Christ Church is a church and local ecumenical partnership in Nelson, Lancashire, England. It is situated on Carr Road in the town centre. The building has been shared by the Methodist Church of Great Britain and the Roman Catholic Church since 2004 – a rare example of an

ecumenical Ecumenism (), also spelled oecumenism, is the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. The adjec ...

union between Methodists and Roman Catholics. The Catholic congregation which meets in the church is the successor to the first mission in Nelson, dedicated to

St Joseph Joseph (; el, Ἰωσήφ, translit=Ioséph) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who, according to the canonical Gospels, was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. The Gospels also name some brothers of ...

, which used three successive church buildings. The Catholics began sharing a now-demolished building with the Methodists in 2001, construction of the Carr Road premises began in 2002, and it was opened on 6 June 2004 by Bishop

Terence Brain Terence Brain (born 19 December 1938 in Coventry, England) is the Bishop Emeritus of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford. Education Bishop Brain attended King Henry VIII Grammar School and Cotton College before training for the priesthood at ...

. In 2019 a ceremony, attended by leaders from each denomination, was held to renew the "covenant" between the two traditions. The church is active and used for Methodist

service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a pu ...

s and Catholic masses.{{cite web , title=Christ Church , url=https://www.burnleyandpendlemethodistcircuit.com/christ-church , publisher=Burnley and Pendle Methodist Circuit , access-date=24 January 2021 , language=en The church building is constructed with a steel frame and concrete blocks, faced in local stone and with a slate roof. It has stained glass windows and banners with a

bifurcate Bifurcation or bifurcated may refer to: Science and technology * Bifurcation theory, the study of sudden changes in dynamical systems ** Bifurcation, of an incompressible flow, modeled by squeeze mapping the fluid flow * River bifurcation, the f ...

theme.

References

Methodist churches in Lancashire Roman Catholic churches in Lancashire Churches in the Borough of Pendle

See also

References