Ockbrook, Derbyshire - Sept 2025

On 26th July 2025, on a lovely Saturday afternoon, our Ockbrook Church and wider community celebrated 275 years of Moravian brethren’s longstanding presence in the community.

The event was well attended – the joyful gathering of neighbours and friends, showcasing the best of our Community Spirit. Our stalls offered a wide variety of goods to purchase, including a plant stall, white elephant, books, handmade jewellery, ice cream, raffle and, of course, our ever-popular cake and refreshment stalls. The coconut shy and ‘splat the rat’ games ensured a great deal of hilarity amongst both young and old.

We also offered conducted tours in and around our Church with a fantastic display detailing our history which was well received.

We are often asked ‘Who are you Moravians?’ so a Moravian stall was prepared by our NCD (Natural Church Development) team with free branded merchandise along with a small card detailing a very short précis of our ancestry and faith. These enabled us to start conversations about who we are, our beliefs and worship.

We had more leaflets available with more detailed information. A large poster was created and our congregation each gave a short synopsis about why being a Christian in our Moravian Church was important to them along with individual photographs. The comments were sincere, heartfelt and garnered a lot of interest.

One of our members made some lovely homemade peg dolls dressed in traditional Moravian costume according to their marital status. A further poster developed by one of our congregations detailed why faith and worship was becoming increasingly important and why many more people are connecting to church and the need for faith in our time.

In addition, we raised much needed funds for repairs to our Manse house. It was teamwork, and we managed splendidly. Well done everybody!

Srs Jackie Flint, Rose Turner, and Adriana Davey