Here in the Blyth Valley have three types of services

Our defining act of worship is Holy Communion. This is a symbolic meal of bread (wafers) and wine, with Bible readings, a sermon and prayers, and hymns on a Sunday. It has layers of meaning to do with generosity and belonging derived from its Jewish roots in the Passover.

We also offer Morning and Evening Prayer which are services written for their particular time of day, helping us prepare for the day ahead or wind down afterwards. They include Bible readings, prayers and may have hymns too – especially when used on a Sunday.

​

Across our churches we have four styles of service:

Common Worship

This is our standard modern language set. It offers a formal version of these three types of service. It is what we use for our Baptisms, Marriages and Funerals too.

Book of Common Prayer

The three types of service are available in old English, in a more formal, appealing, living tradition dating back centuries. To avoid confusion, we call this style of the bread and wine service Traditional Communion. We call its opening and closing daily prayers Matins and Evensong for the same reason.

Family Services and Family Communion

New Patterns for Worship is a resource that gives us authorised prayers and other materials that are more contemporary for our least formal and most flexible examples of these two types of services.

Local Traditions

Some of our churches have their own service sheets. These may have come from other Christian organisations like the Iona Community, or another Diocese (county scale unit of the Church of England) like Wild Church. They may have been kept on having been written by previous clergy. They may have developed them themselves or asked current minsters to try something different like Pause for Thought. We sometimes share regular worship with other denominations like the Wenhaston Methodists, or take part in other initiatives like World Day of Prayer. When we do this we use their styles of service.

Revd Dominic Doble