2002 began with the second week in January devoted to prayer and fasting. Throughout the year there were several evenings of prayer and fasting for all aspects of church life including the use and redevelopment of the Church Centre.

During Holy Week 2002, together with Churches Together in Teddington we ran "The Labyrinth" which was an opportunity to taste, touch see, hear and smell the life of Jesus. It consisted of a walk through a labyrinth past exhibits and tableaux recalling key moment in Jesus' life. This meditative journey touched the lives of many who came.

With advice from Church Projects Ltd, a firm of architectural consultants, a plan was developed during the year to modernise the Church Centre so it will be better able to support the mission of the church. This plan involves changes to the interior and exterior of the premises (see exterior view above). In the autumn, the church committed itself to a Redevelopment Project which it was estimated might cost over £800,000 to bring to completion by the end of 2004. The church is determined that the buildings should remain a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. So it has adopted a new Vision Statement at the same time as committing itself to the Redevelopment Project.

Gail Nerurkar

Early in the year, Janet White went back to continue her work in Zambia. Louise Harper came back from India at the end of her service there. She then looked for further opportunities of overseas service and in September went to Sierra Leone working for Tearfund. Richard Nerurkar organised the second Great Ethiopian Run in November 2002 and appeared on Sky Sports together with Gail in a programme about the event.

2009 saw the church continue its service of the community in a variety of continuing ways (e.g. Open Door, Busy Bees, Who Let the Dads Out?, The BIG Top, The Alternative) as well as letting out rooms for community events.

cafechurch, for example, begun in 2008 was followed-up with evening events during 2009. We also took part in Back to Church Sunday for the second year running. Twice in the course of the year we hosted the Guildford Friary Brass Band (conducted by Chris King - one of our members) in giving a charity concert in aid of the Shooting Star Children's Hospice.

But there were also several new initiatives. Great Bible Stories was a venture with Stanley Infant School to produce giant illustrations of Bible stories to decorate the Main Hall of the church premises. The stunning results can be seen in our Great Bible Stories feature on our website.

2010 saw our Minister ( Richard Littledale) and a member of the fellowship, Mark Leong, started a new web-based initiative on Twitter called @chatbible which offers the chance to "Chat about the Bible". Richard continued his contributions to Pause for Thought on Radio 4 and also became involved with natwivity - which is a nativity play on Twitter and Facebook.

We continued to organise groups going to Spring Harvest and Soul Survivor, The BIG Top 2010 and The Alternative (a fun alternative to Halloween for children and young people) and our Christmas Craft Fair. We also continued with The Event for teenagers - an evening event with a band and a speaker. Although key members of The Event's band (including Nathan Blyth from Teddington Baptist Church and Matthew Jenkins from Hampton Baptist Church) left for university in the autumn, it is hoped that new band members will come forward to reform the band during early 2011.

On the personnel side, early in the year Pam Chapman stepped down as our Families Worker (a new name for her extended role agreed during 2009) while at the end of the summer Sonia Stead went on maternity leave.

The donkey with baby Jesus at Christmas 2010

2011

2011 was the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. That anniversary was celebrated alongside many churches through a focus on the Bible under the Biblefresh initiative. One of the ways we chose to do this was by the choice of our Memory Text for the year and by selecting our favourite "Verses to Remember". We used these verses to create the heart shaped "Word Cloud" at the right. The size of the words shows the frequency with which they occur in our set of Verses to Remember - it illustrates the particular words from the Lord which we have chosen to have in our heart for 2011 and beyond.

2012 was a year of many celebrations - the Queen's Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in June and a "global sporting event" came to London in July and August. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, we cannot mention the name of the "global sporting event" but its cycle road race passed through Teddington on a Sunday morning at the end of July 2012 resulting in an adjustment of the time of our Sunday morning service.

Because of the sporting focus of the year, we chose a Motto Text for the year with sporting references ("Run the race in such a way as to win the prize"; 1 Corinthians 9:24) and illustrated it on the screen each week before the services with different images of sporting trophies, athletes and cartoon runners. We also used a sporting theme, "On Your Marks", for our annual holiday club, The BIG Top 2012 which was reduced to one day because of the "fixture" congestion around the time of the "global sporting event" which came to London in 2012.

A more local celebration during the year was the 30th anniversary of Open Door, our carers and toddlers group which was started in 1982 by Joan Blyth. Open Door continues to thrive alongside Busy Bees and Who let the Dads out? A development during the year has been the even greater use of the church premises during the week by a wide range of outside organisations especially children's groups but also by the NHS, local authorities, and Tearfund for a range of meetings and activities. During 2012, it was rare for the premises only to have one group in progress at any time during the day and sometimes there might been four or even five simultaneously.

2013

The Christmas Doors of Teddington was the church's major new community initiative of 2013. 24 miniature doors were hidden in shops and businesses around Teddington forming an Advent trail for children. Behind each door was a picture illustrating the Christmas story. Children who found all 24 doors (the last one being in Teddington Baptist Church) were rewarded with a prize.There was also another community based event - a Lantern Procession a week before Christmas which started at Teddington Memorial Hospital and finished with carols outside the church - an enjoyable event despite the showery weather. The Posada which we had used back in 2007 and 2008, was borrowed by BBC Radio and spent the advent season travelling around Surrey and Sussex: see Posada 2013.

The year 2014 began with a discipleship course called Lifeshapes which used three simple shapes (a circle, a triangle and a square) to help us focus on our relationships - with God, with each other, and with the world around us. You can learn more about the way Lifeshapes was used by clicking here.

Under the title "Open 10", in November, we celebrated the 10 years since our redeveloped premises were opened and the ways in which this has changed the life of the church and our relationship to our surrounding community. On Saturday 22 November we had an open day, with stands by many of our community users and displays of the activities organised by the church. On Sunday 23 November, we had a celebration service in the morning and a testimony service in the evening. The picture above of our church premises was prepared by our children and young people's groups in preparation for this special weekend. Word below was assembled using the comments of our building users when asked to complete the sentence "Teddington Baptist Church is....".

On Sunday 21 February 2016, Richard Littledale announced to the church that he had accepted a call to Newbury Baptist Church and would be leaving Teddington in July 2016 after nearly 19 years of ministry. A few days later, the recruitment of a Youth Worker ended without an appointment being made. A decision was then made to defer further recruitment of a Youth Worker until after a new minister had been called to succeed Richard Littledale. During our pastoral transition, Gordon Hindmarch (Whitton Baptist Church) will be our Moderator.

In July 2016, to our surprise, we found ourselves to be one of the featured places in a new hot alternative reality (AR) game called Pokemon Go. Throughout the year we acted as a collection point for the Richmond Foodbank and during Advent we had a focus on collecting suitable food for those needing Foodbank help at Christmas. In December we ran Christmas Doors once again with over 100 children completing the trail. We also had a very successful Nativity from Scratch with those attending a morning service invited to dress as a character from the Christmas story.

Oliver McMullen

On Saturday 14 September 2019 we held held an induction service for Rev John Gleghorn as the minister of Teddington Baptist Church> Soon after, on Saturday 5 October 2019, there was the ordination and induction of Rev Oliver McMullen as our Associate Minister.

Oliver McMullen wearing a face shield (August 2020)

TBC Motto Text 2021

In August 2022, Oliver McMullen left us to be the Minister of Socketts Heath Baptist Church, Grays, Essex.

In September we had a successful Fun Day, in October a "Faith at the Musicals" concert and a Light Party, in November our annual Craft Fair and in December a concert by the Friary Brass Band.

Throughout winter 2022-23 we opened our premises one day a week as part of the Warm Welcome initiative organised bwteeen all the Teddington Churches to assist those unable to afford energy prices which had peaked following international events.

BC Motto Text 2023

Early in 2023 we started on the Emmaus Project from Share Jesus International. The Emmaus Project (which last about two years) was the theme of our Church Weekend in March at Ashburnham which was led by Marcus Bennett from Share Jesus International.

In early December we had another "Faith at the Musicals" and a Friary Brass Band Concert both with Christmas themes in addition to our normal autumn events (Fun Day, Light Party and Craft Fair).

In February 2024, John Gleghorm left us to take up the senior pastorate of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Scarborough.

Louise Hearn was appointed as our Moderator for the period of transition.