Work is in progress at St John’s Weston Rhyn in the effort to make the church a great community resource for the people of the village.

Over the last decade the building has become fully accessible – comfortable seating, a toilet, refreshment, good facilities and carpeting have all made such a difference.

Never in its history has the building been so extensively used by all sorts of people for such a variety of things.

In July it hosted the Village Festival and even the part-time Post Office is based there on Thursdays when the building is also open for coffee.

Members are delighted with progress so far. The changes have been made sensitively and the ‘sense of church’ remains with the design of the front blending both old and new.

When the chairman of Shropshire Historic Churches Trust, Stephen Winwood, visited earlier in the year, he was so impressed that he said: “Every church in the diocese should be made to come to Weston Rhyn to see what had been achieved.”

Now, the new extension is creating space to move the toilet and leave room for the future insertion of a large staircase with a platform lift to lead to the proposed new room above the reception area.

Members of the church hope the extension itself will be completed by Christmas.

Peter Bevington said: "The work is slow because, contrary to the impression that the CofE is rich with all its assets and pension funds, the exact opposite is true at the local level.

"Finance is very, very tight. The current work will exhaust the funds even though we shall be doing a lot of the internal work ourselves.

"So, completing the whole project may still take a long time.

"It is a long journey that has already taken several decades but we are determined to create a resource suitable for our neighbourhood.

"The aim is to have a place where people can encounter God, build God’s community and serve their neighbours."

St John’s wants to welcome more people to join in and engage with these aims.