Welcome to Widcombe Church

Welcome to St Matt’s

St Matt’s is an Anglican Church, based in Widcombe, Bath. Our desire is to Pursue God, Embrace Community, and Change the World by living out the gospel of Christ.

We believe that God is continually making an invitation to all to experience His love and grace. So for us as a community, our invitation is simply for you to just come and be you. You don’t need to dress up. We won’t ask you for any money and you don’t need to be anything other than yourself. All are invited and all are welcome.

Please don’t imagine we have all the answers, but we certainly believe in and have encountered a God who does!

Meeting times and descriptions

Every Sunday

4.30pm Toast Café

5-7pm Contemporary service

We aim to be contemporary in style, with a format which is relaxed enough for us to go with the flow of the Spirit. We place an emphasis on dynamic, vibrant, band led praise and worship, relevant bible-based preaching, and response through the application of prayer ministry.

We start our Sunday meetings at 5pm with tea and toast, then we begin our services at 5.30pm with a short welcome from the meeting leader, followed by around 30 minutes of sung worship, which is led by a band. From here a passage will be read from the bible and the preacher will deliver a short talk (usually 30 mins). We move into a further time of sung worship and offer an opportunity for anyone who wants to receive prayer ministry, either in response to the talk, or for anything else.

Our usual pattern is to share Holy Communion together on the first Sunday of the month.

Wednesdays

1^st Wednesday

7.30pm Pastorate – St Matts.

A time of worship, prayer, teaching, community – different every month!

2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th Wednesday

7.30pm Life Hubs – in various homes in Widcombe.

Smaller groups working out what thinking and living “upwards, inwards and outwards” means every day.

5^th Wednesday

Something different – see events for what’s happening next time there’s a fifth Wednesday

Find out more...

Revd Tim Buckley is the vicar, assisted by a small team. Peter and Victoria Jones run one of the mid-week Life Hub groups while also looking after pastoral care. Martin and Amanda Geake host this group and Martin is a member of the PCC. Mark and Debbie Nish host and run a second Life Hub. Andrew and Mary Udale-Smith host and run the third weekly Life Hub and Mary is the Church Administrator. Sarah Buckley leads work with families and a dedicated team of volunteers assist with both the children and youth. There are also two Chapelwarden positions, filled by Peter Jones and Mark Nish, while Chris Tottle has moved into the role of Lay Reader, now primarily based at St Thomas.
To be a dynamic and vibrant church, seeking to be a blessing to the City of Bath, and beyond, with a three-fold perspective: Upward (radical worship of God), Inward (discipleship and community life), and Outward (mission focused; towards friends, family, our community, the city and beyond).
In 2009, the leadership of Holy Trinity Combe Down felt led to start an Emerging Generation congregation and started to look for a venue which was more suitably located for students and young adults than Combe Down. Due to a growing relationship with the neighbouring Parish of Widcombe, who had a church building which was vacant on Sunday evenings and on a bus route from the centre of town to the University of Bath, HTCD arranged to rent St Matthew’s Church and plant with a dozen volunteers led by Tim Buckley. In September 2014, when Revd Tim Buckley moved to Widcombe as vicar (having previously been youth pastor and then pioneer curate at HTCD), Widcombe Parish adopted the evening congregation as a complementary expression of faith and worship to the morning congregation meeting at St Thomas.
St Matthew's is a much larger church than St Thomas, built for the Victorians, to accommodate the growing population of Widcombe. Its beautiful spire dominates the village and houses the bells that were once situated at St Thomas, but were taken apparently following a bitter battle in the porch of St Thomas between the churchwardens. Today relations between the two congregations are much more cordial! During the 1970's it was refurbished and all the pews removed. This provided the Parish Hall and various smaller meeting rooms. Towards the end of the last century, weekly attendance fell to the point where it was no longer feasible to continue regular Sunday services here. This trend was joyfully reversed when the evening congregation was adopted. St Matthew's is the largest church in Bath, with the exception of the Abbey, and consequently is a very useful venue for holding events. Our local junior school uses it for their end-of-term services. The church, hall and meeting rooms are available for general hire, either for regular events such as the BODS rehearsals, or for one-off large events, conferences, parties and exhibitions.

More information about...

St Matt's Team

Vicar

Tim Buckley

Vicar

Married to Sarah with three children, Ellie, Sam and Joe. Loves church pioneering, family, guitars, Macs, jeeps and Jesus, not necessarily in that order...