Christenings at Farlam

The gift of a baby is something that often brings parents back to Church. The miracle of a new life re-awakens a sense of gratitude, an awareness of the mystery at the heart of life. We may want to acknowledge our need for the grace of God as we are entrusted with such a precious and fragile life.
The Church offers two kinds of service for your babies and young children:

Thanksgiving. This is a service in which there is a thanksgiving to God for the gift of a child, there are prayers for the child and your family, there is a blessing and the child is named. It is a joyful service which leaves the way open for a baptism (‘christening’) at a later date. Some choose the Thanksgiving because they want their child to choose for themselves whether to be baptised or not when they’re older. Others don’t feel they can make the commitments asked of parents at a baptism, or cannot express an explicitly Christian faith for themselves. Honesty and realism are to be commended!

Baptism (‘christening’). Christian baptism is with water and in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It an initiation ceremony which includes elements of the thanksgiving service, but it is essentially a rite ( a ‘sacrament’) by which someone becomes a member of the Church community. Parents and godparents re-affirm their own Christian faith, and undertake to bring up their child in a Christian way of life. In particular, you promise to prioritise attending church with your child on a regular basis. The Church undertakes to support you in this.
  
Both thanksgivings and baptisms can be arranged to take place as part of a normal Sunday morning service, or to take place separately on a Sunday afternoon. If a baptism takes place on a Sunday afternoon, the parents also bring their child to the morning service on another occasion to be welcomed by the Church.

We are delighted when we are asked for a thanksgiving or a baptism service, so don’t hesitate to get in touch. But be aware that if you live outside our benefice and if your present connections with the life of the Church in Farlam are not very strong, we will encourage you to ask for a baptism service in your local parish church. This is because you are most likely to be able to fulfill your baptism promises in a church which is close to you.


The old stone font that stands at the front of the church is used in the service.

Advice about baptisms can be found on the Church of England web site.

Getting Married at Farlam


The church is in a beautiful rural setting on top of the hill. The building has classic architecture and plenty of space.

We are delighted when we are approached by a couple wanting to get married. The church is in a beautiful rural setting

Marriage is a gift of God, it is something we wish to support and celebrate. However there are legal rules about who can get married where, so if you are considering a wedding at Farlam Church, do please get in touch with the vicar as your first step so we can clarify what’s possible.

Of course we recognise also that married life can be tough, that there’s no such thing as a perfect marriage, and that we are human and sometimes marriages break down.  This is why we ask couples who are planning a wedding in our churches to attend a Marriage Preparation Day in the March before their wedding. It’s why we believe the resources of faith and prayer, guidance and  forgiveness that the Church offers are so important.

If you want to get married in church and have been married before, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the vicar to have a conversation about the way forward.

Cost of weddings in the church are available on the church of England website. Local cost include the verger and organist.

Bereavement

People often turn to the Church when a loved one dies. The clergy take funeral services in the parish church or in a local crematorium chapel. They also conduct burials both in churchyards and in council-run cemeteries.

A funeral service conducted by the clergy is of course a Christian act of worship but we also want to shape a service that is personal to the family and that is both sensitive and real in terms of the person who has died. There will be prayers and a Bible reading, and we are essentially thanking God for the person’s life, celebrating all that was good in them, but also acknowledging the universal human need for forgiveness and mercy and ultimately, healing. We entrust our loved one, and ourselves as mourners, to God.

The first step is always to get in touch with a funeral director who will carefully guide you through the initial stages of the process. Funerals take place in churches where the person who died had some kind of natural connection with the parish.