Belfast Sydenham: Belonging and love

Majors Graham and Keira Wood share how Belfast Sydenham Corps is a flourishing place of welcome.

Blending together

We’ve been the corps leaders here since July 2020. In 2025, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the corps in its present location. Although we’ve been more contemporary in our worship style, we combine the traditional and modern. Our band, songsters and worship group provide a great balance together. As a corps, we’re very outward looking, not only in mission but in our thinking and discerning and we’re blessed to have many children and young people.

Our young people’s activities take place from midday on Sundays across three age groups. We have about 10 teenagers, 7 older primary school age children and lots of little ones in the Primary. We’ve had about 10 babies born in the past few years!

Our youth group have a monthly fellowship, do social activities together and a weekly Bible class on Sundays, which they called ‘Basic’ - Becoming a Soldier in Christ. We have a young people’s band and singing company.

We changed our parent-and-toddler group name to The Ark, after the Covid-19 pandemic, to emphasise a safe and warm place for families. That’s been hugely successful and we’ve had local families connect into our corps and Sunday school from that.

We are very much a young family church and we’re also intergenerational. What’s lovely is how they all blend: there’s excellent connection between them. We have fellowship after our meeting and the older generation are genuinely interested in our children and our teenagers. Our youth love the support they get from the older generations. It’s a warm place to be; there’s a lot of love.

We are very much a young family church and we’re also intergenerational. What’s lovely is how they all blend: there’s excellent connection between them. We have fellowship after our meeting and the older generation are genuinely interested in our children and our teenagers. Our youth love the support they get from the older generations. It’s a warm place to be; there’s a lot of love. In 2025, our older youth spent a fortnight in the USA, mainly serving at Old Orchard Beach Corps in Maine. We offered to be available to them, to do whatever they needed and helped with their adult senior’s programme, their children’s programme and an annual community yard sale raising funds for overseas mission. They also supported the divisional music camp at Camp Sebago.

Flourishing in Christ

As a corps, we decided that, rather than having lots of different events, we would have a running theme for our 30th anniversary year in 2025. We chose Flourishing in Christ using Proverbs 11:28, which says ‘the righteous will thrive like a green leaf’. On Sundays we looked at various aspects of flourishing – for example on Bible Sunday we looked at flourishing in God’s word – challenging ourselves on how healthy we are in different areas. We encouraged people to set their devices for 11.28am every day – inspired by Proverbs 11:28 – to pray for our corps to flourish.

Connecting with the community

We’re part of Churches Together in the East Belfast group. We provide a lot of practical assistance for families in the community and we are also a Restored Beacon church, providing a safe refuge for survivors of domestic abuse.

We seek to make a lot of connections through corps outreach, supporting care homes, a centre for adults with learning disabilities and a special needs school. Being available and having opportunities to invite people to our events is a privilege.

We host a fortnightly online prayer gathering, which started during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some people join us from England. We run a variety of Bible studies, some online or in people’s homes to suit their needs. Our monthly ladies fellowship is going well and growing. On Wednesdays we’ve focused on meeting community needs, with a Connect community group and lunch club with an activity afterwards. This has been hugely successful in connecting people with each other and with God.

A place of welcome

Some of our congregation travel from out of the immediate area to come to the corps. We’ve also had new people join us from the community, which has been encouraging.

Nurturing disciples of Jesus and serving others without discrimination are key mission priorities for us. We’re working hard to be a place where everyone feels welcome and they belong, wherever they are from or whatever their background is. Our aim is simply that people come in, feel welcome and come to faith. It’s all about belonging and love.