We hope you can join us for a joint covenant service between Matlcok Methodist and United reforemed, Matlock Moor Methodist Chapel and Cromford Methodist Church. You can find the order of the service at the bottom of this page.
You can join us in person or on zoom. The service starts at 10.30am, if joining in person please read the note below, if joining on zoom the detail can be found here.
Please note:
As per government guidance, masks must now be worn at all times in places of worship.
Unless of course you are exempt.
We would add that if you have the opportunity, we encourage you to take a lateral flow test before coming to the building.
If you do choose to come to the Church, please only come if you are fit and well and have not recently been in contact with anyone who has COVID19. With the new variant, we are continuing to encourage the use of hand washing/sanitiser and to maintain social distancing. There will be good ventilation in the Church so please wear warm clothing.
What is a Covenant Service - Taken from the Methodist website click here to find out more
At the start of the new year Methodists make a distinctive resolution
The covenant service, often celebrated on the first Sunday of the year, is at the heart of Methodists' devotion and discipleship, and their dedication in working for social justice. In the service the Church joyfully celebrates God's gracious offer to Israel that "I will be their God and they shall be my people".
This offer is then extended beyond Israel to all women and men in Jesus Christ, who also provides the supreme example of what it is to live in such a relationship with God. That relationship primarily involves the corporate life of the community of God's people (i.e. Israel; the Body of Christ). It is concerned with individuals within that group. What God offers is a loving relationship. The Covenant is not a contract in which God and human beings agree to provide particular goods and services for each other! It is not something that we have to do to create a relationship with God. God has freely and graciously already made it possible.
Rather, the Covenant is the means of grace by which we accept the relationship and then seek to sustain it. It is therefore not so much about getting in to a relationship with God as it is about staying in it. It is not about acquiring a relationship with God, but living within the loving relationship that God has already offered us.
God's gracious offer to us is therefore simultaneously a challenge. If God is committed to us, are we prepared to accept that as reality and commit ourselves in return to God? Even if we do choose to accept it, how can we manage to live out our commitment adequately, frail and human as we are? The New Testament suggests that as we join the group of those seeking to follow the way of Jesus, we respond to God's challenge with him and begin to share his relationship with God as Father. Within the group of disciples, this leads to his Spirit bubbling up in us as individuals, encouraging and enabling us to live out our side of the relationship (i.e. "writing God's ways on our hearts" as Jeremiah 31 describes the Covenant).