A week in the life of... Kircubbin Community Church

Thank the Lord for Bank Holiday Mondays!  We all needed it to recover from the church weekend away.  Fifty-five of us, young and old, filled Whitepark Bay Youth Hostel over the Bank Holiday weekend and had a great time of fun, with friendships deepened; times of fellowship to feed our souls; and with a “little” bit of food for the body also!

Maxwells Courtyard

The weekend was a wonderful time for the church but each Sunday in our church life is special with 30 plus adults and probably as many children meeting in “Maxwells Courtyard” - Kircubbin’s regeneration building.  We meet for at 10.30am for coffee and 11.00am for our morning service.  During church we have “Workshop” (Sunday School) for primary school aged children and creche for the preschool children and on one Sunday evening per month we have our (newly formed) Youth Fellowship. On the third Sunday morning of the month we all stay for a meal together or, in the summer, join together for a picnic.

On Mondays I head off to the Hamilton Road Church to meet up with the pastor and other staff.  Once a month my co-elder Phil Derrick and I also attend the elders meeting in Hamilton Road – this is a very valuable relationship, enabling us to be part of the wisdom of, and come under the authority of, this larger church.

Tuesday mornings have seen an exciting development on the Ards peninsula with a number of local ministers deciding to come together for support and fellowship and to plan some joint endeavours e.g. worship and outreach events.  On Sunday 31st  May we had a joint BBQ and praise service.

Whizz Kidz

On Tuesday evenings we have “Whizz Kidz” our weekly children’s meeting and just this week we had a major planning meeting for Summer Whizz Kidz - a week long outreach to local children which is now in its 12th year.  It usually draws 150 or more children each year and will run from 10th – 16th August.  Please pray for this event which takes a lot of planning and requires a lot of personnel.  It runs in two streams: one for primary school children and a parallel event for teenagers.  We are excited about the impact of this work on Kircubbin in years to come.

A number of our church family and some local people completed a ‘Christianity Explored’ course over the last few months and we thank God for some men who came each week.  They had been reading Mark’s Gospel and it was great to see them coming along and asking all sorts of questions.  We pray for fruit in God’s time.

ScrapYard Angels

Now there’s a name that has caused some confusion and a few questions as I have travelled around the country recently on deputation.  ScrapYard Angels is a craft class and gets its name from scrapbooking - a fancy way of storing and displaying your photos.  The class meets monthly in Maxwells Courtyard as a monthly outreach of our church ladies and has proved to be remarkably useful in bringing ladies from the community into contact with the church.  Around twenty women are now meeting each month.  Please pray for a BBQ arranged for the summer when the Gospel will be shared in a more upfront way, building on the relationships made through the year.

A lot can happen in a week in Kircubbin as God’s word is shared publicly and privately.  Whether in large groups or in the twos and threes it’s always “powerful and active”. 

So pease pray:

  • that the Word will find good soil and takes root
  • for contacts made by me among other workers in our shared office building
  • for contacts made on the streets and door-to-door, and
  • that God will pour out His Spirit and bring in His harvest in Kircubbin.

 Article by Derek Reid (Kircubbin Community Church Worker)