Welcome to the Parish Website for St Matthew's, Northampton. We hope that you will find your visit both informative and interesting, a valuable resource in discovering more about the on-going life and activity of our Parish. Above all we hope that you will feel encouraged to come and see us in person.

We are an Anglican Parish Church, in the catholic tradition, whose primary purpose is to bring others to faith in Jesus Christ and to promote the Christian Gospel. We seek to inspire lives of committed service and, in all respects, live the implications of our faith within our contemporary setting.

We strive to be a welcoming community where worshippers enjoy a sense of belonging to a ‘parish family’. Such a community is characterized by mutual respect and affirmation based on a recognition that, though unique, we are each created in the likeness of Christ.

We aspire to be outward looking, a witnessing community within our local setting for which we have particular responsibilities, and further afield. We do so through a well promoted pattern of prayer and worship, and through a wide variety of community-based activities that attract a broad cross-section of society.
 

Announcement       The Bishop of Peterborough has invited Fr Nicholas to become a member of the College of Canons at Peterborough Cathedral. This honour has been conferred on Fr Nicholas for the significant contribution he has made to the life of this diocese. As a canon he will be able to contribute to the life of the Cathedral through the regular meetings of the College of Canons. It is also a reflection on us at St Matthew’s as a congregation and a recognition of our contribution within the diocese. Fr Nicholas is to be installed as a non-residentiary canon on Thursday 9 November during Choral Evensong. The service begins at 5.30pm. Caroline Ward, Church Warden

A Sermon delivered at St Matthew's Church, Northampton,
5 May 1946

First published as Five Sermons by Laymen, 1946
Matthew 11.28. 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'

		"When I came into this church for the first time in my life, which was yesterday evening - coming in by that South West door over there - I wanted to go down on my knees. For this is the sort of church which brings you to your knees. These soaring vistas of pale stone arches, the superb proportion of window to wall space, the delicacy of much of the detail from the profound, primitive simplicity of Henry Moore's Madonna and Child, to the lace-like tracery of this beautiful wrought-iron chancel screen, the way the genius of Holding, the architect, leads your eye to the high altar there below the flashing jewels of the East Window, that altar where the Greatest Mystery in the World happens Sunday after Sunday, and where, as we who try to be Christians try to believe, the Creator of the world, of the universe, of the trees and birds in the road outside, of the stones which Holding used to build the church, of the bones which help you sit upright in your seats tonight, where the Maker of our souls and minds, our very selves becomes present to hear our needs and answer our prayers in accordance with His Will - as I thought of all these things I did indeed want to fall on my knees and thank God for the beauty which man has made to the Glory of God in St Matthew's." Continue reading...

More information about the John Betjeman sculpture by Martin Jennings can be found at www.martinjennings.com