Chads News - 21st January 2026

Dear Church family,
I would love to share an update on our plans for our All-Age services. Creating opportunities for our 11am congregation to worship across all generations has been something we have valued at St Chads for decades. Over the past 12 years this has taken the form of our monthly ‘Blended’ services. Last year we undertook a consultation and review, listening care-fully to feedback from all generations within our 11am congregation, which has been hugely helpful. I want to share some of the outcomes with you.

The first question we asked was whether God is calling us to continue gathering for worship in this way. We believe He is. We believe that this is something God values and that a good all age service expresses our anchors of glorifying God, loving community and following Je-sus. We recognise Blended services haven’t always been everyone’s preference, and this style of worship isn’t right for every service. However, we believe that worshipping together as family is a key part of discipleship for us all.

In the light of that we have decided to hold All Age services less often, enabling us to put more time and care into preparing them. Going forwards they will be once every half term ra-ther than monthly.

We have also formed an All Age team, who will meet at the start of each term to pray, plan, and reflect together to make these services really special. The team is: Anya, Daniel, Zachary, Adrian, Eden, Hannah, Anna, Katie, Dave and me. We will be commissioning and praying for this team on Sunday morning.

During the consultation instead of asking, ‘what do you enjoy?’, as worship isn’t about per-sonal preferences, we asked 'what enables you to engage with God?' The responses were rich and varied, reflecting not just our different ages, but the different ways we connect with God. The team has discussed these and we want to continue to include elements of praying together, having fun together, connecting in conversation, sharing stories and worshipping together. Rather than have a sermon, each service will focus on one key Biblical truth and then embrace it in our lives and prayers in all sorts of interactive ways. We have actually been trying this out for the past six months and the feedback has been positive.

Finally the name! – Part of the reason for the consultation was that we sensed these services were ready for a change and we want this to be a fresh, new season of worshipping as all ages. While we still quite like the name ‘Blended’, we felt a change of name signals something fresh. However, to be totally honest, after prayer and lots of chat and many suggestions, we haven’t yet landed on a name which the whole team can get excited about and that conveys all we’re aiming for. For now, we’ll simply call these services ‘All Age’.

Ultimately the name isn’t the most important thing. What matters is that we gather as a family and in our different ways, glorify God, love our community and follow Jesus.
With love,
Richard.

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