What to expect

You are welcome to come as you are

We hope this information will answer any questions you might have, but please get in touch with our office if you have other questions.

What to Wear:

Come wearing what you like – virtually everyone will be in casual clothes.  We are a pretty chilled bunch of folk, and try to take people as they are.

Timings:

We start at 10.45am and finish around 12.15pm.  There is a chance to stay around for a cup of coffee or tea afterwards, chat to folk, ask questions or find out more about getting connected in CCE.  It is best to arrive a few minutes early, but if you arrive after 10.45am please do come in – you won’t be the only person arriving after we have started!

Children:

Children aged 3-11 have a separate meeting that starts around 11.20am until around 12.15pm.  There are different groups for different ages and a creche for younger babies/toddlers.  Most Sunday high-school aged youth also have their own time together with our youth leader or other responsible adults.

Breastfeeding: 

We are part of Breastfeeding Scotland’s Breastfeeding friendly scheme. Please contact us (office@cce.community)  if you have any questions or concerns about feeding your baby during a Sunday service.

What will happen:

Singing:  We love to sing songs about God or directed to God – expressing our appreciation of who God is or what God has done for us.  You will find our singing (what we often call worship) expressive, authentic, and contemporary, with use of modern songs and a band.  Sometimes people will share what they sense God might be saying to us all.  Other times, people might speak out their prayers.  Sometimes, we linger and be quiet or still in God’s presence.  People can sit or stand as they wish, or there is no compulsion to join in, if you’d prefer to just listen.

Participate:  We believe that a church service or gathering is best when we hear from a number of different people.  So we seek to create space for people to share.  We often do this after the talk (see below) but also with a question that we invite people to reflect on for a few weeks and have space on our Sundays for people to share their reflections.  There is such a richness in hearing from many different people!  Of course, it is fine to listen to others sharing – there is no pressure for anyone to speak publicly!

News:  There is often a lot going on in our church family, so we often will take some time to share what is happening and how folk can get involved in different aspects of church life.  If you miss anything, you can sign up for weekly newsletter or ask someone at our “welcome point”. Each Sunday we have an online notice board with information about the sermon and upcoming events which you can find here.

Talk:  Each week we have a talk of about 20-30 minutes based around our “Scripture of the Week”, normally from a member of the church, but sometimes we invite a guest speaker.  We mostly have a series of talks along a theme, to help us dive deeper into a topic or a book of the Bible.  We hope the talk will be informative, inspiring and helpful as we reflect on our lives.

But we don’t believe these are a “one-way” conversation, so each week we find ways for others to contribute or participate, often at the end of the talk.  This might be about what they have noticed from the Scripture passage, what struck them from the talk, or share something of their experience of the topic being talked about.  This isn’t so we all agree or see things the same way, but through the variety of “voices” we might learn together and hear God speaking through us all.

You can watch one of our Sunday Gatherings on YouTube if you want to see what we do before visiting.