About Us
Birmingham Central Baptist Church
is a Christian fellowship that has been been established for over 150 years.
Our main worship service usually takes place on Sunday morning at 11am (current Coronavirus restrictions allowing). We are not a big congregation, maybe 40-50 adults on a 'normal' day.
We tend to keep things fairly simple and choose not to be overly reliant on technological wonders to create a sense of experience.
We're not scared of technology though and we aim for a decent visual and audio quality.
Our worship services are shaped around God's Word from Scripture and through preaching, prayer, songs and music. We love to hear the voices of the people within our fellowship too and so it is common to find a number of people involved in leading worship on any given week. To hear different preachers from our in-house team as well as occasionally from guest speakers. To find God's people giving testimony to his greatness and goodness in their lives.
Our strap-line is
Believing - Rooted - Growing - Fruitful.
It is a recognition that the Christian life is a constantly developing relationship with God, with each other, and with the world. From those very first steps of faith as we come before God and confess our sin and seek his forgiveness, continuing into the confidence in God that grows through understanding, which builds and strengthens our faith and ultimately overflows to be a witness to others of the power of God at work in our lives. None of those things are one off events though, we constantly move in a circle, we find a new understanding of what it means to believe, we become increasingly rooted and established in faith, we continue to grow in knowledge and understanding and maturity, and we become ever more fruitful in witness.
BCBCS is on a journey of discovery with God. Although the Coronavirus pandemic has of course forced us to reshape and rethink much of what we do, we were already engaged in reviewing and restructuring many of our activities. We are asking questions of ourselves before God, questions such as 'who has God called us to be in this day?', 'what has God called us to do as we face a new normal in the future?', 'what does it mean to worship? 'What does worship look like, sound like?' How do we enable God's people to engage in wholehearted, whole life worship?'
We are situated within walking distance of Birmingham City Centre and very close to the famous Jewellery Quarter. We seek to be a Christian witness to the communities around us which include Brookfields Estate, Ladywood, Hockley and Winson Green.
The church has a long history of running and supporting social action projects within our communities. From it's earliest days it has worked to alleviate poverty, be a positive influence for young people, provide community activities for older folk and more.
We have been involved in various projects over the years from the 'Sunday School Movement' providing education to underprivileged children in the 1800's, we ran a debt counselling centre and money management courses for a number of years, and currently provide supported accommodation for homeless men through our Still Waters House ministry.
Leadership
Baptists hold strongly to the principle of 'priesthood of all believers'. This means that the important decision making about church life and ministry is shared across the Church Members. Together, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, the Church Members seek to discern Chrisst's direction for the local church. It is usual for the whole congregaton to be actively involved in church life in some form or way.
The local church appoints various people from within the congregation to help manage the day to day running of the church and deliver its vision. This group is known as the Diaconate. The Diaconate will consist of a number Deacons, Church Secretary, and Church Treasurer.
The church may also appoint Elders who focus predominently upon the spiritual growth of the congregation.
Finally, it would be usual for the church to appoint a Pastor(s) who is called to lead the church, serving pastorally to support the congregation in its times of need, teaching the way of faith, and enabling the church to discern its vision, motivating it to act out God's call upon his people in the place he set them.
The current Pastors of Birmingham Central Baptist Church are, Paul and Liz Tyler. As husband and wife they have served BCBC since 2004. As a team they bring very different gifts and focusses to the church, although both share a similar passion in all things. Liz has a strong passion for teaching and discipleship, as well as bringing her gifts as a worship leaderg. Paul has a strong passion for community and social action, encouraging the church to engage with and where possible tackle the wider issues in society such as homelessness.