Meeting as a church at St Augustine's

(St Augustine's Hall, set up for a course)

St Augustine’s meets as a church every Sunday at 11am in St Augustine’s Hall – see map at bottom for location.

Sundays
We are a small community church. On any given Sunday there could be between 15-25 of us meeting for a contemplative worship service. This involves some chanting, silence and readings. We have a 'community time' for news and an update from the members of the church and there is a sermon with a small music group leading us in a few songs.
Every other Sunday we have a communion led by Nicholas Vesey. On other Sundays the service is led by members of the congregation.
Once a month, usually the first Sunday of the month, we have lunch together in the hall after the service.
History
The church itself dates from 1163. It was re-dedicated on 30 April 1429 following extensive rebuilding and re-roofing, possibly necessitated by damage to its fabric during the Peasants’ Revolt 40 years earlier.
In 1993 the congregation, numbering 40-50, moved out of the church because the roof was dangerous. About £80,000 was raised to renovate the church hall for worship. In 1999, during a long period without a vicar, the old church was declared redundant. By then our numbers had dropped to about 25.   We wanted to grow from there and identified quite a strong ‘alternative’ community living in our area, and made a decision to be less ‘churchy’.   First we erected a new, more friendly, sign encouraging people to ‘come and develop your spiritual life’. Then, after surveying newer members to find out what attracted them to St Augustine’s, we created the Developing Consciousness course.  
(Outstde the Hall)                    We re-ordered the building to make it more attractive, and rebranded ourselves as the Norwich Christian Meditation Centre, using modern marketing and advertising techniques to publicise our events. We encouraged the development of a Community Group to include those on the local estate, and organised a regular garden party for all local residents to create a village feel, although we are near a city centre.  

We still use the old church on high days and holidays.

If you would like to ask any questions about the church, please click here and email us.

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