If you made the decision to come along to one of our regular church services, what would you expect to go on? That’s a dilemma faced by many people as they ponder over whether to go into a church for the first time, or the first time in a long while. To help you get over that worry, here’s a brief description of what you could expect at our church.
A beginner’s guide to Sunday services
At Corringham Community Church, our services are relaxed and friendly and often follow a broadly similar format.
When you enter the church you’ll be greeted by a regular attendee who might give you a Notice Sheet, outlining activities that are happening during the next week, as well as events planned for slightly further ahead.
We spend a portion of our time singing songs set to music; we do this as a way of expressing our emotions/feelings, and to praise God. The songs we sing vary in style from modern guitar-led songs written in the past six months to hymns that were written a few hundred years ago. Words for the songs are projected onto a screen at the front of the church so that visitors don’t have to worry about finding songs in a book or knowing which bit of a song comes next. You can stand or sit during the songs, whichever you feel more comfortable doing. We devote a portion of our services to reading the Bible, sometimes referred to as God’s Word. Christians believe that the Bible is a very important way in which God speaks to us and guides us. It will form the basis of the talk that is given at a later stage in the service.
Prayer plays an important part within our services because it’s the way in which we communicate with God (and vice versa!). This often takes the form of someone leading prayers on subjects that are important to members of the church, our area, and the world, or a time of open prayer in which the congregation are given the opportunity to pray, if they want to.
Around 20-35 minutes is usually allowed for the ‘sermon’, which takes the form of a talk expounding on the Bible text read and applying it to our lives. These talks are lively and interesting and hopefully will relate the Bible to the lives of those listening.
We don’t take a monetary collection during our services so you don’t need to feel pressurised into giving money. It’s our members’ job to keep the church running!
We really hope that coming into the church and attending services isn’t threatening and that this short article has cleared up any misconceptions you might have. However, if you’ve still got questions or would like someone to go with you then please contact us and we would be delighted to help you out.