Following the publishing of the government’s guidance on the safe use of places of worship from 4th July; we have been discussing, planning, and looking at what steps we need to take in order to reopen for church services.

We are now ready to share with you our plans to reopen for services in September. This gives us time to fully prepare the building and get everything in place administratively and practically to start services. It also allows time for all the staff to take a 2 week holiday, as they have been working so hard to make church online possible during this lockdown period and we feel that it is important to make space for them to have a break before we enter this next season of reopening for services.

From September we will be holding two separate weekly services, in order to maintain social distancing and do our utmost to keep everyone safe.

Family Service every Sunday at 10:30am - starting 6th September

A special service exclusively for families with young children sitting as households in the main hall (with a maximum of 2 adults). It will be approximately 40 minutes long and will be a fun, word-filled time aimed at the children.

Wednesday Adults Service at 7:30pm - starting 9th September

This one hour service will be for adults (young people aged 13+ are welcome to attend with a parent/guardian) and will include a time of prayer and a message from Pastor Robert.

We will share more detailed information about reopening on our website and on social media over the coming weeks, but all services will need to be pre-booked online.

How wonderful to be able to start meeting together again - we are excited!

However we also understand that not everyone will be able to come out for these services for a wide variety of different reasons, and so we are pleased to share that we will be continuing church online even after reopening – this includes our Sunday 10:30am streamed service, with worship led by Simon T and the team and the Sunday message from Pastor Robert. This ensures that everyone can join us for church, wherever they are and whenever it works for them.

Jesus came to bridge the divide not only between us and God but also between one another. Pastor Robert and Virginia and the senior leadership team have been deeply grieved to see how George Floyd lost his life and the evil of racism and discrimination. As followers of Jesus we are all called upon to be examples of His love; to be part of the answer for the world today and to join hands with our black brothers and sisters against racism.

We realise that for many people this may raise painful memories from events in the past, or from more recent incidents, and feelings of hurt, anger or injustice linked to racism and discrimination. We want you to know that we are here for you. We want to listen, to stand with you in prayer and support you however we can. If you would like support and to talk to a pastor, just text the word CONNECT to 66777.

We are very grateful to be part of a multi-racial congregation where we see how wonderful it is to love and respect each other.