We’re putting on D-groups again for Lent! Don’t forget to sign up - you can sign up below! Sign up closes on Sunday 26 February. You don’t need to know who you are going to be in a group with, just let us know and we can link you up.
Here are some great events coming up that you might be interested in. You can click on the images to find out more and sign up for each event.
Bible School - 19 February
Wholeness course - 21 Feb
New ID course - 22 Feb
Naturally Supernatural with Mike Pilavachi - 25 Feb
Hope to see some of you there!
To kick off the new year well, we invite you to join with all of the Woodlands Church Family for a Week of Prayer and Fasting starting on Sunday 15 January. Our vision is to come together spiritually in prayer and fasting, bringing to God our hopes for the city, for the world and for His Church.
Here are all the ways you can join with us in prayer.
- Join us for an evening of Prayer and Worship on Tuesday 17 January starting at 7.45pm at Woodlands Central. More event details can be found here.
- Join us for our Wednesday 7am prayer gathering on Zoom!
- Click here to download and print our prayer resource.
- Information and guidance on fasting can be found here.
- Join our Facebook News and Notices group for daily prayer posts throughout the week.
January 2023 update!
It's looking like the building work will be completed in early February 2023. Thank you for bearing with us!
29 July 2022
After many years of planning, the Highgrove Building project is now underway!
Following the recent granting of planning permission, we’re extending the building over the current driveway to give greater accessibility with ramps, wider doorways and an accessible toilet, greater visibility with a glass fronted entrance and greater capacity. As well as an additional space to be used in various ways, the foyer will give us more room in that busy crossover period between the two Sunday services.
You can see the plans on the noticeboard in the main hall at church, or online here.
We’ll be able to continue using the building for the majority of the period of building work, but we’ll need to bear with some inconvenience for a while!
Any questions, do get in touch.
This week we are very excited to launch our Discipleship Groups (D-Groups for short) for the Lent period.
The Bible is essential reading for Jesus’ followers. Jesus himself said,
“ Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. ”
The Bible is God’s word, and it’s where we encounter God and how we get to know him better. But it’s often quite hard to commit to reading the Bible in the busyness of daily life. We need other people to encourage us and keep us going!
So for this Lent period we are starting our D-Groups, a group of 3, 4 or 5 people who commit to reading the Bible everyday and meet each week to discuss about the passages they’ve read. Here’s a video from Ed and Deb explaining it in more details:
As explained, we will be starting on March 2 and continuing on until April 17. Do visit the D-Groups page on the website to sign up!
Are you or someone you know looking for a new job opportunity? Sea Mills Community Initiatives are seeking to employ an Operations Manager whose primary role will be to bring leadership and management to our day-to-day activities as a charity. This is a fantastic opportunity to make a real difference in our community.
Salary: £23,000 pa pro rata (up to full-time hours by negotiation) 1 year fixed term contract, to be extended subject to funding Closing date for applications: Monday 21 February 2022
To find out more go to: https://www.smci.org.uk/vacancies
“ As tragic as these last few weeks have been. As difficult, scary and uncertain as they’ve been, they have been an incredible opportunity for people to be awakened to some of these underlying trends. And they offer an opportunity for us all to work together to tackle them, to take them on, to change.”
At Highgrove we want to be a community who are striving for greater understanding and change, and that includes in the area of racial justice. We are committed as a church to following the 10 step roadmap to racial diversity and unity, and encourage everyone to explore the following resources:
5 things you can do:
1. Read
There are loads of good books exploring the issue of race. Here’s two we would recommend you read if you want to dig deeper into this issue:
We Need To Talk About Race: Understanding the Black Experience in White Majority Churches by Ben Lindsay
God Is Not a White Man: And Other Revelations by Chine McDonald
2. Watch
Black and British: A Forgotten History
A four part series in which the historian David Olusoga explores the enduring relationship between Britain and people whose origins lie in Africa.
3. Discuss
Why not take an evening with your smallgroup to discuss the issues raised?
Dave and Chloe have offered to facilitate discussion with groups. If you would like to help facilitate these discussions in any way, let us know.
4. Pray
Read the Psalms and note all the places the nations are mentioned.
Ask God that your heart will reflect his heart.
Use this prayer:
Lord Jesus use this time to open my eyes to what I can’t see and haven’t seen and where I have deliberately fallen short of your love towards others.
We thank you that you are a God of forgiveness. I ask you to forgive me for the times I have fallen short and cleanse my heart of racism, division and prejudice.
Lord I pray that through your forgiveness you will grow in me a spirit of acceptance and honouring of people who are different to me.
I pray you will show me ways that I can challenge racism among my friends, family, in my workplace and in this church community. Open my eyes to things I can change in my own heart and attitudes and also in my areas of influence.
Lord may I become a person who brings peace and is willing to forgive as well as ask for forgiveness.
Amen
5. Act
Make a conscious effort to talk with someone who is from a different culture or ethnicity, listening closely to their story.
Proactively speak up about racism, challenging family, friends, and colleagues.
You’re invited to join us for our annual Global Partnership Weekend on 12 and 13 June 2021.
Jesus said, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation”.
Join us on Zoom as we hear encouraging stories from our Global Partners. We’ll have seminars about bringing together climate change and mission plus breakout sessions for different regions.
On Saturday, we are running morning and evening sessions on Zoom and then on Sunday we will have a global theme at all our services.
Morning Session:
Dare to care for God’s world
Saturday, 12 June 2021
from 10.30am - 12.30pm
Join us as we take a fresh look at what the Bible says about creation care, plus enjoy conversations with our Global Partners on what that could mean for us all.
Evening Session:
Meet our Global Partners & hear stories of faith
Saturday, 12 June 2021
from 7.45pm - 9.15pm
Join us as we host eight world ‘rooms’ so you can meet our Global Partners, hear stories of faith and find out what's been happening in their lives as they serve God across the world.
It’s been fantastic to be gathering back in the Highgrove building on a Sunday morning. There’s nothing like being together, with the Holy Spirit at work in our midst. But each Sunday is tinged with a little sadness as we recognise how many of our church family are missing.
So we’ve been praying and thinking about how to MAKE MORE ROOM for YOU and for others and we have a plan we’d like to share with you.
From 6 June we will have not one, but two, Highgrove services happening in our building every Sunday morning!
Each service will be an hour long and will have the same format and content. The only thing that will be different will be the way we structure our children and youth provision.
The first service will start at 9.30am. Adults will meet in the main hall while we use the back hall for our Sparklers pre-school-aged group and our Key Stage 1-aged Superstars group will meet in our brand-new side room.
The second service will start at 11am with a second Superstars group meeting, plus our Trailblazers Key Stage 2-aged group and our Devo group for secondary-aged youth both meeting at Sea Mills Methodist Church on Sea Mills Square.
As the children will go into their groups before the start of each service, this plan doesn’t allow for us to worship together across the ages. This is one of our key values at Highgrove, so on the first Sunday of each month we will have two all-age services with no separate children’s provision.
Between each service every week we’re hoping to serve refreshments in our Highgrove garden for much needed chatting and catching up with one another.
We will continue to livestream our service, albeit at the earlier time of 9.30am, so those who can’t yet meet physically can still engage with the service, as well as maintaining the opportunities for others not yet connected to church to easily be able to check out our services.
These plans will almost triple the number of people who can currently meet together on a Sunday morning. And, as social distancing requirements reduce over time, these numbers will continue to increase!
We’re excited by the prospect of not only increasing capacity for meeting together right now, in a Covid-safe way. But also, in time, the potential for further increased capacity beyond our original limits to extend our Highgrove welcome to new guests and increase the opportunities to share the good news of Jesus further and wider than we’ve ever done before!
To double the number of services we provide, as well as livestreaming, is going to be a huge challenge. That’s why we need you! Our teams will need lots of extra volunteers. If you’ve been part of a team before then please step back up. If you’ve not been part of a serving team for a while, then now’s the time to get involved. If you’re new to Highgrove, we’ve found joining a team is a brilliant way to get to know people and to feel you belong really quickly.
This is going to take all of us, but we’re so excited about MAKING ROOM in this next season. We’ll provide more information about these changes and how you can help over the next few weeks. But in the meantime, please be praying with us as we take this exciting step!
Each day during Holy Week, we would encourage you to watch our short lunchtime meditation videos and take time to pray. Reflect on Jesus' journey to the cross and the greatest act of love this world has ever seen.
Follow the links to watch on the Woodlands YouTube channel at 12noon each day:
