Welcome / About our church

A warm welcome to the fellowship of Godalming Baptist Church. If you join us for a service, we hope you will experience the presence of God and His love through the people. If there is anything you need to know please ask one of the stewards who will be happy to help. We invite you to join us after the service when there is opportunity to get to know one another.

As a church we seek to be a community of grace where we are all accepted by God and each other no matter what. There is no pressure to conform in any way but rather a freedom to be ourselves, to grow and receive all that God wants for us. We know we are all on a journey and have not arrived, and we recognize that life’s journey can be hard and difficult at times. We want to be real and acknowledge the difficulties as well as celebrating the good things.

Through the services and many activities and events we offer, we seek to help one another grow in our relationship with God, others and ourselves, to address issues we face, and to experience what the Bible calls ‘Shalom’ – a sense of well-being individually and corporately. We want to become increasingly the person and community God created us to be and to minister his love, justice, and peace in tangible and relevant ways in our wider community and beyond. May God bless you. Peter Jackson [Pastor]

What sort of a church are we? We talk about CULTURE, which we understand as the foundational values and beliefs which determine why we do what we do, our priorities, how we spend our time, how we relate. The culture of our church is based on the parable of the soil [usually known as the parable of the sower]. We understand that when the condition of the soil is good then seeds planted in the soil grow, flourish and bear fruit – and the kingdom of God is established.

We seek to have a ‘soil culture’ of grace expressed in the ‘grace arrow’ below.

Grace Arrow.pdf( You can find out more details by listening to the sermon on Sunday November 11th 2021 )

In harmony with ‘Count Everyone In’ [www.counteveryonein.org.uk] we have a group of about ten who have learning difficulties. These people are fully integrated, accepted and supported, and make an active and beneficial contribution to the life of the church. As a Baptist church the final authority for decisions rests with the congregation and we meet regularly to discuss the life of the church. We are aware that from time-to-time, issues or conflicts will arise and we want to be able to address those in a Godly way based on Acts 15, where the church handled a serious issue that threatened both the unity and future mission of the church. As we seek to discuss and resolve issues, we want to allow these issues to be shared and not ignored or swept under the carpet. We respect everyone’s feelings and opinions and encourage honest sharing. We want to listen, to one another, to everything, to motives, to evidence, to scripture.

We recognize that sometimes relationships are more important than the issue and want to encourage warm communication. We respect leaders who lead with wisdom and sensitivity, who make the church as fully aware of things as possible and help us to weigh things together. We refrain from becoming too conclusive and dogmatic or from allowing our individual prejudice to affect our attitudes and actions. We want these things to characterize our church meetings so that we seek to know the mind of Christ together. . [ You could find out more by listening to the sermon on September 4th 2022 ]