Following a successful launch at St John's Woodley in March 2025, the Revd Mark Nam shares more about Bubble Church, from his experience running it and how it has transformed his church, to the support and training he and his team received.
Watch Mark's video below and on YouTube, or read the transcript.
Find out more about Bubble Church and find churches in the diocese running it already.
"It just works"
Hello, my name is Mark Nam. I'm a vicar of St John's Church in Woodley, just outside of Reading. If I had to describe our church, it's a typical suburban parish in a leafy part of Berkshire. We're surrounded by young families and retirees.
This is the second bubble church I've been involved with starting. The thing I love about Bubble Church is it works in an inner city. It works in the countryside. It brings people together to learn about Jesus. It just works. And that's why we've done it again.
Since we've started Bubble Church, we've definitely seen young families gravitating towards our church. We only run it once a month, but already the families are saying, "Can we do it more often?"
Because they want to build community. They want to connect more. So, it's really made a difference to our church. There's now a buzz on Sunday mornings. We have Bubble Church at 9am and straight after we have our 10am. And there's that beautiful crossing over of people from our 9am and 10am. And it just feels like one church. It's a great energy.
There's that saying, if you fail to plan, plan to fail. And the beauty of Bubble Church is they give you the plans. They gave us the timelines, the resources, the stories, the advertisements, all of those things that require lots of mental energy and effort from me and my team was already done and prepared. And that made the difference in us as a church adopting this amazing programme.
The main question I had when considering Bubble Church was, would young families who have busy Sunday schedules want to come along to Bubble Church? And you know what? Yes. And in fact, a few families have said this is the perfect way to start their Sunday together. They get 30 minutes to pray together, to explore God's word together before they go about their busy day. So yes, it's been really well received.
We have a number of families in our church with children who have additional needs, be it neurodivergence, autism, and what we found is that these families really like the way Bubble Church runs, because in some ways it follows the liturgy. You know what to expect, and that creates that safe space for some of our families to really enter into worship. So, it's been really useful for engaging with those with extra needs.
I think being part of a regional group of churches actually sets Bubble Church apart from many other programmes because it's a learning community. I really like the WhatsApp group because anytime I have a question or a concern within minutes somebody out there has probably done that or seen that and they respond.
Bubble Church is just the beginning. It leads into so much more, and the regional gatherings have been so key for us in working out and discerning what's the next steps for our families? How can they go deeper? How does it lead to baptism for example? How do they connect with the wider family? It's been good to learn that at those regional gatherings.
I totally recommend Bubble Church to other churches even if I don't know what your context is because as I said, Bubble Church is so contextualized. They provide so much for you. The resources are free and if you can just share the vision with your PCC, I can't see why people wouldn't want to get on board.