Welcome To Melling Community Church
We are a Baptist church based in North Liverpool, we love being together through the good times and the bad, in the laughter and the struggles. Always thankful for our ever-present, all-loving God. Click on the links to see what we get up to and when.
Our Melling Community Church motto text for 2025 is John 8:12.
‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’
For information on any of our events please look at our pages under 'What's On'
Sunrise revisited
cheers - 30/10/20
This Sunrise was written in 2020 when we were meeting as Church on Zoom. Now we have the opportunity to meet together its important we make sure Melling Community Church is always a place with warm welcomes.
I recently noticed that Channel 4 are showing re-runs of one of my favourite comedy shows; Cheers. Some of you may remember it. It’s the ongoing story of a bunch of disparate individuals who meet in a Boston bar every day. It was full of great characters; Sammy, Woody, Cliff, Carla, Diane, Norm and of course Frasier, who went on to have an equally successful spin-off show. When it first aired in the early 80s, we didn’t have any means to record the show, so if you were out at nine o’clock on a Friday night, you missed it. Now, I simply set my digi-box to record all the episodes and the entire catalogue will appear for my delectation. So much time has passed that I can’t remember which ones I missed, so I’ll probably end up watching them all again. I don’t have to wait until Friday, I can watch it every day of the week!
People often comment on the show’s theme song, “Where everybody knows your name”. The lyrics paint a picture of a warm, welcoming place. A place where you can be with people who know you, people who listen to you and take time to understand you:
“Making your way in the world today, takes everything you’ve got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn’t you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go…
Where everybody knows your name,
And they’re always glad you came.
You want to be where you can see
Our troubles are all the same.
You want to be where everybody knows your name.”
Sounds nice, doesn’t it? The problem is, it’s not like that. I’ve been to Cheers (yes, it’s a real bar in Boston) and nobody knew my name. More to the point, if you watch the show, you’ll find that the behaviours exhibited by the characters don’t mirror the sentiment of the song. They might know everybody’s name, but they are not terribly sympathetic or understanding towards one another. In actual fact, they spend most of their time mercilessly ridiculing each other and making jokes at the other’s expense. Now for the purposes of a comedy show, this is both hilarious and necessary, but if you were really treated that way, you wouldn’t be in a rush to go back.
Contrast that with the wonderful community that is being built by the Melling Baptist Community Hub. Many of us have only met through Zoom and everybody didn’t know my name, but they could cheat and read it on the screen. I know that, whenever we meet, I am assured of a warm welcome and will be greeted by a sea of faces that seem genuinely pleased to see me. It’s a place where people laugh together, cry together, quiz together, buy cakes together, play bingo together, learn about God together, pray together and feel that they belong together. A place that people will want to go to in person when the whole Covid pandemic is over. Each time I drop in I am reminded of Paul’s words in the Bible; “Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing”. I’ll take that over Cheers every day of the week!