Blog

On Saturday the 26th June, 12 How Far challengers plus a couple of the homebase team met at St Peter’s church at 5am. Read more...

36 hours to get as far away from Brighton and back – without spending any money! Read more...

Yesterday, after the Ten, we moved out as church for the first time onto the green immediately outside and set up BBQs, bouncy castle, facepainting, craft, inflatable sumo wrestling (!), and games – our first community “Summer Sunday” in the heart of this great city, and with 27,000 cyclists going past at the end of the London-Brighton bike ride. Then all down to the beach for seven baptisms in the sea, young people from the church, publicly declaring their commitment to Christ in the shadow of the Palace Pier. Read more...

Last Sunday was the first Sunday after Trinity, known in the church calendar as the start of Ordinary time. Read more...

Brighton Freakshow Read more...

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90 turned up and crammed in for our first occasional breakfast last Saturday in the hall – yummy (healthy) food, worship, talk and ministry. I don’t know what it is about women getting together (!), but there was a buzz around the place that can’t be accounted for simply in terms of sunny weather, children left at home for a morning, and decorous touches (everyone went away with a homemade heart-shaped lapel brooch). Read more...

Grace and Peace were the themes of our services yesterday with a particular focus on the cross at the start of Holy Week. St Paul talks about the “power of the cross”, and it was easy to see what he meant as through the day people experienced afresh the love of God in worship and ministry. In the evening, dozens of people went forward after the talk with pieces of paper on which they had written private prayers, fears, burdens or sins, and dumped them in a basket at the foot of a wooden cross. Read more...

I love catching up with people on Sundays and hearing about what everyone's been getting up to over the weekend, returning to "base" at St Peter's on Sunday with lots of fun and stories to tell. This weekend, the band recorded our first homegrown song, "Everything is Possible", and joined 2000 others in London at Worshipcentral; it was week 6 of Safehaven on Saturday night, with 60 guests and 35 helpers in the hall; and 40 of us went on the Alpha weekend to Chichester. Read more...

Last Sunday was Vision Sunday and to celebrate all that God has been doing in the first four months we've been open, we reviewed the original "Follow Brighton" video (the hair was shorter then!), and put together a photo montage, set to a Fat Boy Slim track, of loads of great stuff that has been happening. Then at the end of the service, we cleared away the chairs, celebrated with a couple of songs, and brought out trays of Bucks Fizz and cakes for everyone. See the original Follow Brighton video Read more...

Archie, Jonny and Tara were in London last Friday to meet HRH Prince of Wales, who came to visit St Mellitus, the C of E’s newest theological college, where Jonny trained. He was particularly taken with church planting in London and beyond (St Peter’s is HTB’s first church plant outside London), “the fact that you able to plant churches and encourage congregations in some of these previously unused churches is enormously encouraging…I think that is truly wonderful and inspiring…I hope you have great success in the future.”   Read more...

The first evening of the Alpha course is about the most exciting thing in church life for me - I love seeing who turns up, what made people come along and what we can do to help them feel welcome. But last Wednesday was even more of an adventure than usual as we'd never done Alpha at St Peter's before; we had very little idea of who was going to turn up and how many. As well as friends inviting friends and family, work colleagues and neighbours, we did some advertising - in the Argus, the Leader, and some free online listings. Read more...

We're focussing on Prayer at the beginning of this new year, in particular praying for our favourite city, Brighton. Someone once said that prayer is "the slender nerve that moves the muscles of omnipotence". So alongside the new Alpha course, the Teams, Helping People and Sunday services, we want to realise "the power of the bended knee" this term. Read more...

Check out the worshipcentral album recorded live at St Peter's last month with Tim Hughes, Al Gordon, Ben Cantalon, Nikki Fletcher, and a whole bunch of us - live, raw and unplugged. Free as a download. Read more...

In these early stages, it would be fair to say we don’t have a very complex structure for looking out for each other – the model is basically, erm… look out for each other. Read more...

We've had an extraordinary few days with over 300 people joining us in the week, on top of our three regular Sunday services. 35 attended the first night of Alpha last Wednesday, although week 2 is really the ideal time to join the course, so do come along if you'd still like to :-). Plenty of buzz and discussion, "exploring the meaning of life". Meanwhile, a further 35 were at the first get-together for the Helping People team, led by Jonny and Tara Gumbel, discussing all sorts of ways that we can make a difference to the community and society around us. Read more...

We really had no idea what to expect on our first Sunday.  Beyond our 50 or so team, who would show up at the three services (8.30, 10, 6)?  In the event, we had 600 through the day - many of them in the morning were friends supporting us as a one off - happy mayhem in the children's church!  We loved every minute of it - the cafe with homemade cakes, the buzz of expectation before each service as the place filled up, the presence of God amongst us as the worship took off, the making of new friends and building community throughout the day.  In the evening, taking the ch Read more...

This week sees us beginning to let people know properly that St Peter’s is re-opening – posters on the 8 noticeboards around the church and banners on the security fencing.  Best, last week the team wrote postcards to 450 of the many, many people who signed the petition to keep the church open, thanking them for their support and letting them know we are re-opening in a few weeks’ time, with the times of the services and our new website.  When they were ready to go, it was very moving as we all held up a handful, prayed for each addressee by name and then went ou Read more...

There are work parties going on every weekend in October in the church hall at St Peter's - alongside the professional work being done in the church chancel itself: heating, lighting, sound etc - all making the place fit for purpose in time for our reopening services on 1 November - a date fixed in people's minds in Brighton as the day of the Old Crocs (vintage cars London-Brighton), which goes right past St Peter's, and also, of course, All Saints Day. Read more...