Welcome

We are a small, friendly, family Church. We begin our Family Worship together on Sunday mornings at 10.30am. On some Sundays members of our Junior Church go out to the Church Hall for their own activities, on other Sundays there are activities available at the back of the church, and we also occasionally have Café Church for all ages together. When our service has finished we share refreshments and fellowship in the Church. We welcome visitors and hope that all will feel welcome at our Church.

We hold our Lovefeast and Holy Communion Service on the second Sunday of each month at 3pm. In the Lovefeast part of the service cups of tea and biscuits are served, news from the congregation and the wider Church is shared and a short address given. The Lord's Table at Holy Communion is open to all who love the Lord Jesus.

Regular Activities

The Prayer Group meets every Thursday at 2pm at the home of one of our members to pray for the congregation, the local community and the wider world.

The Moravian Women's Association meets on the second Wednesday of the month at 7.45pm at the home of one of our members.

The Ladies Fellowship meets on the first Wednesday of the month at 8pm in the Church, and has a wide range of speakers and activities.

Our Wellbeing Wednesday activities have gone from strength to strength since they started six years ago. On the first Wednesday of the month at 10.30am we have Walking For Health. On the second Wednesday of the month at 10.30am is our Julian Meeting, a time of silent contemplation. On the third Wednesday of the month at 10.00am there is a short walk followed by Yoga (charge of £4). On the fourth Wednesday of the month at 10.30am we have Carpet Bowls (charge of £1). All of the activities include refreshments. Wellbeing activities do not take place in August.

We enjoy each other's company and have a lot of fun working together and at our various social and fund raising activities - we particularly try to have a mix of activities that are suitable for all ages.

We have an annual Heritage Open Day in September when the church is open and there are various displays about the history of the congregation and its buildings.

We have a close relationship with Little Gomersal Community Association and have held occasional joint events. We worked together on a project called Gomersal and the Great War to commemorate the centenary of the First World War for which an exhibition was produced. To see the exhibition online please click here. One of the additional outcomes of this project was a book called 'The Great War Minister's Diary' which has been compiled by Br Christopher Shorten, and is available for download as a pdf file from the Downloads section below (if you would like the book in the alternative epub format for iBooks, or mobi format for Kindle, you can request the file directly from Br Shorten by emailing him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). Having read the book, if you wish to support this church by making a contribution towards our heritage fund and outreach projects, you can now do this using PayPal. See the Donations section below.

Our Minister serves the Fulneck congregation as well as Gomersal, and we share in the life of the Yorkshire District of the Moravian Church. We are also members of Churches Together in Gomersal, Birkenshaw and East Bierley, taking part in joint services and events, and activities with local schools. To visit the CTGB&EB website, please click here.

Buildings

Our church is a Grade 2 listed building. The Church was extensively repaired between 2005 and 2009. Most of the fixed pews were removed and replaced with chairs, and we have a lovely new kitchen and toilets including a disabled toilet. We have been greatly helped by grants from English Heritage but we have had to raise much money for this ourselves.

You can hire the Church and our Church Hall for community events and parties.  For more information please contact the minister.

History

Benjamin Ingham, an Anglican clergyman born in Ossett and educated at Batley Grammar School, was at Cambridge with John Wesley and accompanied him to America where he met some Moravian colonists. On his return to Yorkshire in 1738 he organised many religious societies in the West Riding, one of them at Gomersal, and invited the Moravians to join him in the work.

On 26th May 1742 the Moravian 'Yorkshire Congregation' was organised and various Moravian evangelists moved to Smith House in Lightcliffe. At a huge lovefeast at Gomersal the members of Ingham's societies gave their approval to the Moravians working among them, and a document was signed by Ingham handing over his societies. So the Gomersal society became part of the Moravian Church, belonging to the Yorkshire Congregation.

In 1755 the Yorkshire Congregation was replaced by individual congregations at Fulneck, Gomersal, Lower Wyke and Wellhouse in Mirfield. The present church building at Gomersal had been erected in 1751, and in 1758 girls' and boys' day schools were established. A single sisters' house followed and in 1793 a girls' boarding school. The additional buildings were built onto the side and back of the church with connecting doors.

In the 1840s, our minister Rev Lauten was a regular visitor to the Red House, home of Charlotte Brontë’s friend Mary Taylor and her family. He was probably the inspiration for the Moravian Minister portrayed in Charlotte’s novel Shirley. Charlotte’s other lifelong friend, Ellen Nussey, attended our girls' school before meeting Charlotte and Mary at Row Head. Ellen’s sister, Mercy Mary, was a Moravian, and many of the Taylor family were also to become members of our church. Br Christopher Shorten has produced a short book on the connections between the 'Brontës, Luddites and Moravians' that is available for download as a pdf file in the Downloads section below. For a sample of what it is about, please click here.

The Taylors contributed to the remodelling of the church and the new organ in the late 1860s, when the church was raised to two stories, with a gallery added and the pulpit moved to the south side with the pews placed breadth-wise instead of length-wise. The pews were fixed at this time. The church remains in this format but without the pews.

The industrial revolution and 1870 Education Act brought many changes, and the sisters' house and schools were closed in the latter half of the 19th century. The additional buildings were then converted into houses which are managed by the Unitas Estates Company. The house to the left of the church as you face it was the minister's house, though this is now rented out by the congregation.

Our extensive archives are held by the West Yorkshire Archive Service in their Bradford Office.

Donations

We can accept donations by PayPal. If your donation is for at least £25 and you are a UK tax payer, please consider gift aiding the donation, as it costs you nothing but allows us to reclaim a significant amount of tax. Complete and return the Gift Aid Declaration in the Downloads section. To make a donation, please click here.

We can also accept donations through JustGiving. Simply text 'GOME01' and your amount (e.g. '£5') to 70070.

You can also help us raise money for free by shopping online through Easy Fundraising. There are over 2,700 retailers registered including Amazon, eBay, John Lewis and Tesco. Once you have signed up all you need to do is start your shopping search at the Easy Fundraising website and whenever you buy something a percentage of the price is donated to the Church at no cost to you.

Thank you.