The Present Situation of the church

Location of the Church

• The church can be found at  Stubley Lane, Dronfield, Derbyshire.
• It is 5 miles south of Sheffield City Centre and 4 miles north of Chesterfield and is within 10 minutes drive of the Peak District.
• Dronfield is a prosperous middle class satellite town with about 28,000 residents.
• Dronfield consists largely of owner-occupied housing estates built around a village core, which gives the residents a sense of belonging to a village. The town has one large senior school and 10 Junior/infant schools.
• Just over the county border from Sheffield, it acts as a dormitory town for the city yet maintains its own distinctive identity and life. It gives the appearance of relative prosperity, but is in fact economically more diverse than it seems.
• Dronfield has the usual problems associated with a middle class affluent town. It has its fair share of single parent families, and a large number of families where both spouses work full time.
• Despite its location in Derbyshire, DBC is, for historical reasons, a member of the Yorkshire Baptist Association and some of our members contribute actively by holding office in the local district and the YBA itself.
• Dronfield Churches are covenanted together as Churches Together in Dronfield and District (CTDD) and do work very closely together. This involves working in all the schools, sharing in a weekly ministers fraternal and mission initiatives.
• The church building is situated in the old part of the town and dates from 1871. It has recently been refurbished with a new layout, modern seating and lighting.

Make up of Church

The Baptist Church at Dronfield is an active fellowship, which has a good cross section of ages making up the membership of 120. (Congregation am: 130-140 and p.m. 25-40). We have active youth work through a number of activities (uniformed organisations/youth club/Tuesday club/parent and toddlers (twice a week)/nursery (5 times a week) canoe club and the usual Sunday youth groups. We also have a lunch club and fellowship group for the older person in the community, as well as four other 'fellowship groups.

All members are encouraged to belong to a Fellowship Group. There are five of these, which meet on a fortnightly basis in members’ homes for Bible study and prayer.

We have recently seen quite an increase in the number of older people worshipping with us and there is an active work amongst them, both weekday social activities and pastoral support.

We have three regular prayer meetings - weekly before the church services and a monthly evening one and Saturday morning one.  A relatively small number of members meet regularly for prayer triplets. Prayer chains are well supported as a way of getting urgent requests for prayer quickly around the fellowship.

Leadership is offered through our Minister the Reverend Tony Marron and his wife Gaynor , a full time Youth Worker, an Eldership and a Diaconate of 12 members each with specific responsibilities for aspects of church life. In the last couple of years, we have moved to a system of slightly formalising the "management" of specific areas of the church's life. We have groups that take forward and co-ordinate outreach, youth work, missions and worship. In most instances, a designated deacon acts as a link between the group and the Diaconate. Other deacons carry particular responsibility for the prayer life of the church, discipleship and pastoral care.

Theology

We would say we are mainstream evangelical and are open to the Spirits leading, we are a lively fellowship who are charismatic with a small c.

The Baptist church is a member of CTDD, an active Local Ecumenical Project that consists of 16 fellowships including Anglican, United Reformed Church, Methodist, Roman Catholic and three independent evangelical fellowships. There is a strong sense of unity amongst the churches. The ministers have a weekly ministerial meeting and where possible act as a team

Worship

Our style of worship could be described as structured but informal. We have a printed order of service and often have a sermon series around a topic or book of the Bible. We rarely use liturgical responses, are not afraid of laughter and clapping and don’t mind the occasional impromptu contributions from the congregation.

We use Mission Praise and have supplemented it with our own songbook. We use both organ and a worship group in the leading of worship, which is usually a balance of traditional and new hymns. 

We use the NIV. 

Much of the pattern of worship is planned in the ‘worship planning’ group. We have different emphases morning and evening. 

Mornings are family services, with the children usually leaving part way through for Junior Church. Every two months we have a uniformed parade /youth service. 

Evenings tend to be more devotional in character. 

Mission

We are strong supporters of the BMS and HM and we are currently supporting work in Russia, Bosnia and Indonesia in addition to our Brazil link with the BMS. We also seek to be active in our community through regular activities such as: Canoe club, Alpha groups, Fellowship Groups and a Lunch club being supplemented by a rolling programme of mission events through out the year.

Youth Work

We have a strong vision for youth work. We seek to express the love and challenge of Jesus Christ to young people by nurturing and developing their spiritual, physical and personal growth. We provide a full range of activities throughout the week. 

Where we see the Future of the Church

Crucially, we are full of hope that under the hand of God, we are moving forward and will grow. Being a reasonably "successful" church, we realise that life can get too comfortable and we are open to challenge and change.

At the heart of our life together we see Sunday worship, Christian fellowship, pastoral care and outreach.

Sunday worship is the focal point of our church life. There are inevitably differences of view and preferences here but because our worship is so important we will continue to be open to the best way of expressing worship and praise to our risen Lord. We know that it is easy to get into a rut in worship, and we are open to change and experimentation. Whether it is through Sunday worship or through the midweek fellowship groups, we endeavour to strengthen the emphasis on a Biblically focused teaching ministry, taking into account the wide range of Christian maturity that exists in the fellowship.

As a family of God, we are working consciously at building a community that crosses the generations and in which people of all ages are welcomed and accepted. We try to ensure that the mid-week activities are tied into the fellowship and do not float off in semi - independence.

We plan to build on the existing patterns of pastoral care where the Minister leads, enables and encourages a pastoral group of members who in turn can ensure that people are not "lost" and that care is coordinated.

There is a strong consensus that we continue to strengthen our outreach activities.

In all of this, we shall continue to work within the wider Christian fellowship.