About

Welcome to Christ Church

Christchurch Felling is an Anglican (Church of England) church. It was built in 1867, and has been in continuous use since then. Today we have a regular congregation of around 80, divided between our regular Sunday services at 9am and 10.30am.

The services have greatly differing characters: the 9am service is a more traditional Church of England service – utilising traditional hymnody and Common Worship. The 10.30am service is less formal, although still following Common Worship, a more flexible approach is taken reflected particularly in the contemporary style of worship. A crèche is available for children below school age.

Each of the services has a similar overall aim – to worship Almighty God; to sing His praises; to hear God’s word preached, to pray, to support and to encourage one another in the Christian faith just as Jesus told us to.

Each Sunday and also Wednesday at 9.30am we share Holy Communion (also known as the Eucharist).

Please feel free to join us at any of our services; and if there is any aspect of the service you do not understand, or wish to have explained, please ask a member of the congregation afterwards. If they cannot tell you the answer, they should at least know someone who can! The Vicar loves answering questions!

We have set up Mission Communities, these groups have started meeting together. If you are interested please contact us.

Finally, as a church we are committed to praying for the needs of the parish of Felling on a regular basis. If you would like us to pray for you, there are two ways to let us know.

Either contact the vicar with a prayer request, or come and visit us on Carlisle Street, Felling, and fill in one of the prayer request forms at the back of the church and pin it to the cross.

What we believe

“What Christians believe” is a subject that has exercised the minds of history’s greatest philosophers and theologians. To attempt to sum up their thoughts in as brief a space as this would be meaningless.

Nevertheless, at the heart of Christian belief is a wonderfully simple message:

About a God who created a world full of people he loved
About a God who loved these people so much that he didn’t force them to love him back
About a God who didn’t stand idly by when the people turned against him, but sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world to try to win the people back to him.

Here is an example of what Jesus taught:

There was a man who had two sons. The younger son spoke to his father. He said, “Father, give me my share of the family property.” So the father divided his property between his two sons.

Not long after that, the younger son packed up all he had. Then he left for a country far away. There he wasted his money on wild living. He spent everything he had.

Then a time of famine came and the son didn’t have what he needed. He went to work for someone who lived in that country, who sent him to the fields to feed the pigs. The son wanted to fill his stomach with the food the pigs were eating.

Then he began to think clearly again. He said, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food! But here I am dying from hunger. I will get up and go back to my father. I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven. And I have sinned against you. I am no longer fit to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired workers.” So he got up and went to his father.

While the son was still a long way off, his father saw him. He was filled with tender love for his son. He ran to him. He threw his arms around him and kissed him.

The son said to him, “Father I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer fit to be called your son.”

But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattest calf and kill it. Let’s have a big dinner and celebrate. This son of mine was dead. And now he is alive again. He was lost and now he is found.

So they began to celebrate;

There are four simple messages that we can learn from this story that tell us something of the heart of Christian belief.

Just as the son in the story that Jesus told rebelled against his father and blew his inheritance on wild living, so as people we have rebelled against God. We have all done wrong. In differing, but equally effective ways, we have all squandered the inheritance that God has given us.
Just as the son ended up living with the consequences of his folly, so we also share the consequences of the things we have done.
Just as the son restored his relationship with his father by saying sorry to him and returning to his household, so we can do likewise – by saying sorry to God for the things we have done, and returning to his household, the church.
Just as the father was ready to welcome his son back with great joy (rather than with a big stick, which is probably what most of us would have done in a similar position), so God is eagerly awaiting our return. He longs for us to return to him, and he has so many wonders in store for us when we do return to him.

There then is the heart of the Christian message. But outside of this heart is a living body of belief that completes the story.

If you would like to know more, please talk to a member of the congregation or to the vicar (he loves being asked questions!)

There are lots of resources on the net which will tell you more about Christianity. Please see our resources page for more information.

An Introduction to Felling

The community of Felling is on the Eastern side of the borough of Gateshead. Formerly an independent “urban area” with its own civic building and facilities, it was merged into the Gateshead conurbation with the creation of the Tyne and Wear Metropolitan Borough Council in 1974.

The last 30 years have been a period of continuous economic decline for Felling as its staple industries – shipbuilding and heavy engineering – have struggled to survive. The result is a level of unemployment of 10.9%, which is substantially higher than the national average (5.2%). This is particularly the case among men.

Many of the problems traditionally associated with large-scale unemployment are found in Felling:

42% of families are Lone Parent (compared with 16% in Gateshead as a whole).
19.5% of the population of Felling have a long-term limiting illness. (2004)
The Index of Deprivation ranks the parish of Felling as the 2nd most deprived parish in the Durham Diocese.
The crime rate is above the national average. The crimes solved rate (26%) for the Felling area is below the national average. (2004)
Felling is one of the government’s 100 Health Action Zones, ranked as the 97^th worst.
There are some boarded-up residential properties, but much has been to demolished in the last 6 moths (Nov. 2008).
Property prices are significantly below the national average.
Gateshead Council provides an above average level of services, however as a consequence, council tax rates are 28% above the national average. Collection rates are slightly below the national average.
The main shopping street in the parish is extremely run-down with a large number of empty properties. In 1996 a council report identified that 28% of Felling’s retail stock was empty, the highest % rate of empty properties of the entire borough’s shopping areas.
A number of estates in the area suffer from gangs of children “hanging around” with little to do. Consequently levels of vandalism are high, and there are problems with drug and substance abuse, as well as a number of cases of arson.

The Felling community exists on the north face of the great hill that forms the backbone of much of the borough of Gateshead. The southern-most boundaries of Felling are marked by the more prosperous areas of High Heworth and Windy Nook, while to the north, the area is bounded by the River Tyne.

To the west, Felling runs in towards the eastern edges of Gateshead’s town centre, bounded by Deckham, the Old Fold estate and the Riverside Bowl recreation area. To the east of Felling lie Pelaw and the more prosperous area of Heworth.

The area is reasonably well served for communications, although the primary transport routes also contribute to the area’s disjointed feel. The major routes all run east-west, tracing the bottom on the hill that forms the southern half of the community.

The Tyneside Metro runs through the area, with a station at Felling. Paralleling this route, the British Rail east-coast line also passes through the parish. The nearest BR station is at the Heworth Metro Interchange.

Immediately south of the Metro line runs Sunderland Road, which carries traffic from Heworth to the South end of Gateshead town centre. North of the Metro line runs the Felling Bypass – a major dual carraigeway – which connects Gateshead with the A1 and A19 to the south.

Most of the least desirable housing in Felling surrounds the Felling By-pass. Several estates on the north side of it have been demolished. There is little likelihood of any additional housing being built in this area as the council plan to turn much of the remaining free land over to industrial use.

However this is not to say that the north side of the Felling Bypass (Felling Shore) is entirely desolate. A considerable industrial estate has been developed here; a mix of warehousing, manufacture and service industries use the factories that have grown up along the Felling Shore. Added to the industrial units that exist between the Felling Bypass and Sunderland Road at Heworth at the Eastern End of area, Felling has quite a respectable industrial base. Although like many such industrial estates that exist in areas of relatively high unemployment, the skill needs of the companies cannot necessarily be satisfied by the local population.

In an attempt to remedy this situation, Design Works, which lies at the eastern end of Felling, provides training opportunities for local people, funded by various government programmes.

Much of the area’s housing stock dates back to the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century, with many rows of terraced housing, particularly lining Sunderland Road, some of this has been demolished and new homes buing build but remainunsold due to the financial climate. Further up the hill towards the centre of Felling, a number of more modern estates have been built, although there has been little new building in the last 20 years.

A number of large blocks of flats have been built in the area – most of which immediately surround the main shopping area. Despite this apparent ready-provision of customers, the Felling retail area has been designated as a Shopping Improvement Priority Area. A 2004 council report found 28% of the properties in the precinct were empty. An early Years uni has been built on the High street which has been used for a year now.

Historical Records

Wedding (1957-Present) and Baptism (1966-Present) records available on request at a cost of £7.50 per document. For older records please contact the Durham County Record Office.