Services.
Meeting together for worship, communion, prayer, chat and more!
We have two meetings on a Sunday:
Sundays
"The Morning Service" at 10.30am
"The Evening Service" at 5pm
Both services have communion, sung worship and teaching from the Bible (normally the same sermon is preached morning and evening), and we encourage everyone to be alert to whether God is nudging them to contribute to the service. At The Evening Service we sometimes make a bit more space to pray for each other and serve each other, drawing on the power of the Holy Spirit living in us. (See below for more on all this!)
The Morning Service is accompanied by age-appropriate groups for children up to School Year 6 and a crèche for toddlers (parents accompany children there). The Evening Service has a group for y5-6 and a group for Younger Youth (y7-9). Everyone starts in the Main Hall together and children/youth will go into their groups part-way through the service.
Refreshments are available after each service and before The Morning Service. If possible, please bring your own mug, though we’ll happily provide one if necessary. You're also welcome to bring a packed lunch to eat after The Morning Service in company with others, though biscuits are also available.
Pizza (or similar) is provided after The Evening Service (for free, with an opportunity for those who are able to donate to help cover the cost), and we have some games out in the main hall.
There is a Zoom stream from The Evening Service for the benefit of people connected with the church who are unable to come in person. If you'd like the details to access this, please get in touch.
In December, the service pattern changes slightly to make space for special Christmas events.
What happens?
What to expect from our meetings.
Singing.
"Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs."
Psalm 100: 1-2
In every culture, music and singing is used to celebrate and express happiness and jubilation. We spend a portion of our service singing, to express and cultivate our joy in what God's done for us, to respond to Him, and most importantly to honour and praise Him.
Learning together.
We are committed to reading and understanding the Bible together. We unpack the words of the Bible in order to help us follow Jesus and apply his message to our lives. Services have a 20-30 minute talk from one of our preachers; there is also sometimes additional content (mainly through our podcasts) for anyone who wants to dig deeper to listen to at their leisure. You can listen to previous talks and episodes of InConvo via the "Recordings" page of this website.
Prayer and prophecy.
God wants to use everyone in the church to bless the rest of the church, in all sorts of ways. Some of those ways particularly relate to our services, so we make space for different people to contribute to the meeting through prophecy, encouragement, prayers in God-given languages, etc. and for us to respond to what God's saying and doing and perhaps pray for each other. Sometimes we'll all pray for someone or something in particular, and there's a team of people available to support you in prayer after the service if that would be helpful.
Communion.
And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he also took the cup after supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you."
Luke 22:19-20
Jesus taught us to remember his death by eating bread and drinking wine, representing his body and blood. We call this simple meal communion. Every Sunday we eat this meal as we remember Jesus’ death and resurrection and look forward to the day he returns. Currently, single-serve portions of communion (a wafer/biscuit (GF option available) and some non-alcoholic wine) are provided at all Sunday services and we take communion as part of our time together.
Socialising.
"Therefore encourage one another and build each other up…"
1 Thessalonians 5:11
Please don’t feel the need to rush off at the end;do stick around to get to know the other people at the service. This is an important part of belonging to a church community – we look out for each other and make new friends.