Sunday Worship at Ridgeway Methodist Church includes a special service for children and teenagers. This service lasts approximately 45 minutes and includes singing, dancing and a time of teaching. Following the service, toast is served for all the young people in the Church Hall, after which various group activities take place for children of all ages. You can read more about these activities in the Youth section.
While the youth activities are going on elsewhere in the building, the main morning service is held in the Church starting at 10:30am. This service, which sees a congregation of around 100, usually lasts between sixty and ninety minutes, and includes several traditional hymns as well as some more modern worship songs. During the service a crèche is available for under 3's next to the main worship area. Following the service, tea, coffee and biscuits are served, usually in the entrance hall. Members of the congregation are welcome to take their drinks back into the worship area and share in a time of fellowship together. For larger services, drinks are served in the Church Hall.
Sunday Worship concludes with the evening service at 7:00pm. Usually attended by between thirty and forty people, the evening worship is in a more contemporary style, with most of the music in the form of modern worship songs. For the more modern songs in both the morning and the evening, music is played by our worship group which includes piano, drums, violin, flutes and clarinet. There is always a time set aside for testimonies and prayer requests from the congregation, as well as the preaching of the Word of the Lord. The evening service usually finishes between 8:00pm and 8:30pm.
In addition to our usual Sunday services, there is a monthly service at the nearby Pocklington Rise residential home. We also hold a "Midweek Celebration" approximately every three months, usually with a special guest speaker. These events are often attended by a number of people from other local churches as well as from our own community at Ridgeway. One Sunday evening service in November each year takes the form of a special Memorial Service, with invitations sent to the families of all those whose funerals have taken place in the Church in the previous year.
Both our morning and evening services typically include Holy Communion on one Sunday in every month, as well as on special occasions such as Maundy Thursday and Christmas Eve. We do not have complicated rules regarding Holy Communion, baptised people from all Christian denominations are welcome to take Communion. If you do not wish to take part in Holy Communion, you are welcome to remain in your seat. If you wish to take part but do not feel ready to actually take the bread and wine, you are welcome to come forward and our minister will ask a simple prayer of God's blessing on you. If you wish to do this, simply indicate it by keeping your hands by your sides when you kneel at the Communion rail. You can also take Communion in your seat if necessary, if you would like to do this you can indicate to one of the Communion stewards. Gluten free bread is available for those who require it.
For all our Sunday services, we use a prayer diary which is made up of prayer requests from the congregation or the wider community. Entries in the diary are used in both Sunday services for three consecutive weeks, after which they can be updated if more information is available. Prayer cards can be sent to those in the diary to let them know that they have been included. More information about our prayer diary and cards is available in the Prayer section.