Welcome to Wokingham Methodist Church

We are now part of the Blackwater Valley Methodist Circuit, formed by the merger of our previous circuit, the Berkshire Surrey Borders Circuit, with the circuit to the south of us, the Hants-Surrey Border Circuit, effective from 1 September 2025.

Our previous minister, Revd Catherine Bowstead, has retired.  We welcome her replacement Rev Wes Hampton, from 1 September 2025.

Starting on Sunday 21^st September, evening service (with Holy Communion) will resume on the third Sunday of each month at the new time of 6.15 pm (new time chosen so you can park in the Rose Street car park without having to pay both an afternoon fee and an evening fee).

Future worship and recorded services are on this page.

10.30am Morning Worship - Rev Wes Hampton

from Rev Wes Hampton

Dear Friends,

This weekend sees the annual Heritage Open Days, described by the organizers as “England’s largest festival of history and culture!”  All sorts of places welcome visitors to buildings or behind-the-scenes areas that are not usually open to the public, encouraging us to engage with part of our past.

The word “heritage” is not the same as “history”.  As we note the relationship between “heritage” and “inheritance”, we see that we are thinking about what is passed on from one generation to the next.  Our heritage is not a mere curiosity, to be wondered at but which has no relationship to our present.  Rather, it is what has made our setting what it now is.

For us, even the idea of “heritage” is not enough to understand the meaning of our history.  The Christian faith has certain historical moments as part of its story: Jesus’ life belongs in the annals of history, and moments within that life are of particular significance.  When we share bread and wine together, we do so because of what Jesus did and instructed on a certain evening in a certain place.  We have inherited a tradition – a word which refers to something that has been handed on – but it is more than a remembering of the past.  As our Jewish friends have done in their Passover celebration for centuries, we bring the past into the present, and understand that God is doing something now because of our commitment to share in what he has done before.

Amid all the everyday things that we have to do, we need to acknowledge that we live as we do both because of our inheritance, and because of our commitment to a God who was before time began, and shall be after it has come to its conclusion.  We look both backwards and forwards, because God’s work in our past is for our future also.  May the God who was, and is, and is to come, help us to see from his perspective.

Wes

from Kim Tame

Dear Friends,

As autumn rains start to make their appearance, and the acres of brown countryside start to show little patches of green, a verse from Isaiah seems relevant;

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth."  (Isaiah 55:11)

Ancient people knew well that their very lives depended on a reliable cycle of weather, and these days we can see the result of destructive human activities.  Rain that brings life can also be wild and stormy, bringing turmoil and destruction. We take it for granted at a price.

Biblical metaphors can still remind us that God's activity may seem like the weather; unpredictable as the wind, life-giving like the rain; welcome refreshment after a time of heat and drought.  Yet God's work carries on with purpose.  It accomplishes what God wills, even when we can't understand it, at all levels of life; for our lives as much as the whole universe.

The weather is not personal; it is the same for the just and the unjust.  Yet this verse is encouragement; what we do is not measured by visible results.  We are the sowers, not the controllers of the harvest.  The rain does its work, and seeds - even those that have lain dormant - will grow.  Trees and grass recover from drought.  And seeds we sow now - literal and metaphorical - have their future fulfilment.  Seeds of hope, grace, encouragement, kindness and love will bear fruit in their own time.

In this Sunday's service, we will be thinking about Jesus' parable of the unforgiving debtor.

Some previous Pastoral Letters are available here.