Westbury-on-Trym Baptist Church

The church is a mainstream, evangelical Baptist Church and part of the Baptist Union of Great Britain.

The church was founded in 1947 with a view to being a "Community Church." A Scout Group was set-up at the same time and remains linked to the church.

The church has had strong children and youth links historically, but numbers of those professing faith has fallen significantly over the last 20 years.

The church employed a full-time Children and Family Worker from 2014 to Christmas 2019, who did a lot of work building links with the community. Sadly, a lot of the work was lost during the pandemic.

The church is led by its minister, James Watson, and a group of seven deacons. It is a congregational church, so any major decisions are made by the church membership.

Our vision is to be forming followers of Jesus for the good of God's world. We recently developed five values: living humbly, living respectfully, living passionately, living relationally, and living prayerfully.

The church is located in a suburb of north Bristol. It is an affluent part of the city, which poses its own challenges. As mentioned, there is a nearby primary school, and two nearby secondary schools - both private all-girls schools! There are further primary and secondary schools fairly close.

There is a small "high street" a few minutes away but the area is predominantly residential.

The demographic is largely white-British. There are a lot of families in the area.

We have an established pre-school, a popular toddler group, and Scouting and Guiding Groups that meet on the premises. We also have strong links with the local primary school, Elmlea. We would like to build on these mission opportunities, and recognise that to do so requires forming strong relationships with those we're in contact with.

We also run a monthly all-age worship service and monthly outdoor worship (Wild Worship), and are currently running a Parenting for Faith course. We would love to have a trainee partner with us, who could specifically join in building on these initiatives, and help to develop discipleship within the family.