Welcome to the Blackbourne Ministry Team Website

We are eight parishes (Bardwell, Barnham, Euston, Fakenham, Honington with Sapiston, Ingham with Ampton & Gt & Lt Livermere, Ixworth with Ixworth Thorpe, Troston) with eleven church buildings in the Ixworth Deanery of the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. We are situated in a rural part of north Suffolk and midway between two major East Anglian towns, Bury St Edmunds and Thetford. The Blackbourne Team was established by a Pastoral Scheme in 1992 as an amalgamation of three existing benefices.

Our aim is to Worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to teach the Bible in a way that is relevant to everyday life, to enable people to grow in faith, understanding and love, equip people to serve and to offer people the opportunity to meet with Jesus and discover forgiveness and new life.

Please browse our site to find out about the services in our churches, the individual church buildings themselves, the people involved, and some of the forthcoming activities in our lovely neck of the woods.

The Team takes its name from the Blackbourne River, which rises near Ixworth and crosses into Norfolk from the parish of Euston, there to be swallowed into the Little Ouse. The river was a vital element in the farming scene of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries since it powered no fewer than five mills, one of which still grinds corn.

The villages within the team are served by a wide variety of minor roads and lie mostly between two A-class highways running more or less south to north, one coming from Bury St Edmunds and the other from Ipswich, meeting at Thetford over the county boundary in Norfolk. The Icknield Way long-distance footpath crosses the Team area at its northern end and there are many other footpaths along historic routes linking ancient settlements..

[Deuteronomy 30: 19-20]

The choice of life is the choice for God.  It is the response of the prayerful.  Fancy that!  Maybe we have to dare to dance rather than look sombre; maybe we have to flirt a bit rather than become dry and cut off.  Maybe we have to risk and trust rather than play safe.  All this is prayer, prayer that desires life and desires God.  Personally I am not very good at it.  I have too often played safe and too seldom taken hold of life as though it were all gift, but I am slowly learning.

[Breathing, I Pray – Ivan Mann]