The Salvation Army Community Church Cheltenham

You do not have to wear uniform to be a Salvationist, although certain responsibilities like playing in the band or taking a major role in running the local corps usually entail uniform-wearing. However, Salvationists who do wear uniform feel it is a privilege to do so.

Wearing the Salvation Army uniform tells onlookers that the person wearing uniform is a professing Christian and that he or she is available to give practical or spiritual help through the Salvation Army, if not personally. Uniform also opens the way for the wearer to be recognised and accepted as the representative of The Salvation Army in all kinds of situations. The intention of Salvation Army uniform is not to isolate its wearer from other people but to give a visible sign that he or she is available to serve others.

For more information on ‘Why do Salvationists wear a uniform?’, please click here.

Absolutely! We are a family church who welcome people from all ages and backgrounds – with or without children. Our Sunday service starts at 10am and we have a seperate hall in which Kids Church commences. Kids Church starts about 15-20 minutes after the main service has started. Parents are welcome to bring their children along and either leave them with the staff for the remainder of the service, or we’re happy for parents to come along.

Our Kids Church is well staffed by members of the church who are fully trained and CRB checked for working with children of all ages. If you have any queries about the Sunday Kids Church, please do feel free to get in touch with us.

Our 10am Sunday service adopts an informal approach. There is no rigorous structure to the Sunday service. Our aim is for all those who attend to be inspired, to be educated, challenged, and to have fun! Our Sunday service usually includes various songs & praise from our very own traditional Salvation Army band.

In addition to this, we also embrace more modern styles of worship and often have a separate band for this as well. The service usually includes a talk from Major Diane and often there is opportunity for people from within the congregation to share a testimony if they wish. The service is then concluded with a time for prayer and reflection, followed by a time for tea’s and coffee’s.

We promote ourselves as a community church, and so our Sunday service is one of many different people, styles and approaches merging together for a unified purpose – to explore and to share in finding out more about Jesus Christ and His role in our lives. We hope to see you soon at one of our services.

The worldwide presence of The Salvation Army, the work of those involved and the motives behind it were founded and are maintained to this day with Jesus Christ at the heart of it all. The Salvation Army as we know it today was established by a man named William Booth – a man who, back in the early-mid 1800′s, became a Christian in his teenage years and then spent much of his spare time trying to persuade other people to become Christians too! The Official Salvation Army web site tells in greater detail of William Booth and how the Salvation Army came to be – read about it by clicking here.

The misery and poverty of London’s East End, which was often exacerbated by excessive drinking, led the Army’s Founders to regard drink as a social evil. They made total abstinence from alcohol a condition of membership because abstinence rather than moderation seemed to them to be the most effective answer to the tragedies caused by drunkenness and alcoholism.

Today, tragedies caused through excessive drinking are no less in evidence, and the Army feels it would be hypocritical to come alongside and try to help in such situations unless its own members practised abstinence from that which was the root cause of these problems.

The Army does not judge people who see no harm in drinking in moderation. However, in a society where much social and business interaction revolve around alcohol, a positive stance is made by Salvationists that it is not necessary to rely on alcohol to feel confident, communicate with others or enjoy oneself.

The Salvation Army Church in Cheltenham put on a FREE Family afternoon of fun for all on the second Sunday of every month during the Summer. The afternoon includes bouncy castles, face painting, arts & crafts, and even a live show from the church’s very own puppets! This happens every Summer and is thoroughly enjoyed by the many parents and children that come along. For more information, please visit our ‘FREE Family Fun in Sandford Park’ page.

If you have any questions or a query that has not been answered on this page or anywhere else throughout the web site, then please do feel free to get in touch with us.

Have a look at our Sunday Sermons page and you might find the sermon you are looking for. However, these online sermons are only for the purpose of giving visitors a flavour of the Sunday morning service. We usually update them with a more recent collection every 2-3 months.

The provision of regular sermons for download and distribution will only be made available to those who are unable to attend the Sunday services due to a difficult circumstance (e.g. health, disabilities, family commitments, etc.), and who are known to the church leader.

While we would very much like to be in a position to do this for those keen on weekly sermon downloads, we have decided against this for the following reasons:

1. Respect of privacy and sharing of intimate information – Sometimes throughout our Sunday Services, there is opportunity for those attending to share a testimony or to ask for prayer. For this reason alone, we would not want to make full recordings available to the world wide web for download.
2. The time demands on editing the Sunday service recordings – Again, out of respect for those who may share something during a Sunday service, the chosen recordings that are uploaded to the web site only include the talk given by Major Dianne or whoever is leading the service. Thus, editing a full Sunday service recording on a weekly basis requires more time than what can be given on a voluntary basis.
3. We’re not aiming to become an online church/sermon service! – Our aim is for the web site (and the sermons we choose to upload), to simply give visitors a flavour of the Salvation Army Church in Cheltenham. We would be somewhat disappointed if, over the year’s, we experienced less people attending our Sunday service because many were just downloading the sermons sometime throughout their week as a convenient alternative!