Caring pastorally for people is an important part of our ministry. We aim to provide biblical, loving and practical pastoral care for every member of our church family from the tiniest baby to those recently bereaved and all stages in-between.

In practice our pastoral care is rather like an umbrella:

The cover of the umbrella represents the three main ways in which we provide Spiritual and Practical Care:

Observing and watching out for our whole church family – something we all do for each other

One mum and dad said “the meals brought to us proved to be a lifeline in the early days following the birth of our baby and showed just how much the church family cared.”

Caring for each other within our church family – which mostly happens within the context of our small groups

“How good it is to see you; I’ve been wanting to talk to someone about how I really feel” was said by a lady when she was recently visited.

Special care for our church family – provided by trained staff and volunteers with more expertise, skill and time for those in need of more intensive or sustained care at a particular moment in time, e.g. unemployment, bereavement or long-term ill health. In these situations we sometimes refer people on to other agencies.

An elderly couple unable to come to church said “Shall I tell you what we do? We keep the CD of the service you send us each week until the next Sunday and, at the same time the service is taking place in church, we listen to the service from the previous Sunday in our own home and that makes us feel we are still part of the worshipping community at the church we have attended for a large part of our lives.”