The Shore Community ChurchWelcome to The Shore Community Church. Our name is a celebration of our passion for our local community strung along the seashore in sunny Bognor Regis! You can get a flavour of what we are about on this page, by checking out our Media resources or social media, or better yet… by popping along and visiting one day.
People often comment about how friendly and welcoming our Sunday gatherings are! We try to make all our services relevant and accessible whether you’ve never been to church before or have been going all your life. The church is very informal - you can wear what you like, sit where you like, sing, stay quiet, move about… you can be yourself. People usually start arriving from about 9.45 and have coffee, tea and toast in the lounge. The main service starts about 10.30 and usually finishes at 12.00. During the meeting our band will lead contemporary worship songs; there’ll be notices, news and prayers, and a talk. If you need any help or information, or would like to chat or pray with someone, look out for someone wearing a Welcome or Ministry Team badge.
Everyone gathers together at the start and after about 15 minutes the young people are invited to go out to join in with the brilliant, age appropriate kids and youth programs we run. Your children are welcome to stay with you in the service if you’d prefer, but if you want them to go out to kids or youth church, make sure you go and sign them in. Every couple of months we have an all-age Family Service which often features our youth band. This is usually only an hour and is made up of all sorts of illustrations, games and activities, so hopefully there’s something for everyone. You are always welcome to bring a book, game, activity or toy along to help keep your child occupied and happy!
There are also various clubs and activites for children and youth that we run throughout the year.
See our Kids & Youth page for more information.
Treasure Box is a full time nursery with dedicated facilities on our campus. Consistently rated well by Ofsted, Treasure Box creates a creative and nurturing atmosphere in which pre-school children can thrive. For more details contact the nursery manager, Kim Doherty. Click here for more information.
Our facilities are often used by community groups, statutory bodies and charitable organisations. In addition to our own work we support other local charities doing great work in our town. See The Haven and The Shore Cafe!
We have a program of various mid-week ‘Life Groups’, which meet at various different times, but are all based around a theme - maybe an activity like running, table tennis, or craft; or around study, discussion, spiritual practices, or some kind of community engagement.
See our Life Groups page for further information!
At Coffee Plus we meet for a lovely time of chat, friendship, coffee, tea and cakes! Someone will usually give a short talk or ‘thought for the day’ as well. It usually runs on the second Thursday of the month from 10.30 til 12. Coffee Plus is really popular with retired folks and anyone else who is around is the morning and likes delicious cakes! We also often hold a Coffee Plus Worship meeting, which is a half hour church service… followed by tea, coffee and biscuits of course!
There is a good amount of parking on the church premises or directly adjacent on Victoria Drive. Much of the building is wheelchair accessible, but please contact us if you have any additional needs and we will endeavour to accommodate your requirements.
The church was founded as Bognor Regis Baptist Church, and we remain a part of the Baptist family. For several years we were also known as 'Opengate'. In 2019 we adopted the name The Shore Community Church to reflect the love and inspiration that we find in the place that we live, and the people we share life with.
We’re a baptist church, part of a stream of Christians who put the emphasis on really taking personal ownership of our faith and living it out in radical ways. Baptist churches have been around for about 500 years and are very varied, as each church is run by its members in the way that they feel best meets the needs of their specific community. Our church is made up of people from all sorts of backgrounds Christian and non-Christian: People who really love reading the Bible, people who prefer singing and spiritual experiences, people who just want to get practical and help others… and people who don’t fit in boxes! We would describe the teaching and theology here as generally Anabaptist, fairly progressive, hopefully useful, usually engaging and littered with bad jokes & pop-culture references. Check out some of our recent teaching to get a flavour...
We're part of Baptists Together and the South East Baptist Association.
