This is our chance to answer the questions you have about our church.
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It's not that we're special or particularly good or clever - we're not, but God is special. We've found that He can change our lives and do what seemed to be impossible. That's worth celebrating and it's worth passing on too. We have a plaque over the entrance to the chapel and it reads like this: 'Not by power, not by might but by My Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.' It's a quote from the Bible and it sums up a lot of our experience. We worship a great God. We've got to know a great God and we want to introduce you to Him as well.
Church is just a gathering of God's people. Wherever we meet, we're the church (or part of it). We have a special bond between us because we all share God's Spirit and many of us share similar experiences. We've found that we are stronger together than when we are apart. We learn more from each other than we can do on our own. We can do more for God when we work together than we can alone. Our worship together is often different and sometimes more profound, when we share it together. In short, it seems to be God's plan that we should be in church groups rather than trying to be Christians on our own.
Seriously, how can Christianity still be relevant today? Jesus is still alive - now as much as ever. Christianity is still relevant today because Jesus is still alive and relevant. Christianity is not really a religion - it's a relationship. We all need loving, supporting relationships and a relationship with Jesus is the most loving and caring that can be. He has changed our lives, healed past hurts, dealt with things that we have done wrong and enabled us to start again. He lives with us here and now and transforms our lives with his constant presence... but don't just take our word for it: meet with Jesus for yourself and find out.
What is a Baptist Church? Why are there so many sorts? The Baptist Church is one of the oldest protestant denominations and overall, one of the largest Christian groups in the world. We acknowledge the truth of the Bible and use it as our basis for knowing about God. We also acknowledge that Jesus is still with us by His Spirit and so still talks to us - ours is not a static faith but a growing, living experience of God. We got the name 'Baptist' because we practise baptism for believers, in other words, we wait until people are old enough to decide for themselves whether they want to follow Jesus or not, then we baptise them in water - lots of it! Our most important belief is that Jesus has the power to save and transform lives, if only we put our faith in Him. In that we are not so different to most of the other Christian churches around. Indeed we often meet with Christians from other churches for combined services, etc. There are lots of different sorts of churches mostly because there are lots of different sorts of people. We may worship in different ways but that's because we think and act in different ways but our worship is just as valid, however we express it. There have been small (and some not so small) disagreements between us over the years but then, no-one said that we were perfect. We're learning that those disagreements fade into the distance when you put them into perspective against the all-powerful love of God.
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