Introduction

We are a “single story (storey) church” – quote from Rev. Canon Leo Osborn at the opening service of our new building in 2003. We proclaim the love of Christ from our small bungalow.

Unity Methodist Church (Ravensworth Road) is a small community of Christians meeting regularly to share our faith and to maintain a Christian presence in the lower end of Dunston.

Worship

Usual arrangements:

Sunday worship takes place each week at 10.30am.  Services are mainly traditional in style, although we are open to new ideas.  We welcome visitors especially residents from the local care home. Following the success of our ‘telephone services’ during lockdown, when our services were held as a telephone conference call, we decided to carry on with these once we got back to worshipping in church. Our morning services are now ‘broadcast’ live on the telephone, allowing those that aren’t able to get to church to still take part in the service. 

Our Local Worship services are often experimental, using multimedia presentations, and the technology is available for anyone wishing to use it.

The death of our dedicated organist challenged us to explore recorded music and we now use this and the ‘new’ Singing the Faith hymn book which encompasses all styles of hymns and worship songs from the very traditional to the very modern.  We encourage our preachers to use hymns that fit their worship rather than considering whether they know them or think that we will know them – until you sing any hymn they are all new, and we are enjoying learning a whole new repertoire!

Fellowship

We have a weekly coffee morning, every Saturday 10:00am until 12:00noon.  This is a time for caring and sharing.  It gives us the opportunity to build relationships with the local community and with the families of residents in our local nursing home, several of whom regularly attend the coffee morning or Sunday worship.

Regular fellowship meals are shared.  Due to the size of our premises we are limited in the number of people we can cater for, but whenever possible we open the invitation to everyone.

Community

Our premises are regularly used by several groups attached to Dunston U3A.  This is helping raise the profile of the church in the local community, many of whom, because of the style of our building, do not realize that there is still a church on the site.

We seek opportunity to take our worship out to the community.  This particularly happens at our Carol Service which is held in the local Community Centre and includes the Dunston Silver Band, with whom we have a long association.