Tamworth Baptist Church        

 

01827 283747

 

Tamworth Baptist Church is located in Staffordshire in the Heart of the Midlands in England, we have two locations where our members/guests/friends and visitors come together to worship our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have tried to facilitate as much information as possible about ourselves and the community we are a part of. Both locations have assisted hearing aid facilities and ramp/ground level access.

We hope that you find what you are looking for and enjoy browsing round the site. However well we organise our website, it will never be the same as a personal visit to our Church. So, if in the Tamworth area, please pay us a visit so that we can greet you properly.

We welcome you to come and be part of us in worshipping and serving the Lord Jesus in our community.

About us

We have a team of people, known as Deacons, assisting the Minister to offer leadership to the church.  Each takes responsibility for an area of church life.  We have both a Church Secretary (Mrs Bev Smith) and a Treasurer (Mr David Thompson).  The remaining Deacons (Anne Clark, Martin Horner, Ray Rastall, Brenda Ridpath, Sue Silcock, Esme Tickle, Iain Dougall and Heather Ulanowski) have diverse responsibilities including pastoral care, worship, prayer and fabric. We also have a preaching ‘team’ who conduct the majority of the services in the Church.  The team obviously includes the minister, Keith Neville who takes up to three services on a Sunday and leads the team, producing themes and preaching notes to help provide consistent teaching across the services held simultaneously at Dosthill and Belgrave.  The team also includes Frank Mardell, James Dixon, Bev Smith, Leigh Bilston and Iain Dougall.  There are others who get involved occasionally in leading services. Sunday Services involve a whole team of people who assist with music, leading worship, technical equipment (PA, projector), prayers, occasional dramas, children’s talks, and puppets. A rota operates for those who will provide flowers and serve tea after the service. In the morning at both buildings we also hold a Sunday school, which is overseen by Esme Tickle. Peter (the Greeter) Birrell or one of the many folk who take a turn to meet and greet worshippers, will welcome you with a friendly smile to our services, so why not pay us a visit?  Church is not about one person at the front it is about all of us as we come to worship together. People are important at Tamworth Baptist Church, whether welcoming on the door, preaching the sermon or making the tea, each one plays a valuable part in the life of the church and we are grateful to all for the faithful service that contributes to work and witness of our Church. Yet the church is not simply a Sunday gathering… in fact there are only two nights a month when there is not something organised to run in the evenings, as well as many activities that happen during the day.  On these two Saturdays we often organise social events and gatherings… anyone would think that we enjoy being together… and in fact we do. Church is about people and God together… so why not come and join us? Deacons We have asked the Deacons to provide us with a brief Profile of themselves. We will rotate them throughout the year. Bev Smith Hi, I’m Bev Smith, I have been a member of Tamworth Baptist Church for over 30 years and am currently serving as a Deacon and Church Secretary.  I am married to Bill, who is known for his sense of humour and always having a joke suitable for any situation!  We have two golden retrievers, Haggis and Bridie, who are brother and sister from the same litter, are extremely cute and very well behaved, well most of the time anyway. I first became a Christian in my teens at a Girls’ Brigade camp, when for the first time I understood how much God loves me and that He sent His only Son, Jesus, to die for our sins, so that we can be forgiven and accepted.  The Bible tells us that Jesus came so that we could have life, life in all its fullness and I believe that this is what I received when I became a Christian, eternal life.  I served for many years as an Officer in the Girls’ Brigade taking on a number of different roles, and only recently standing down as District Chaplain. Girls’ Brigade has always been important to me and will always have a special place in my heart. As well as the duties I undertake as a Deacon and Church Secretary – I also do some preaching and occasionally lead Bible study groups. I enjoy learning more about God and sharing what I have learnt with others.

Home

Faith

We are a Baptist Church that is affiliated with the Baptist Union of Great Britain.  This means we hold to the beliefs shared by those of the Union… LINK to ‘WHO ARE WE on the BUGB website …but what does this mean to us: We believe in One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit… We believe in the Trinity – God has chosen to reveal himself to us as Father Son and Holy Spirit and yet the three are one.  Not one in the same, not three ways of seeing the same, or one person who has shown up in different ways at different times, but three that have a unity, and shared nature and purpose and will.  God has revealed himself in community, in Trinity.  In God we see relationship as central and we are made in God’s image.  We may be individuals, but we were made for relationship and relationships are central to who we are as people and therefore who we are as church. We believe in God the Father – as earthly parents we all make a mess of things, none of us are perfect.  Some of us may even have been damaged by our relationships with our earthly fathers, but God is not like them, rather as people we are called to be like our heavenly Father. We believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God – Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God, which means that in all eternity God chose to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that Jesus has always been.  Yet we see and know Jesus in the one who was born to Mary in first century Palestine.  Jesus was always God in his nature, as well as being human, and at his baptism he was filled with the Spirit.  From that point Jesus exercised his ministry, revealing what God is like to the people around him.  Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the one who came to restore our relationship with God the Father and so to liberate us from the controls of this world, power, sin and death.  Chris humbled himself to the Father’s will: whereas we too often we stamp our feet and do what we want, Jesus lived his life doing’ only what he saw his Father doing’ and willingly went to his death for us.  Jesus died for us as our ‘Passover Lamb’, acting as an atoning sacrifice, winning victory over death and sin, paying the price for us, taking our punishment on himself, paying our ransom, and as the Judge of all the Earth he took the outcome of that judgement on himself.  What Jesus did for us is bigger than we can get our heads around and it did not end there! Jesus died, and rose again.  We believe in the truth of resurrection and the power of that resurrection for us.  Jesus ascended to God the Father and intercedes at the Father’s side for us… his humanity crying out for us at the very heart of God’s nature.  Jesus reigns; he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and Jesus is coming back to bring in his future and our eternity.  If all this sounds huge… then it is.  If all this sounds complicated… then the truth is very simple:  Jesus is the Son of God, he shows us what God is like and he died that we might have a relationship with God the Father.  Jesus is our Saviour and our Lord. all about Jesus! We believe in God the Holy Spirit – The Holy Spirit isn’t some kind of Christian electricity supply, but one of the Trinity, part of the very nature of God.  The Spirit is a person, who God sends to us to help us, guide us, enable us and empower us to serve Jesus.  The Holy Spirit was there at Jesus conception, empowered him at his baptism, led him into the wilderness and beyond.  The Holy Spirit made Jesus resurrection a reality and for us makes our lives as Jesus servants a reality.  The Spirit is bigger and more awesome than we can conceive and is more personal and intimate than we can imagine. Home

Minister

Hi there! I am Keith.  If you insist you can address me as the Reverend K. E. Neville BD MA, but I may ignore you as people usually either call me Keith or a whole lot of other things around here!  Titles don’t really cut it with me, all a bit pretentious.  I may be the minister of the Baptist church here in Tamworth, but it is together that we serve and minister in this place and not me alone. I do have qualifications and even a posh piece of paper from the Baptist Union of Great Britain saying I am an accredited minister, but none of this makes me fit for the task.  That means I can even attempt to show and talk to people about Jesus is that I believe in him and that I am part of a community where we can seek to do that together. I live in Belgrave, next to the church, with Chris, my wife, and our son, Rhys, and two boisterous dogs, Calvin and Barth.  People tell me that the dogs are rather large, but as Chris and I are both over six foot these two four and a half stone Airedale Terriers look like puppies to us.  Our son Rhys is only a toddler so they must look huge to him, but he has learnt to handle them and they are all a pack together.  When I get home I tend to get bounced by all three… and Chris as well sometimes! I love learning more about God and helping other to get to know him for themselves.  It may seem an obvious thing for a minister to say, but there is nothing I would rather do than study and learn more about God.  Some people say that surely I have enough books… but personally I think it is impossible to have too many books about God.  This summer I even wrote some for myself, but that is another story! I also love music, walking the dogs and playing with my son.  I will change a nappy, do the breakfast, and have even been known to do the bedtime routine when my wife doesn’t get there first.  New dad… no, just a chip off the old block… I sometimes frighten myself when I look at my dad, though I still have more hair than him, but I am not sure for how long! I have been trying to loose weigh recently.  Not easy as I love food, but I have managed to shift over three stone since summer 2006.  I needed to, and am still overweight according to the BBC’s Body Mass Indicator, but I am slowly getting there!  I have discovered that not all of my chins were necessary… and really do need to buy some new clothes! I have been the minister here for over four years, you can tell can’t you!  It is a real joy being here.  The church is a joy and working with the other ministers in the town as part of Tamworth Covenanting Churches and with other Baptist ministers as part of the Heart of England Baptist Association just adds to fun and the real sense of fulfilment.  As a church we try to reach out to the community and love those with in it.  We constantly look for new ways to try and love one another and those who don’t yet know how much God loves them… what more could a minister ask for? Before I was here I worked as a tutor at Spurgeon’s college and before that spent a couple of years as a minister in a church in Essex.  Mind you, I had a life before that, my last job was as a Corporate Finance Executive for a Stock Brokers in the City of London.  This was a long way removed from working my school holidays on building sites with my father.  Life is never static and is constantly full of surprises.  When God is central to who we are, we find that life is full of surprises!  Personally, I have no plans to move on… I just hope and pray that God doesn’t have any plans for me to go anywhere else at the moment! and After all, I am having fun here! Meet the Family, some pictures

Home

Weekly Notices - 2008
 

 

 

 

 

 

Home

Monthly Diary - 2008

As from June 2008 we have changed the way our monthly diary appears on the website, you will now be able to view the diary in a web page, prior to this you will see a PDF file. Also we have added a location map connection into Google Maps on the page. Please contact the church office for more details.
 

January	February	March	April	May	June
July	August	September	October	November	December

Home

Church
 

Home
ê	About us
ê	Faith
ê	Minister
Events and Notices
ê	Weekly Notices
ê	Monthly Diary
ê	Church

Text for 2008:Romans 12:5 (NIV)
"so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."