At St. Matthew’s we are very proud of our links with the local community.

Before St. Matthew’s was built, the people of Borstal had to go to St. Margaret’s church, almost a mile away for services. The church built a school in the village in 1868 and services were held there for a while. Then, a villager named Thomas Tuff who lived in Albion Villa donated a portion of his land to the church, and in July 1879, St. Matthew’s held it’s first service and Borstal got it’s own church.

The close relationship with the Borstal Manor Infant School and later the St. Matthew’s Primary School have continued to this day with The Pilgrim School and the pupils of The Pilgrim School come to St. Matthew’s for services every term.

St. Matthew’s works with the other churches in the diocese to provide Dementia Friendly Services . We are also part of the Without Walls programme as well as supporting local events such as Stride and Ride, the Blythswood Shoe Box Appeal, the Salvation Army Toy Appeal and many others.

We have a permanent collection box for the local food banks and in 2020 we donated an impressive 55.6Kg of food for local people in crisis through the amazing generosity of our parishioners.

St. Matthew’s has a Peace Garden where you are welcome to come and sit and reflect. We also have a Prayer Tree where we welcome people to add their prayers or blessings to the tree for others to read and reflect upon.

At St. Matthew’s we also have several groups that we welcome members of the community to join such as our craft group, Odd Balls and our Fellowship group. We also run discussion and learning groups periodically. We recently ran a group entitled “Being Church” where we discussed what “Being Church” means to us.