Poole Methodists at The Spire welcome you!
Loving God | Following Jesus | Serving Community
Who We Are
All our activities are underpinned by prayer and worship
- 1st Sunday of the month: Praise & Worship with our Filipino Community including lunch
- 2nd Sunday of the month: Preaching Service with Holy Communion
- 3rd Sunday of the month: Explorers Family Service
- 4th and 5th Sunday of the month: Preaching Service
Activities
Together @ 1
20 minutes of prayer and worship in the chapel. Weekdays at 1pm in the chapel.
All welcome.
Prayer Meeting
Monday prayer meeting at 10am.
This prayer meeting is open to all as we pray for all that happens at The Spire.
Bible Study
Join us for our Fellowship Bible study on Thursdays.
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.’
John Wesley
Children and Young People
We do all we can to provide for children and young people in our Sunday services, either through all-age worship, Explorers groups or the monthly Explorers’ Service.
The Circuit Youth group, GOD SQUAD, meets at The Spire on alternate Sunday evenings in term-time and attendance averages 8-10. Snooker, table tennis, table football as well as chess and board games are popular pursuits.
We also regularly undertake art and craft projects. At each meeting, we also spend some focussed time considering Christian themes or teaching. Sometimes we lead these sessions "in-house", but also welcome visitors to lead our "God Slot"
A little of the history
Methodism came to Poole in 1779 when the first service was held in a hall at the Wimborne Rd end of what is now Tatnam Rd. The first mission chapel was built in 1794 but was shut when Poole Methodist Church was built out of local Purbeck and Bath stone between 1878 and 1880 in the centre of Poole High Street. The building, although Victorian, is of faux-gothic architecture – with a distinguishable large spire and was built to house 1,000 worshippers.
In the summer of 2009, the church was closed for safety reasons and an application was made to renovate and extend the building – in order to provide a Christian centre for the community of Poole to use for worship, service and mission throughout the week. It would become, not only the centre of Poole’s continuing Methodist presence – but also a community facility relevant to Poole in the 21st century – and the congregations of the five Methodist Churches in Poole amalgamated to make it happen.
In 2015, Wesley’s Café was established on the ground floor of the original church and a new extension (nominated for the 2016 Carbuncle Cup for the ugliest new building in the UK!) was added at the rear, with the church re-branding itself as ‘The Spire.’
The extension provided a hall with kitchen, community meeting rooms, office spaces and facilities available to the public on the ground floor and - via stairs and a lift – more halls, kitchens and community rooms upstairs. The upper part of the original church provided a multi-purpose large space (the Rose Hall) with a stage and with tiered seating. It is used for shows, concerts and large celebratory events – as well as Sunday worship. The beautiful original stained glass Rose Window has been retained.
A chapel has been created downstairs, which is available to the public and kept as a quiet room without a lock on the door – for personal devotion. On the wall is a piece of artwork made from roof nails from the 1779 Methodist hall and mounted on a wooden plaque fashioned from one of the 1878 church pews.
Years of prayer, planning and fundraising produced a modern and flexible seven days a week building which is both available to the community and is mission focussed.
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