Who Are We?
At South Shields we have a very diverse attendance. Some of us come from the Caribbean, Southern Africa, Asia and of course from cities, towns and villages in the North East; particularly Sunderland and South Shields. On average around 50 people attend here every Sabbath/saturday - not bad in an age when many churches are being closed down.
Come to church on a Sabbath morning and you will first encounter the members in Sabbath School when we study a topic common to all of our churches around the world. This takes the form of a free-flowing discussion focussed on studying the Bible. After a short break we have 'Divine Service' where after songs, prayers and a children's story there will be a sermon of some type. The topics vary from week to week and we preach/talk on a variety of topics extending from: Health, Old Testament stories-to what we have to look forward to when Jesus comes again! The talks are not just presented by our Pastor but often by our members or visiting preachers.
Some people have said that church people look down on others as 'bad people'. The Bible has another explanation. We have to begin with that word 'sin'. Sin is not the admission that we are bad people while Christians are well-behaved people. 'All have sinned and come short of God's glory' is the Bible teaching. I can relate to that. God is so capable, so loving so ... everything that we are bound to come short of that glory.
In the dim and distant past, but not so distant that there is no record, Adam and Eve decided that they wanted to have less relationship with God. They expressed that by choosing to do their own thing. They chose to eat a fruit God had asked them not to eat. That might make God seem rather childish. In fact our forefather and mother had decided that they simply wanted to choose their own way of doing things and remove God from part of their lives.
We might imagine God would just move on and find a new family to be part of His own family but He didn't. He had formulated a plan already that was designed to bring the family back together. We can express that plan quite simply.
A stands for 'Accept', we can simply accept that God loves us and wants us back in His family. The letter B stands for 'beleive'. We can beleive that God both wants us back and beleive that God can bring us back to Him. There is a third step. C denotes our need to confess our sin to God, not to a Priest. We may simply say, "God, I know you love me, I do understand that I've been following my own inclinations - please, I want to come back to you. Please forgive my sins." The next step is signified by the letter D. We set out to do God's will. We follow Him. That involves becoming related to other Christians. We begin to express that by being baptised.
One of our young people recently chose to be baptised. She had a number of Bible studies and asked to be baptised.
As we have the North Sea very close to our door we chose to stage the event on a Saturday afternoon in the sea.
We were very pleased to see the South Shields Gazette take an interest, with the results seen in the picture to the left. We were very pleased because baptism is, after all, a public witness to faith in God. You can't get more of a witness than published in the paper.
Why not come along and sample a Sabbath with us? We only ask one thing from you...Come to church with an open mind, a desire to learn and...expect to get just that!
In the dim and distant past, but not so distant that there is no record, Adam and Eve decided that they wanted to have less relationship with God. They expressed that by choosing to do their own thing. They chose to eat a fruit God had asked them not to eat. That might make God seem rather childish. In fact our forefather and mother had decided that they simply wanted to choose their own way of doing things and remove God from part of their lives.
We might imagine God would just move on and find a new family to be part of His own family but He didn't. He had formulated a plan already that was designed to bring the family back together. We can express that plan quite simply.
A stands for 'Accept', we can simply accept that God loves us and wants us back in His family. The letter B stands for 'beleive'. We can beleive that God both wants us back and beleive that God can bring us back to Him. There is a third step. C denotes our need to confess our sin to God, not to a Priest. We may simply say, "God, I know you love me, I do understand that I've been following my own inclinations - please, I want to come back to you. Please forgive my sins." The next step is signified by the letter D. We set out to do God's will. We follow Him. That involves becoming related to other Christians. We begin to express that by being baptised.
One of our young people recently chose to be baptised. She had a number of Bible studies and asked to be baptised.As we have the North Sea very close to our door we chose to stage the event on a Saturday afternoon in the sea.
We were very pleased to see the South Shields Gazette take an interest, with the results seen in the picture to the left. We were very pleased because baptism is, after all, a public witness to faith in God. You can't get more of a witness than published in the paper.
Why not come along and sample a Sabbath with us? We only ask one thing from you...Come to church with an open mind, a desire to learn and...expect to get just that!
If you need anymore information or you need someone to talk to, any prayer requests, directions to the church or requests for a bible study, or just a general chat, please feel free to contact us and we will do our best to meet your needs.
