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!
1st and 3rd Sundays of the month
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 (except during the Summer Programme) at 4.30pm with coffee, tea and biscuits, then we begin our services at 5pm with a short welcome from the meeting leader, followed by 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. 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.
During the talk, we run a youth session for secondary school aged children. This is a chance for them to learn, discuss and share together in a more informal setting.
2nd and 4th Sundays of the month
10:30am Contemporary Family service
Again, 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 morning meetings at 10am with coffee, tea and biscuits, then we begin our services at 10:30am.
Our morning services run alongside a LEGO®based Sunday school for primary school aged children and pre-schoolers. This is a chance for the children to have fun, learn a bit about a story or theme from the Bible, and play with LEGO® or DUPLO®.
Our usual pattern is to share Holy Communion together once a month.
The most up-to-date information about services is always available from our home pageor church calendar.
With its strap-line “finding family, creating community”, our core belief at St Matt’s is not so much in doing church, but rather in being church. We look to increasingly bless Widcombe, the City of Bath, and beyond. In partnership with St Thomas à Becket, we aim to be a Christian community that reaches out, to invite people to encounter God’s grace.
As we seek to grow as family, into a dynamic and vibrant church, we are seeking to build on our 5 key foundation stones.
Our Foundation Stones:
In 2009, Tim Buckley, an associate Minister at Holy Trinity Combe Down felt led to start an Emerging Generation congregation centrally within Bath. Due to a growing relationship with the neighbouring Parish of Widcombe, who had a vacant church building on a central bus route to the University of Bath, HTCD arranged to rent St Matthew’s Church.
In September 2014, Revd Tim Buckley was asked if he would come to Widcombe as vicar. Widcombe Parish then adopted the evening congregation as a complementary expression of faith and worship, to the morning congregation meeting at St Thomas.
After nearly five years of God’s continued grace, the revitalisation of St Matt’s as a worshipping community has now become a well-known success story within Widcombe.
St Matt’s now hosts our increasingly busy parish admin offices. The building is in use most evenings and daytimes, housing ministries, mission and family life, feeling truly vibrant and alive.
St Matthew’s is a much larger church than St Thomas, built for the Victorians, to accommodate the growing population of Widcombe. On construction, seating was installed for some 1250 worshippers.
With its location high above Widcombe Locks, and its vast broach tower visible from across the city, along with its desire to welcome, bless, serve and be a spiritual home for many, St Matthew’s identity as a true light on a hill was born.
St Matthew’s is the largest church in Bath, with the exception of the Abbey, and consequently is an amazing venue for gatherings and events.
Other things you might be interested in…
Calendar
Sermons
Students
Lifehubs
Safeguarding in the Parish
Read our Safeguarding policy and find out who to contact should you have any concerns.