal, for the wait for a better outcome, for dreams to be realised, for someone to say sorry, for institutions to be accountable.
And in all of this, God holds time and us in it. And that is just so hard to comprehend. God makes time revelatory. It shows us more than we would like to see, and not enough, all at once. It offers consolation and deepens human injustice. It suggests opportunities and, at the same time, can shut down freedoms. Yet, in and with God, time can be blessed and honoured through love, wonder and enlightenment, in the best possible sense of these words. Because God’s motivation is love. And in our time with one another, however long that may be, we can continue to work together to ensure that our journey includes everyone, that people can feel safe in our welcome, nurtured by our offering of prayer and contemplation, and supported by our walk (or crawl, or drive) with them as they choose time with God and time with us.