Your First Visit
What do I need to know?
We think all you need to know before you come to one of our services for the first time is that you’ll be made very welcome and accepted as a friend. There’s no special knowledge or qualifications you need – just come on in and join us as we worship God together.
What do I wear?
Worried about wearing the ‘right clothes’ for Church? Read on for some good news – we don’t have a dress code! (Well, bikinis are probably not a good idea – our heating’s good, but not that good!) Some people like to dress up to come to Church but some people wear their jeans and a t-shirt – anything you feel comfortable wearing is fine by us.
What happens in a service?
We’re part of the Church of England and we use services from a book called Common Worship. We have an organist or a pianist at each of our churches, and we love singing hymns of praise to God. We also pray, hear readings from the Bible and listen to a sermon or talk from one of our ministry team. At Communion services we share bread and wine at the altar together, or receive a blessing from the vicar if we’re not confirmed. After the service we usually have tea, coffee, juice and biscuits while we mingle and chat. We have lots of different services throughout the week – you can find out more on our Prayer and Worship page.
Children
At each of our churches we have a Sunday School for children: if they’re feeling brave and want to jump straight in they’ll be very welcome to come along on your first visit: just ask the welcomers at the door to show you the way to Sunday School. If you’d prefer, your children could stay with you in church and find out about Sunday School after the service. You’ll notice that partway through the service the Sunday School children re-join the main congregation so we all finish our worship together. For those with younger children we have an area at the back of St. Thomas’ Church where you can spend the service if you’d rather not sit in a pew – you’ll still be in the main body of the church with everyone else but there’s room for your toddlers to toddle about and lots of books and toys. As St. Mary Magdalene’s is a smaller church we don’t have a similar crèche area but there’s still space for little ones to roam free and we have books and toys there too.