As we've prayed over the last few weeks, we feel that the Lord has distilled our task as a church down to three simple purposes: 

1) sustaining worship;
2) pastoral and practical care for one another;
3) serving our community.

One: Sustaining Worship

Join us online every Sunday at 10am for our streamed service. Click on | worship with us online | from our homepage to see the upcoming service and previous services.

We're also using our digital presence through our social media channels to bring hope to our digital community at this challenging time, and encouraging our church family to do the same.

Two: Pastoral and Practical Care for One Another

Small Groups have a crucial role in the Body always, but especially at this time when there is real stress and justified anxiety everywhere around us. We're hoping that you'll make sure that you share within your groups any pastoral care and practical help needs you may have, and pick up the responsibility of supporting one another (Galatians 6: 2). Pastoral staff will be checking in with small group leaders to ensure that the leaders are being adequately cared for as well.

Prayer: For those not in a small group we encourage you to join one of our prayer sixes who are praying for the other five people in their group each time they wash their hands. If you would like to join a group please click here for the form.

If you have any confidential prayer requests please email them to prayer@highfield.church.  

Practical Help: If you have a current DBS, some time to give and aren't needing to self-isolate, please would you click here to volunteer your services providing practical help for those in our church family and we'll get back to you with further information.

If you require any practical help (eg. shopping or picking up prescriptions) please email practicalhelp@highfield.church and we will do all we can to find someone to help you.

Three: Serving our community

We also want to encourage you to support your neighbours in prayer and through providing practical care where that's appropriate and required. Find a simple card to give to your neighbours asking for prayer and practical requests here. Please meet those practical help requests wherever you can reasonably and safely do so. But where there are help requests that you or your small group cannot meet, please email those requests to practicalhelp@highfield.church. We will, of course, look to work with other churches wherever possible. 

Similarly, if there are particular, urgent prayer requests for your neighbours, please email them through to prayer@highfield.church. 

There are other ways to get involved in supporting the wider community across the city:

- Caraway, one of our mission partners, is working hard to support those working in care homes across our city. Click here to find out more.

- For information on how your spare board games and jigsaw puzzles can benefit prisoners at this time please click here.

- Love Southampton is an initiative working to support people across the city in many different ways, and they are looking to recruit volunteers to help with this. For more information click here.

Three Simple Purposes
If we pursue these three simple purposes during the current crisis, we believe we can both be good neighbours and commend Jesus within our community. We hope and pray that we'll all embrace playing our part in pursuing these three simple purposes, and that we will grow as Christians and as a grace-filled community despite these difficult times. As Paul discovered, God's power is made perfect in weakness and our prayer is that we will discover that for ourselves and as a community in the weeks and months to come (2 Corinthians 12: 9).