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Weekly Prayer Focus: Colchester Baptist Church

Week 04

Colchester is Britain’s oldest recorded town and Colchester Baptist Church, located in the heart of the town, is one of the oldest Baptist churches in the country with roots dating back to the mid-17^th century.

This thriving and growing church with over 200 members is currently led by Revd Cole Maynard who has bought a new vision of ‘strong Christians rooted in Christ’ to the church since he joined in 2018.

Since March the Sunday services have moved online benefitting from the recent technology upgrade in the church, and there have also been restricted numbers of 80 at socially-distanced services when these have been permitted. Online service require a lot more work and input from a wider team but provide new ways to reach more people. In fact online viewings of Sunday services are almost twice the pre-lockdown in-person attendance and new people have joined the online church community in recent months including some from outside the local area.

Just before the first lockdown a new pastoral care system was put in place, especially focussed on the elderly, and this has been adapted to remote working so no one is excluded or feels left out of the church fellowship.

The church has an active long-term programme to reach vulnerable people through the successful Open Doors ministry which has a part-time Director and a part-time Manager and a varied programme of weekly activities including a café and ‘Sunday at 1’ which has an alternative-style service and a meal.

For prayer:

For the opportunities to grow and start to move the church into new areas
For continuing blessing and encouragement during the current lockdown restrictions
For wisdom in delivering online services and harnessing technology to adapt to a new way of being church