St Mary Magdalene with St Leonard

There are two churches within the Parish, St Mary Magdalene and St Leonard.

St Mary Magdalene is a growing, vibrant 900+ year-old parish church that meets in a grade 1 listed building in the centre of Newark. It is a church with a long history of choral and liturgical worship, and the Rector has a desire to see this continue to grow and flourish, whilst also developing more informal and contemporary forms of worship.

The church currently holds three or four services on a Sunday, with a robed choir, formal liturgy, and vestments being used for two of these services: a 9.00am Sung Eucharist, and 5pm Evensong. There is a contemporary service at 11.00am which is informal in style, and includes groups and activities for children as part of the service. In addition, once per month, there is an early morning said Eucharist at 8am. There is also a said Eucharist weekly on a Wednesday morning.

The average weekly attendance at St Mary’s is around 170 adults and 30 children. The building is open every day for visitors, and includes a cafe and meeting room. There are a number of weekday events including a weekly toddler group and community group, a monthly repair cafe and several evening events for youth.

St Leonard is a modern building which is incorporated in a Community Centre and adjacent Vicarage on Lincoln Road, Newark.  This was built in 1978 to replace a Victorian church, of the same name, on Northgate which is now the site of a retail store. St Leonard was built to serve the local community as Newark progressively grew north-east along the Fosse Way towards Lincoln. The name is linked to St Leonard's Hospital which was built in the same area, then outside the town walls of Newark, by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln (1123-1148), when he was building Newark Castle.

It was designed to seat 40 worshippers on modern stacking chairs. A folding screen at the back of the church can be opened to incorporate the church with the main community hall to accommodate a further 200.  The services are a mixture of Holy Communion OR Service of the Word  and the average weekly attendance is 15.