English Business 1,meeting 5

PRESS RELEASE
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CHURCHES TO OFFER FREE VIDEO TELLING THE STORY OF JESUS TO EVERY HOME IN BEACONSFIELD

Eight Beaconsfield churches have joined forces in an ambitious plan to offer the JESUS Video to each of the 4,000 homes in Beaconsfield. During the last two weeks, 60 volunteers have visited 690 homes and over 200 have accepted a free copy of the video, which tells the story of Jesus.

The churches taking part in the two year project are Beaconsfield Baptist, Beaconsfield Free Methodist, St Teresa Roman Catholic, Beaconsfield URC, Holtspur URC, and St Mary’s and All Saints, St Thomas’ Holtspur and St Michael’s Anglican Churches. This is the first time that all the churches in Beaconsfield have worked together on such a long-term project. They plan to spend two weeks every six months visiting homes in different areas of Beaconsfield. A pilot project of 600 homes last Autumn resulted in 185 homes accepting a video.

Although it is early days, they are already seeing results. One Chinese lady living in Beaconsfield had never heard about Jesus, and after receiving a copy of the JESUS Video she was inspired to go to church one Sunday. On several occasions people have not been at home when church members have called, but have seen the leaflet offering the video and have phoned up to ask for a video, or even to ask for extra copies for their neighbours or grandchildren. The churches are aware, however, that the JESUS Video Project is not a quick fix but marks the start of a journey many people will take along the road to a personal faith.

Father John Udriss, the Priest at St Teresa’s Roman Catholic Church in Beaconsfield, is fully supporting the JESUS Video Project and is encouraging members of his church to be involved. Initially he had doubts about the JESUS Video Project, but he was won over by a man who revealed the reason he was considering ordination was because someone had given him a copy of the JESUS Video.

Rev Richard Caddell, Vicar of St Thomas’ Holtspur, said: “The churches in Beaconsfield set ourselves this target because we realised that people in our community simply don’t know Bible stories or the facts about who Jesus was. We have found that the JESUS Video Project is a great way for churches to work together and to let people in the community hear the facts about Jesus in a simple but unobtrusive way.”

The purpose behind the JESUS Video Project is to give every home in the UK an opportunity to see the story of Jesus for themselves. Since the start of the initiative, volunteers from over 2,000 churches have knocked on the doors of 2 million homes in the UK to offer them a copy of the JESUS Video. To date over 500,000 homes have accepted.

For more information on the JESUS Video Project, please contact the JVP office on 0121 *** ******.

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NOTES TO EDITORS:
The film JESUS - produced by John Heyman – was shot in over 200 locations in the Holy Land. 80 minutes in length, it accurately retells the story of Jesus as recorded by Luke. Now available in more than 500 languages, it is the most widely translated film in history and has been seen by an estimated 1.6bn people – a quarter of the world’s population. Titanic, in comparison, has been seen by a mere 250m.