Trinity Methodist Church Shiney Row Sunderland

09/06/2026

Faith is the Key

Rev Richard Bainbridge began his message by reading Matthew Ch 9 vs 22: Jesus turned, and seeing her He said, ‘Take heart, your faith has made you well.’

We live in a world where faith is often seen as being unbelievable and a brainwashing for the simple minded, but Christians believe that humanity thrives on faith and is the key to everything that is of true worth.

When Richard Dawkins published his hugely successful book The God Delusion he undermined religion and the Christian faith saying that “There’s probably no God, stop worrying and enjoy life.” But that philosophy neither satisfies the soul nor makes life meaningful.

In Romans Ch 4 St Paul defines our identity as coming through faith. Here he says the Jewish patriarch Abraham “…believed and God reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Paul had grown up with a strong belief that the people of Israel were the chosen people of God, through whom salvation would come to everyone. Now, having met with Jesus, he understands just how that happens. It’s not through birth or obeying the law, it comes through faith and that through faith we find our identity as the people of God and that we discover meaning, purpose and an understanding of who we are.

The Gospel writer Matthew, quoted above, had himself responded to Jesus’ calling to ‘follow’ and discovered, through faith, that he had a reason to get up every morning! Our needs are met through faith which meets all our other needs, for companionship, belonging, security and healing.

Each generation discovers that through faith they find identity, purpose and a reason to go on, with their needs met.

Dear Reader, may your faith in Christ grow day by day as you walk not by sight, but by faith.

07/06/2026

Here's our service, led by Rev Richard Bainbridge

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06/06/2026

Today we completed the next stage of our Community Garden project, a public space for Rest, Remembrance and private Prayer with the team clearing the area next to Heron Foods 😀😃 Here are the before and after pics

02/06/2026

What ‘Trinity’ means
God is incomprehensible, bigger than our minds can grasp, so it’s not surprising that we struggle to fully understand Him so Alan Irvin spoke this Trinity Sunday about what the Holy ‘Trinity’ actually means.
In Deuteronomy Ch 6 Moses tells the Israelites, and us, that there is only one God and that we should love Him with all their hearts, souls and might. Back then, the idea of a single God was radical in an age when other peoples had multiple Gods for everything.
In the Bible’s New Testament, Jesus speaks of God as His heavenly Father and when the original disciples and then the early church reflected on Jesus' teachings and the miracles of His birth, death and resurrection, they increasingly came to believe that Jesus is God and that the Holy Spirit who was sent to guide us is God as well. They affirmed these different strands of a single God as one Lord, determining that the Father is fully God, Jesus is fully God, and the Spirit is fully God as well.
So what does this mean in practice? Firstly, to know what God is like we need to know Jesus because God is revealed in Jesus. Next, that Jesus gave us His Spirit to help us keep our eyes fixed on Him no matter what. We need the Son and the Sprit to fully know and live for the Father.
God reconciles us to Himself and forgives all our wrongdoings through the death of Himself as Jesus and in rising again He shows that sin and death have been defeated. The Spirit living within us empowers and helps us to live the way that God wants, as a community faithful to Him.
And God wants us to invite everyone to join in! That’s the mission Jesus gave to us, His church.

31/05/2026

Today's service was led by Alan Irvin

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26/05/2026

Pentecost

How powerful it is when we have God on board with us in our lives and so as Christians, this Sunday we celebrated the coming of God’s gift of His Holy Spirit at Pentecost, something which was promised by Jesus and is recalled in Acts Ch 2.

Local Preacher Maureen Simpson reminded us that Jesus had told His disciples to wait until the helper He had promised them arrived and that whoever calls out to the Lord will be saved and Pentecost is the day the Holy Spirit came and Jesus’ promise to His disciples came true.

The Holy Spirit enabled the disciples to ‘speak in tongues’ meaning that everyone who heard them did so in their own language and it was the first miracle to take place after Jesus‘s death. This outpouring of God’s word was so contagious and the occasion so electric that 3,000 people became followers that day.

We cannot see the wind, but we know when it’s there because we can feel it and it is the same with God because the Acts story tells us that the Holy Spirit came like a rushing wind.

So today, how would we speak about Jesus? What gifts do we have to spread the word of God? How did St Peter do it and how did the people who influenced you do it? Maybe your words or actions can be seen by others as signs of God’s love or your invitations to people to share in hospitality?

Are we led by the Holy Spirit and longing to go forward with God? Ask yourself now - where am I with the Holy Spirit and how am I preparing myself for what God wants me to do for His Kingdom on Earth.

24/05/2026

Maureen Simpson leads our Pentecost service:

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23/05/2026

We've made a start on our Community garden project - can you help us? Message via the Contact form on our website. www.shineyrowmethodistchurch.com

19/05/2026

Remembering - and Forgetting
Led by Rev Jenny Porterpryde we celebrated our Lord’s Ascension Day, when Jesus left His earthly life to be re-united with His Father in Heaven, by taking Holy Communion, something that all Christians do in remembrance of the Last Supper Jesus had with His disciples 2,000 years ago.
Memory is a core part of faith as well as everyday life, and is particularly important when someone is no longer present and Jesus knew that we would need to be reminded again and again. Remembering what God has done for us in the past and brought us through enables us to keep going in times of challenge.
As Jesus prepared to ascend to Heaven, He told His disciples in Acts Ch1 that they would receive the gift of God’s Holy Spirit to help them, and as Jesus’ disciples of today this applies to us too. Jesus knew that in telling others about him there would be trouble and hardship and so He equips all who ask Him with His Spirit, enabling us to live our best lives and become everything He wants us to become.
However, forgetting also has its place. In the book of Hebrews Ch 8 we read that because Jesus has sacrificed Himself to pay the price for our sins those sins are forgotten by God, which means that having confessed our sins we can forget them too. Can you forgive yourself and let go?
In 1 Peter we read ‘you are blessed because the Spirit of Glory and of God rests on you.’ God’s Holy Spirit enables us to give our anxieties to Him, remembering that we are forgiven.

We worship a God who calls us to both remember Him, to forget our past wrongdoings and know that we are destined for eternal life with Him.

17/05/2026

This week's service is led by Rev Jenny Porterpryde