Thinking About A Christening……………………

 

Thank you for clicking this part of our web site. We hope the following will be of help to you.

 

Christening is the same thing as Baptism and it’s about wanting to bring your son or daughter up in the Christian way and joining the church family as a way of doing this. It’s about recognising that the love of God is already there in your child and that you want to nurture that love.

 

We would be delighted to help you to explore having your child baptised at St Matthew’s. Just give Fr Andrew or Rev’d Rosemary a ring to have a chat.

 

You need to be resident in our parish or if you live outside the parish but have a link with St Matthew’s then we might be able to help too. We’re just pleased you’re making this first step.

 

Following our chat on the phone, we’d arrange a time to come and visit you at home where we can talk a bit about the meaning of Baptism and tell you about the things we have at St Matthew’s to help make you all welcome. You can click on the “Children’s Section” at our home page to find out more now.

 

We would then have a look through the Baptism service and explain the promises both you and Godparents would need to make. This is all very informal and is a good way of getting to know us. It’s useful to know that the Godparents you choose need to have been christened themselves, and that it’s usual to have up to four.

 

We would welcome you to attend our worship sometimes, so that you can feel whether St Matthew’s is right for you. The third Sunday in the month – Family Service at 10am  is a good starting point as it’s very child friendly!

Click here for details of all the other service times.

 

We’d  encourage you to have the Baptism in our morning service on Sundays at 10am  because part of it is about welcoming your little one into our church family. So we’d like to be there to celebrate this with you. We can assure you of a very warm welcome.  It’s good to plan the date well in advance, so please never think it’s too early to make contact.

 

There is no charge for a service of Baptism, but we hope you’d want to stay with us as members of the St Matthew’s Family.

 

You’ll probably want to bring friends and family along to the service and we’ll welcome them all with open arms. (We’ve got a loo and crèche facilities!) We also have a large hall and a parish room which can be booked if you intend holding a celebration afterwards.

 

The next step is to contact one of us so that we can get things going.

 

We hope to hear from you soon

 

Rev. Andrew Cunnington Telephone 01737 761568
Revd. Rosemary Webb Telephone 01737 769763