WHAT TO EXPECT
If you’re a visitor to our church, welcome!
Whoever you are, whatever your background, beliefs, or experience with church, we would love to welcome you to one of our services. All of our weekly services are open to everyone.
We’re sure you’ll probably have some questions, so we’ll try and answer the most common ones here.
Where are your services?
Our church is located at 9702 Beattie Drive, in Hudson’s Hope in beautiful British Columbia.
We are ideally located right in the centre of town, next to Beattie Park, along highway 29. If you drive through our lovely little town, you can’t miss us.
What time are your services?
We meet at 10:30 am on Sundays throughout the year.
Our services typically finish around 12:30, but coffee, refreshments, and good conversations are available after the service, and you would be more than welcome to join us for these.
If you would like to join us for pre-service prayer, some people choose to come a little early to pray. This is open to all, from around 9:30 and is especially valuable if you have any specific needs or requests, we would love to pray for them.
We also have additional events throughout the week — make sure you check our calendar (coming soon) or all of our upcoming events.
What should I wear?
You should come in whatever helps you feel comfortable.
We are a really diverse northern community, with a lot of different people, and everyone is welcomed just as they are. Some of our members choose to dress up their Sunday best, and that’s great, but others are hunters and outdoorsmen, and feel most comfortable in their hunting camo, and that’s fine too! Most of us tend towards casual, but there are really no rules.
We are a northern community, so we’re well aware that function often trumps form, especially in our winters, so make sure whatever you wear is comfortable.
What does a typical service look like?
We always want to make space for God to lead, and so, any given service may be a little different, but services usually have a few consistent elements.
We will worship God through songs, share in communion, pray and read the bible together. Often there will be a message given from one or more people in the congregation, a guest speaker, or via video, that is based on the Bible.
The Bible talks about praising God through singing, and so each week, we do that. This is a valuable part of our weekly worship. The songs we sing are a good mix of modern and contemporary praise and worship songs, as well as old-favourite hymns too. Each worship leader will bring songs that they feel God has led them too and that will partner with what the Lord is bringing forth on any given Sunday.
If you don’t know the songs, we project them onto a screen, so that you can follow along. However if you choose to sit or stand and just listen and or reflect on the words we sing, that is completely acceptable.
When we sing, you may see some of our members dancing, kneeling, raising their hands, or showing other outward expressions of their worship. Don’t let this scare you — this seems to be a natural human reaction when we hear music that connects with us, and we wouldn’t be overly concerned if we saw this at a music concert. We believe we are singing songs of thanks and praise to the God who created the universe, and so some of us choose to express that physically with our bodies, as well as our voices.
Our service will also include prayer. Prayer is a vital part of our relationship with God, and is really just a conversation with Him. We believe our faith is a real relationship with God, and in any healthy relationship, communication is key. We believe that when we pray, God hears us, and that this can make a huge impact in our lives and circumstances.
Communion is a special time for believers of Jesus to remember and experience our Savior’s sacrifice of love for us by trading His faultless life for our sinful one. In obedience to Christ’s desire for us to remember him, we eat bread and drink juice to commemorate His shedding of blood and broken body given for all who would receive it. These elements are passed around for anyone to take who relates to the sacrifice of Jesus’s life for us.
Finally our service includes Bible reading and sharing/ preaching. Through praying and asking God for direction and words from Him, the believers in our congregation seek to share a message from or pertaining to scripture. We believe that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2Timothy 3:16). We look to encourage each other through the bible, while seeking to know God more and to apply His word and revelation to our lives.
We are not typical or traditional in scope as a church. We draw from the gifts, talents and inspirations from within our collective group. It may be that we do somethings differently from time to time. For instance we may do a service project for our community, a prayer walk around our town, have an outdoor or lake service, potluck, outreach or just a diverse service . When these changes are to occur, we would put out emails, Facebook posts or website updates as well as let it be known on prior Sunday morning services.
What about children?
Children are very welcome in our church. We love having children in our church, and encourage them to worship and learn with us.
We know that it can be hard for young families to attend with concerns that children may be noisy, disruptive or bored. We want to assure you that we are welcoming and understanding about the ways of little people. Although we do not offer a structured children’s program at this time, we are happy to direct you to toys or colorings that may encourage your littles to enjoy their time more. You are welcome to bring along snacks and drinks for them as well.
Our prayer goal is to once again have a thriving christian children’s program.
Will I be expected to give money, read, pray out loud, or do anything uncomfortable?
No. There is never an expectation to do any of these things, or do anything at all that makes you feel awkward or uncomfortable.
You will see all kinds of things happening in our service.
Our members and regular attenders do give financially to the life of the church, and there may be part of our service when this happens, but if you are a guest or visitor, or even a regular attender who cannot afford to give, there is no exception at all that you do this.
You will also see people reading from scripture, praying out loud, sharing testimonies, news, or updates, sharing communion, or doing other things from the front of church or their chairs. However we would never ask anyone new to do any of these things, and if anything else at all that we do (for example, standing to sing) makes you feel at all awkward, is difficult, or is unfamiliar to you, you are welcome to simply sit back and observe anything that happens for as long as you want.
If you do want to take part, you are more than welcome to sing along, pray out loud, or share prayer requests, at relevant parts of the service if you feel comfortable doing so, but there is never an expectation to do that at all.