About Us

St Martin's is the mother church of Dorking. Christians have worshipped on this site close to the High Street of the busy market town of Dorking for more than a thousand years. The present church - in the Victorian Gothic style with its high spire visible from miles around -was completed in 1877.

We aim to be a place and community of spiritual, intellectual and emotional refreshment in which the transformational love of God in Christ Jesus is known. We are a broad church, seeking to include all Anglican worship traditions (evangelical and catholic), and offering a warm welcome to everyone in their journey of Christian faith.

St Martin’s is a diverse group of people at different stages in our Christian pilgrimage, called to celebrate and proclaim God’s presence in the person of Jesus Christ. We embrace a range of worship styles which reflect our broad Anglican traditions. We are engaged both in developing our spiritual life together, and in using our gifts and skills to support our community, both within the church and outside it.

Our common life together is founded upon scripture and the sacraments. At the heart of the life of the church is the belief that God is not remote and uncaring, but that in the death of Christ upon the cross we are offered forgiveness and reconciliation. We believe that Jesus Christ is not a dead character from history, but our living and exalted Lord who rules over all things, including our lives: when we put Jesus at the centre of our lives, we are given forgiveness, meaning and purpose. In our reading of scripture, and in our eucharistic services, that grace and reconciliation of the cross are offered to us all. As a community we are committed to embracing the love of God by growing in faith, and manifesting that love by engaging in evangelism, learning to live with respect for creation, serving others, seeking justice and resisting evil.

St Martin's embraces a wide range of worship styles and theologies, and we regard this as an enrichment to our community life. We are part of God’s world wide family of the church, and like all families whose members have diverse interests, we all have different preferences in how we like to worship - but we want to learn from each other as we read the scriptures together, so that seeking Christ's truth and trusting each other, we discover God's will together.

The church is open for private prayer everyday from 9am. There is a prayer resource corner in the nave, and the blessed sacrament is reserved in the Lady Chapel (which is designated as a quiet area for devotion and prayer).

As members of St Martin's Church and St Mary's Pixham, we commit our church community to the support, nurture, protection and safeguarding of all. If you have any safeguarding concerns please contact our safeguarding officers:-

Anne Whibberley 01306-889039 email [email protected]

For further information please see our safeguarding page.