Sunday evenings will have a new look this autumn 2009. Instead of sermon series with the sort of expectation people should be coming every week, we are going to have a different theme each Sunday evening, and people may like to commit to coming to one or more evenings—the same evening each month.

Starting in October, the First Sunday each month will be based around John Ortberg’s brilliant book The Life You’ve Always Wanted. It’s a modern take on spiritual disciplines updated for our lives today, including the disciplines of slowing down, serving others secretly, celebrating life. As it’s a book about transformation, we thought it would be best read a chapter a month. Each month on the first Sunday we can look back over how we have done and then look forward to the next discipline. John Ortberg writes that when he read Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline he just felt guilty; this book is designed to actually help us put into practice things to help us in our following of Jesus.

We hope a group of people will commit to coming to this service and reading together a chapter each month. (Review the sermon schedule.)

On the Second Sunday of each month it will be a Communion service for wholeness and healing, with time for waiting on the Holy Spirit and ministry for healing in it’s widest sense.

There will be space for worship, reflection and receiving God’s grace and life, which we do in the mornings but don’t always have the time for quiet, and to give God some space in our lives.

On the Third Sunday of each month we will continue with our Church Prayer Meeting when we pray for our church’s life, our mission partners, and the world around us. It lasts an hour, is fairly fast paced and speeds by—really!

This we think is the powerhouse of the church, where things change, and where we listen to God and let Him work among us.

On the Fourth Sunday of each month the youth band lead us in worship, with more experiential ways of praying.

When there is Fifth Sunday we have the opportunity to worship with Taize or Iona music. The next fifth Sunday is Advent Sunday and we will have a special advent service with advent carols and mediations.