Our vision: the church we aspire to be 

Our vision statement at Whitley Lodge Baptist Church is 'loving God, loving people, making disciples'. This helps us express, experiment and evaluate our commitment to Christ as his people in our location and beyond. We want to see our church grow in the character of God, following and living out Christ's new order. We would like to see this happening through our core WLBC values - Worshipping, Loving, Believing and Connecting.

Worshipping. Our love for God expresses itself in our worship of him. We aim for reverent simplicity, intelligent informality, joyfulness and substance for all. We seek to do this by fusing together historic core elements of corporate worship and contemporary elements, in ways that the present culture finds meaningful. For us, worship is both a relationship with and a response to God. We encourage our people to participate in home groups and prayer meetings during the week, to assist where possible with our outreach activities, and also to engage in witness to family, friends and neighbours.

Loving. We consider ourselves to be a friendly church, and visitors often express how welcome they have been made to feel. We also care about each other. We aim to ensure that each person loves and is loved, knows and is known, serves and is served, celebrates and is celebrated. No-one should be alone – they are all with others on their discipleship journey. We have an active Pastoral Care Team who ensure that everyone is supported particularly when facing health and wellbeing needs. Our love also extends into our community and the wider world.

Believing. We believe that the Bible is the word of God. Therefore we are eager for sound Biblical teaching. We hold seasonal Bible classes for in-depth Bible teaching during some weeks of the year. We need to listen to and learn from God’s Word in order to live it out in our daily lives. We strongly believe that our God answers prayer and are convinced that it is the very powerhouse of the Church; therefore we seek to underpin all we do with prayer. We are open to the possibility of new workings of the Holy Spirit among us, and we encourage everyone to use the gifts they have been given.

Connecting. As just stated, we have a heart for our community and the wider world. We have excellent relations with the school where we meet. Our Open the Book team presents Bible stories in the school. Church members have been involved in running extra-curricular activities and also in leading school assemblies. We reach out into the community with events such as lunches for those who live alone and are regular supporters of the local foodbank.

We are affiliated to Whitley Lodge Community Spirit, which is a not-for-profit organisation with the sole purpose of working and raising money for the local community. With this group we take part in such activities as the annual summer fayre and carol singing in the shopping centre in the run-up to Christmas.

We are members of the Northern Baptist Association, the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Evangelical Alliance.  We are committed to supporting the BMS World Mission and the Baptist Home Mission both financially and in prayer.