Welcome to Wokingham Methodist Church

We are now part of the Blackwater Valley Methodist Circuit, formed by the merger of our previous circuit, the Berkshire Surrey Borders Circuit, with the circuit to the south of us, the Hants-Surrey Border Circuit, effective from 1 September 2025.

Our previous minister, Revd Catherine Bowstead, has retired.  We welcome her replacement Rev Wes Hampton, from 1 September 2025.

Starting on Sunday 21^st September, evening service (with Holy Communion) will resume on the third Sunday of each month at the new time of 6.15 pm (new time chosen so you can park in the Rose Street car park without having to pay both an afternoon fee and an evening fee).

We now aim to open Little Fishes every Thursday throughout the year when Café Mosaic is open - including school holidays, but not Christmas/New Year.

Future worship and recorded services are on this page.

10.30am Holy Communion - Rev Wes Hampton

from Rosi MorganBarry

Dear Friends,

Charity, it is said, begins at home with family, friends and neighbours.  Think of our real neighbours, those who live next door, over the road, down the street.  How well do we know them?  Have we any idea what they might need?  In material terms maybe not a lot.  This is Wokingham after all.  But then maybe at times they do need help.  How might we know?  What might we do?  Perhaps just provide a friendly smile, a word, a scrap of conversation in the street, over the fence, down the garden.  And if we keep aware of how they look, what they say, perhaps what they don’t say, then who knows where that might lead?

In Luke 10. 29 – 37, Jesus answers the question: ‘who is my neighbour?’ with a story of a stranger’s kindness.  This leads to thinking of neighbours in a wider sense: neighbours across the town, across the country, across the world.  Here, the opportunities may be wide-ranging, and our neighbourliness will depend on our circumstances and the means we have at our disposal.  Charity may begin at home, but it doesn’t end there: we are called to respond as best we can to the needs of the world.  That’s a tough call, and one we can only answer with prayer.

Rosi MorganBarry

from Rev Wes Hampton

Dear Friends,

Recently I saw a television production of Noël Coward’s play Private Lives.  In the play, two people who had previously been married to each other meet again while on honeymoon with their new spouses.  Opportunities abound for reflection on what had gone wrong in their previous marriage and for embarrassment.

These leading characters have a more relaxed attitude to marriage than do their new spouses, who are each marrying for their first time.  Experience has left them more cynical, and it becomes clear that their new marriages lack commitment and depth.  We might come away from the play thinking that deep personal relationships are impossible.

This weekend brings us an appropriate corrective, for 14 February, St Valentine’s Day, is a chance to recall the saint who defied the Roman emperor because of the importance of love and marriage.  Emperor Claudius was worried that his army was being weakened because too few men were ready to enlist.  So he outlawed marriage in the hope that there would be more men without the ties of family life, who would then be willing to serve in the military.

Priests like Valentine, however, continued to marry couples in secret, as a profession of their love and commitment to one another.  No emperor can outlaw love, and no playwright can convince us that the loving relationships that we share are unworthy of our dedication.  This should not surprise us, for relationship is at the heart of our triune God, and love is the very centre of his character.  We, too, share in that divine nature.

Today even if we see the attitudes of a play from 1930 in society around us, nonetheless we recognize the impulse to show a deep-seated lasting commitment to others as a reflection of the nature of God in us.  God is love and, to the best extent that we can, we reveal his love to the world.

Wes

Some previous Pastoral Letters are available here.