Every Friday we hold a ‘Places of Welcome’ coffee morning in our building. As part of this we have Techy Coffee every first Friday, where people can bring their mobiles and appliances and get free Age UK Wirral help. A group of pre-school children from a local nursery join us regularly for this morning as well. Last Friday these children sang Happy Birthday to one of our longstanding members, which was a touching moment.

We ran a very ambitious Christmas 2019 programme and it paid dividends with a number of families and ‘outsiders’ joining us, especially for a ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ themed family service, where people were handed parts of costumes to be involved in a search for Mary & Joseph together. We also held a ‘Blue Christmas’ evening service, for those among us for whom Christmas is not a happy family time.

On 12^th of January we held our third Coffee Bar service, with a number of people attending who don’t normally come to church. The theme was ‘Books, literature and poetry’ and the title was ‘Paperback Writer’, a song by the Beatles. The Borderline band, of which I am the drummer, played this song as well as ‘Beryl’, about a Liverpool Booker Prize winner and ‘Lord of the years’ plus ‘Blessed Assurance”. Amanda Pauls, Community Worker from Claremount Methodist spoke about her 12 years as a Beatles Shop manager and her love for Jesus. I love these evenings, crossing the divide between sacred and secular.

Dirk Uitterdijk