Our Meetings

Church Services

Jesus taught that his message to us can be summed up with two commandments - to love God and to love our neighbour.  Our church services are places where we can focus primarily on the first of these, and grow in our love for God. However they are also times when we can meet others, both the Christian brothers and sisters in our own church family, and also new people who are coming to the meetings as visitors.  

All our churches have services on a Sunday, usually in the morning - most of these take place in our own church buildings.  They are times where we can re-focus our minds on God and worship him for his goodness and love.  We communicate with God by talking to him in prayer and by listening to what he says to us through teaching from the Bible.    Through this we can grow in our walk with God.

Our meetings are also places where people can try church for the first time and hear about the amazing news that God loves us and about Jesus coming into the world to bring us into a relationship with him.  We love to make newcomers welcome at our services.

Our aim is to make the services accessible to all people, and we recognise that different groups have different requirements.  So, many of our churches have separate activities for children and young people which run alongside the main meeting.  This means that families can come together to the services.  Many of our churches have loop systems to help those who are hard of hearing.  Many also broadcast their services online so that older folk or others who are unable to come physically to the church can join in on their phone or computer.

Another aspect of our meetings is that they are places where we can be together with other people as we come to worship God. The Bible speaks of the church being like a family - all being children of our Father God.  Our services are where we can meet up with the rest of our local family - they give great opportunities to meet a range of people of different ages and backgrounds. Very often coffee is served either before or after the meeting (or both!) giving the opportunity for people to chat together.

The details of our church services can be found on the individual church websites on the Local Churches page of this website.

One service worth a special mention is the New Song Cafe that meets at St James Road Methodist Church on Sunday evenings.  This is a time where people from across our churches can join together in worshipping God.  Details of this can be found on the What’s on page of this website.

Small Group Meetings

When the early church started out they used to meet together in their homes and share meals together.  Following this pattern many of our churches also have small groups meeting in homes where we can get to know one another better, share life together, and where we can encourage other people and be encouraged by them.  The small groups are where we can work out our church family life.