Our school helps us to walk with Jesus, to be the best that we can be.  Through God’s love and guidance, we create an ethos of shared endeavour, friendship and co-operation to help us flourish academically, emotionally and spiritually.

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13

Scroll down to the bottom of the information to see some of the ways that we support St. John Church with their services.

Our Vicar

Our vicar is Rev Jordan Bentliff – he is heavily involved in the life of the school, and leads worship once a week for us. Read all about him!

I’m Rev Jordan, the Vicar of St John’s Baxenden and St Paul’s Accrington, and I’m delighted to be a governor at both schools. I’m passionate about working with children and young people and love seeing them grow in confidence, discover their gifts and flourish. I’m particularly excited to support the schools in being places where every child is valued, encouraged and given the opportunity to thrive. Outside of church and school life, I enjoy spending time with my family, playing guitar and making music. Blessings, Revd Jordan

Church and School Partnership leading to life in all its fullness

Jesus talked a lot about the kingdom of God – this is wherever Jesus reigns as King.  I want to see the growth of the kingdom of God in our church, our school, in our community.  This faith we have is not just for Sunday, it affects the whole of our lives.

So I am delighted to see our mutual flourishing as church, school and community which reflect the things I learned from working in Christian aid and development for ten years in Asia.  Wherever my organisation built an irrigation project, a school, an agricultural programme in Nepal, a church formed.  The reason?  Because the Nepali people saw the love of God in action and asked to know more.

So, this is the heart of all we want for our community – that we might show the love of God in word and action.  We see this through many of our church members being governors, through children from the God Squad getting confirmed through the Gardening Club, attending trips, or listening to children reading.

We are delighted, however, that our headteacher had encouraged this mutual flourishing – older folk have come from the community for lunch at school, school children regularly come and join our monthly community coffee, the school choir enhances some of our key festivals throughout the year; Remembrance, Harvest, Christmas, Easter.

And for me personally, I lead Collective worship weekly, I visit classes to talk about things like baptisms, the Bible, Communion. I have friends in the school – teachers and members of the wider team, and am truly a part of the Baxenden family!

And over the last year we have seen parents getting confirmed, parents wanting to be more involved in the life of the church, members of staff attending church, one even helped us plan the launch of a well-being course for those in our community who are struggling with loneliness, bereavement and mental health.

But, I believe there is so much more to be done – I would love us to be able to offer more chaplaincy to staff, to offer marriage and parenting courses to parents, to support the more vulnerable children by offering mentors from our congregations.  For me this is what it means to see life in all its fullness.

Rev Amanda Marshall

This Month’s Service Rota

https://www.baxendenstjohn.org.uk/calendar/

History of the School & Church

This link will take you to the page on the St. John church website where you can find out about the history of our school:

This link will take you to the page on the St. John church website where you can find out about the history of our church:

The school has a trust deed that dates from 31st December 1878. The ethos statement of this voluntary school is:

Church Events & Services

Harvest

The God Squad helped to retell the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13. They also wrote and performed some Harvest acrostic poetry and helped the congregation sing ‘My Lighthouse’.

Pamper Afternoon

Members of staff from the school went to take part in a ‘Pamper Day’ organised by Bishop Jill – great fun was had!

Blackburn Cathedral

Our choir sang with the choirs from Blackburn at their Christmas Spectacular. Here is a sample for you to enjoy!

Harvest

Our KS2 children and families all supported the church in their Remembrance service.

Scroll down to the very bottom of the page to find lots of ideas to celebrate Lent and Easter.

Lent 2026

This year, Lent begins on Wednesday, February 18th, 2026. But before Lent even begins, there’s Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent, which is a time to “clean the soul,” according to the BBC. The first day of Lent is called Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday, priests gather ashes from the previous Palm Sunday (more on that later) and rub them on congregants’ foreheads.

Remembrance

We supported St. John Church by singing and laying a wreath duirng their Remembrance service on Sunday 14th November. Watch our video to see what we did:

Easter

Our Lent challenge this year is the ’40 acts’ challenge:

Easter

The winner of our ‘Cross for your Window’ competition is Ollie! Well done Ollie – what an amazing cross made out of lego. He wins a gift voucher for a local shop!

Look at the entries to our ‘Design A Cross for Your Window’ competition! To vote for your favourite cross, remember the number BELOW the picture and follow the link.

If following links online, you should monitor that children are sticking to that page only and are keeping safe online (eg. some of the texts are You Tube links)

Link to the Downloadable ‘Easter Exploration’ Booklet from the Spinnaker Trust:
https://tinyurl.com/rtbq2wv

Also available to watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/NteMQbOkEO0

• The learning activities below are planned around KS1 (Y1&2); Lower KS2 (Y3&4); Upper KS2 (Y5&6) – pick the activities which are appropriate for your child’s level of learning
• The activities are around a theme so there may be activities (eg. art and design) which children of different ages in the family can do together
• Each sheet has a key text around which the activities have been planned. Sometimes there is an activity to do before reading/following the text
• There are some ‘challenges’ in there. These are designed to be completed after all the other activities for that particular subject have been completed
• Children can complete the non-challenge activities in any order and colour the boxes when complete – the sheet is designed to be flexible in order to support parents with managing the home-learning as positively as possible