A very brief introduction to St John’s, Locks Heath

St John’s is friendly, lively family church in Locks Heath, South East . Usual Sunday attendance is just over 200 people over 3 morning services. Our worship is focused on Jesus and the power of his Spirit at work in us.

We are keen to be a hospitable and welcoming church, and we work hard to make everyone feel welcome. We have a range of opportunities for people to informally gather and join in with the church community, from morning coffee mornings and ‘Fellowship’ meetings for our more senior members, to music evenings with our resident band ‘Cahoots’ at Spirit Café.

In April 2017 we launched a new Sunday service at 10.45am with an emphasis on informality, families and encountering the Spirit in sung worship. This service has grown rapidly, and around 20 children now attend each week with their families. We have groups for children alongside our 10.45am service and sometimes alongside our 9.15am service too, as well as groups during the week.

We have just appointed a new Children and Families Team Leader, Lewis Jones, who will be joining the church and the Leadership Team in August. His role has a particular focus on developing our work with 8-12 year olds.

We are working with 3 of our neighbouring parishes to launch a Church of Ministry Experience Scheme in September 2018, bringing up to 6 interns (aged 18-29) to our cluster of churches. Up to 3 of them will be based at St John’s.

The Leadership Team and PCC have been reviewing the strategy and direction of the church, and have recently adopted a new vision statement: “Reaching out with the love of Jesus to bring hope and change to our world.” In the last 6 months we have assessed our activities against four key words: Connect, Decide, Grow and Go. We have concluded that our church needs to be more purposeful about engaging with the needs of our community and our world - so we are looking for more opportunities to “Go!”

The Alpha Course is an important part of our church’s strategy to help people to “Connect” and “Decide” to follow Jesus. We have run Alpha four times in the last 18 months, including Youth Alpha with our teenagers, and we budget to run at least two Alphas a year. We have found Alpha to be an excellent tool, not only for introducing people to faith, but for bringing life, energy and purpose to our church.

Located in South between and , Locks Heath merges with nearby towns and villages to form a larger suburban conurbation. Sailing on the Hamble is a popular local sport, and there are plenty of places to walk or cycle along the Solent coast or in the Meon Valley. The and the New Forest are within easy reach. The town of is nearby, with larger shopping and leisure facilities available in , Southampton and Portsmouth.