There have been Baptists in Bradninch for nearly two hundred years!  Whilst valuing our heritage and traditions and continuing to embrace that same ‘non – conformist’ spirit of our ancestors the current Baptist church in Bradninch is seeking to make the love of God known to the people of the town in 21st century ways.

We are a member church of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and support it with our praying and giving to Home Mission.  A number of us have in recent years been regulars at the annual Baptist Assembly and 15 of us explored the wider Baptist family by attending the Centenary Baptist World Congress in Birmingham in 2005.  We feel it is important as a small church in the South West of England to take the opportunity to remind ourselves that we are part of a much larger family of Baptist Christians. We demonstrate this too by our prayer and financial support for BMS World Mission, particularly as expressed in our relationship with our link missionaries, Les and Fiona, who are based in Bangladesh and we're looking forward to meeting them when they come to visit us on the first weekend in July this year.  We are really pleased to be getting to know them because we already had links with the hospital where they’re based as one of our members, Alyson, spent some time there during 2006.

Whilst being proud of our Baptist heritage we remember that we are first and foremost Christians and enjoy good relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ in Bradninch and further afield.  We work together whenever we can, sharing in a procession of witness and joint worship on Good Friday, delivering a joint Christmas and Easter message to the residents of the town and sharing in civic events together.  We joined in the with the JUST 10 DEVON mission in 2006 and plan to share in county-wide events with ‘Hope 08’  as well as engaging with and promoting some events in Bradninch. These will include an Alpha Course, a passion play, open church, cream teas and much more besides – watch this space!!!! 

Our members are involved in all aspects of community life – a group regularly go into the local primary school to help out and our minister, Barbara, is a governor and goes in to take assembly there each week.  We have also recently started a fortnightly act of worship at the residential home within the town, which is proving very popular with both the residents and the church members! We have members who are involved in many local groups – sports, music, history to name but a few.  We have recently started praying specifically for the residents of each of the roads in Bradninch, distributing cards to each house as they are prayed for and have been pleased by the way this has been welcomed by many people.  Last year we were really pleased to be involved in setting up a local branch of the Devon-wide Credit Union ‘Plough & Share’; our church premises are used as a Member Access Point on Saturday mornings.  We’ve also continued to run our Holiday Club each summer – this year’s club will take place from 11th – 15th August, more details available soon! We have a regular Traidcraft stall following our morning worship and at our coffee mornings that take place in the Bradninch Guildhall twice a year.  We’ve just recently had a coffee morning where we collected tools for Tools With a Mission which was well supported by people within the town and also just before Christmas we ran a coffee morning in aid of CHAT, a local housing advice and support organisation.

Our church membership is aged from teens to eighties, and those who attend our Sunday worship are aged from five to eighty plus!  We would love to welcome more people of any age to our Sunday worship and hopefully eventually into the membership of our church.  We use traditional hymns and modern worship songs, we’re exploring the use of technology to enhance and enrich our worship and we are exploring too how we can make our buildings more user friendly and welcoming to all.   We’re exploring different ways of meeting together for worship too – on the second Sunday morning of each month we’re meeting to share communion and breakfast together before our ‘All age worship’ and on the fourth  Friday evening of the month we’re meeting in a home to share an evening meal and bread and wine together around a family meal table.  We’re just introducing too a Fellowship Bring and Share Lunch  and Meeting after our morning worship on the third Sunday of the month to which all are welcome. As you can probably tell we love to eat together and meet together socially too – in fact Bradninch Baptist Church parties are renowned!  

Our minister, Barbara Carpenter has been with us for just over 5 years now.  She came to us as a student minister in 2002 whilst training at Bristol Baptist College.  She graduated from there in 2005 and was inducted as the part-time minister in September that year.  Barbara is also the Baptist Chaplain at the University of Exeter.

Hopefully you like what you see – this is just a ‘word snapshot’ of some aspects of the life of Bradninch Baptist Church.  We’d love it if you’d like to come and meet us for yourself.

-  But we’d love it more if you were to come and meet God for yourself too!