Visiting Eltham Park for the First Time

Eltham Park Methodist church seeks to make people welcome in its worship. There is easy access on the level which takes you through a short entrance, into a social area before you enter the worship space. This is a roomy area and there are plenty seats. You simply sit where you feel comfortable. Most of our congregation arrive some 5 minutes before the service is planned to begin even though the doors are usually open some 30 minutes earlier.

You will be welcomed in the social area: hymns books and if required service books are handed out for use in the service.

The service usually lasts for 1 hour and is generally a number of hymns, readings from the Bible to which the preacher will add an address, hopefully helping with understanding the reading (s) and showing its relevance for today. There will be prayers where we rejoice and seek to acknowledge the nature of God, where we realise that we are not as God and then we hope in the prayer that we are reminded that our lack of perfection, our failures, are forgiven as we trust God. There will be second set of prayers where we will offer thanks for the good things in our lives and world; we will pray that we might respond to these things by sharing them with others as we pray for other people seeking God’s blessing for them as we have been blessed.

Most of our services are services as above but usually once a month we will include the service of Holy Communion which is a symbolic meal, whereby Christians meet in a special with Jesus and hence with God. The bread and the wine (non Alcoholic) are taken in faith to be an encounter with the love of God in Jesus. All are welcome to receive the bread and the wine in this act of faith.

Finally during the service a free will offering is made so that the work of the church might be financed. After the service there is time to meet others, over a cup of tea or coffee in the social area, should you so desire.