A reflective strand of the Northstowe Church Network, primarily gathering on Thursday evenings.

We meet to slow down, pray, listen and explore faith together — drawing on ancient Christian rhythms while making space for poetry, conversation, silence, Communion and the questions of contemporary life.

We began by gathering particularly around Compline, the Church’s ancient Night Prayer, and you may still hear us called the Compline Community. But our shared life has gradually grown wider than one particular service. These days our Thursdays might include Evening Prayer, extended silence, spacious conversation, a simple Communion, a meal around the table, or an occasional trip to pray somewhere beautiful.

Most weeks we gather at Church House in Northstowe, with other local members hosting us from time to time. We also occasionally head further afield for pilgrimage or to share in the worship of another community.

Some of us have prayed this way for years. Some are discovering contemplative spirituality for the first time. Whatever your background — whether you are just beginning to explore spirituality or a pilgrim dusty from the journey — you are welcome to come and rest awhile.

New? Register interest

Jump to "Latest News"

Thursday Evenings

A different rhythm at the end of the day

Our weekly gatherings move between quieter nights of prayer and silence, spacious conversation and reflection, and occasional Communion Meals.

Jump to "What to expect"

Prayer, silence & hospitality

Ancient practices for ordinary lives

We draw on liturgy and Christian traditions of contemplative prayer, while making room for poetry, art, scripture, conversation and simply being still.

Jump to "Why Contemplative Prayer"

A community of hope

Rooted in shared practice

We meet at kitchen tables, in living rooms or visit beautiful ancient places of worship. We're shaped as much by welcome, listening and friendship as by the words we pray.

Jump to "Growing as a community"

What's On with the Compline Community

We normally gather on Thursday evenings, moving between our quieter prayer evenings and Spacious Discussion Group, with seasonal communion servives and trips to join worship in beautiful chapels, churches, and cathedrals. The shape and venue vary, so ChurchSuite is the best place to find the next gathering and know what kind of evening to expect.

If you are coming for the first time get in touch: we'll normally share the full address via WhatsApp

New? Register interest

What's On across the Network

Thursday Evenings

Jump to "Why Contemplative Prayer"

New? Register interest

What to expect when we gather on Thursday Evening

Our different Thursday evenings share the same contemplative instincts, but they deliberately do not all follow the same format.

🌙 What to expect at Evening Prayer or Said Communion evenings

These are the quieter, more liturgical evenings in our rhythm.

We normally arrive from 8pm, giving time for a cup of tea, conversation and catching up before prayer begins. Or you can just slip in at 814pm if you don't have headspace for conversation.

What is Evening Prayer?

Evening Prayer is one of the ancient daily rhythms of Christian prayer.

Christians have marked the passing of the day with prayer for many centuries. In the Anglican tradition, Evening Prayer gathers together psalms, Scripture, canticles, prayer and silence, with the words changing through the seasons of the Christian year.

This term we are experimenting with the beautiful, poetic liturgies of Church of England Evening Prayer in place of Compline on many of our quieter Thursday evenings.

It isn’t a dramatic change. The shape will feel familiar to those of us who have prayed Compline together: received words give us something to lean on, Scripture helps place our own lives within the much bigger story of God, and there is room not to fill every moment with speech.

Evening Prayer gives us a little more biblical input and a little more variety. The psalms and readings appointed for each day change, while the prayers and canticles also respond to the seasons and festivals of the Church’s year.

Our Northstowe version will remain deliberately spacious. We will continue to keep a substantial period of silent reflection: time simply to sit with what we have heard, bring the day we have actually lived into God’s presence, or rest without needing to produce anything.

So this is an experiment in adding a little more Scripture without losing the silence.

And we haven’t abandoned Compline! In Advent we’re planning a trip to Ely Cathedral for sung Compline, allowing another worshipping community — and a choir — to carry that ancient Night Prayer for us.

When we share Said Communion

On some of these quieter Thursdays, the centre of our gathering is instead a simple spoken Communion.

Scripture, prayer, silence, bread and wine are held within the same unhurried rhythm. There is no need for lots of additional words or activity: we gather around what Christians have received and allow the familiar actions and prayers of Communion to carry us.

As an ecumenical church, the way we celebrate Communion draws on the traditions of the Church of England, Baptist Union and United Reformed Church.

Nobody is put on the spot about whether to receive Communion. You are equally welcome to remain in the stillness of the gathering without receiving bread and wine.

[Find out how we share Communion →]

📖 What to expect at Spacious Discussion evenings

Our Spacious Discussion Evenings carries the contemplative practices of the community into the way we read, speak and listen.

We are moving to ensure that each of these sessions works stand-alone, and you don't need to read anything in advance.

We normally arrive from 8pm, giving time for a cup of tea, conversation and catching up as we gather. And the ending is more fluid - it is always possible to leave by 9 but some of us might linger chatting a little later.

+ How the discussions with silence work

We read together

We begin by sharing a chapter aloud together.

Then we pause.

Our three-minute timer gives everyone time simply to sit with what we have heard before anybody responds. We deliberately resist the urge to jump straight into discussion.

Everyone gets three minutes

After that, each person in turn is given three minutes of their own.

They can use that time however they wish. They might:

reflect aloud on something in the reading;
share something from everyday life that it has stirred;
respond to something another person has said;
ask a question;
or simply invite us all to hold silence for some — or all — of their three minutes.

Nobody has to fill the space.

While one person has the timer, the rest of us practise listening without interrupting. Each contribution — and each silence — is given room to be received.

Then we see where it leads

Once everyone has had their three minutes, we may simply draw the evening to a close.

At other times, something has opened up that we want to explore further, and the conversation becomes freer and more wide-ranging.

There is no requirement to speak and no expectation that we will reach a single agreed interpretation.

The aim is not to finish a book having mastered its argument. We are allowing good writing, one another, silence and God to help us notice something we might otherwise have missed.

What to expect at Communion Meals

At least once each term, the rhythm changes again as we gather for one of our Communion Meals. These are deliberately both meal and sacrament.

We gather around an ordinary table. Opening prayer and Scripture begin the evening, and then we eat. As we share food, we break open the Bible together through conversation: wondering, questioning and listening rather than stopping the meal for a separate sermon. Conversation gives way to thanksgiving and prayer as we share Communion.

These evenings are often rich in poetry, symbolism and silence as well as laughter, food and conversation. They remind us that contemplation is not an escape from bodies and ordinary life: table fellowship, friendship and sacrament belong together.

We particularly gather in this way around significant moments such as Maundy Thursday, Ascension and All Saints

Why contemplative prayer?

Jump to What To Expect

The first book we read together was Ian Adams’ Cave, Refectory, Road. Its three simple images have continued to shape the Compline Community.

Adams draws on ancient monastic wisdom, not to suggest that everybody should become a monk, but to explore rhythms that can help sustain Christian life today. For us, the three images help hold together things that can too easily become separated:

prayer and action • solitude and friendship • stillness and ordinary life.

We are not trying to recreate a monastery. We are learning what these rhythms might mean for people living ordinary lives in Northstowe. These three images continue to help us.

Cave: make space to encounter God.
Refectory: make space to receive one another.
Road: carry that attention and love into the world.

They are not three separate activities. They flow into one another.

Silence can make us better listeners.
Hospitality can expose us to lives different from our own.
Walking into the world gives us new things to bring back into prayer.

And then we begin again.

Contemplation, hospitality and ordinary life — each deepening the others.

+ The Cave — becoming attentive to God

The cave is the place of withdrawal, stillness and prayer.

We need moments when we stop doing, producing and explaining — and practise simply being present to God.

That is why silence has become important to us. Sometimes we turn our large Northstowe sand timer and sit together. Sometimes stillness emerges through Compline, Communion, Scripture, poetry, music or another contemplative practice.

We are not trying to achieve a perfectly empty mind. Thoughts arrive. Attention wanders. We begin again.

Contemplative prayer is less about manufacturing a spiritual experience and more about learning to become still, attentive and available to the God who is already present.

And there are many ways into that attention. The Church Mission Society’s Ways We Pray project has found people discovering prayerful presence through solitude and communal prayer, Scripture, silence, beautiful worship spaces, creation, movement — and even through paying attention to the brokenness of the world.

That breadth matters to us:

Sometimes prayer is ten minutes of silence.
Sometimes it is allowing a choir to carry the words for us.
Sometimes it begins by noticing what is right in front of us.

+ The Refectory — making room for one another

Then comes the refectory: meeting around the table.

Contemplative Christian life is not only about what happens when we close our eyes.

Most Compline evenings begin with somebody putting the kettle on. We arrive carrying work, family life, tiredness, things we are celebrating and things we are worried about. We sit around kitchen tables and in living rooms. We eat together. We listen. We learn one another’s stories.

That is not the waiting room before the spiritual part begins. Hospitality is itself part of our practice.

Our Communion Meals make that particularly visible: conversation, food, Scripture, friendship and sacrament inhabit the same table.

And our Spacious Book Group carries the same instinct into conversation. We deliberately make room for one another rather than racing to make our own point. The timer creates space in which someone can speak, wonder, disagree, tell a story from everyday life — or invite everyone else into silence.

Contemplation can therefore change not only the way we listen to God, but the way we listen to one another.

It invites patience, gentleness, humility and the willingness to be changed by relationship rather than simply sharing space with people who already think as we do. These are also qualities emphasised in contemporary communities drawing on older traditions of prayer, community and hospitality.

Perhaps doing life with one another is one of the most ordinary — and demanding — contemplative practices of all.

+ The Road — carrying prayer into ordinary life

And then there is the road.

The cave is not somewhere we hide from the world, and the refectory is not somewhere we remain forever. Prayer sends us back into life.

Sometimes, quite literally, we take to the road together: walking pilgrimage routes, noticing landscape, sharing stories and songs, or making the long approach towards Ely Cathedral.

At other times we visit a Cambridge college or cathedral and join worship offered by another community. We receive Choral Evensong or Eucharist rather than creating something ourselves, allowing music, liturgy, architecture and the prayer of generations to carry us for a while.

And most of the time, the road is simply Monday morning: Home. Work. School. Neighbourhood. Relationships. The news. The world in all its beauty and brokenness.

So the road asks whether practices of attention, prayer and hospitality are helping us become more present to God, to one another and to the world we actually inhabit.

That movement from prayer towards loving engagement is central to the tradition Adams draws upon: contemplation is intended to open us more deeply to God and therefore more deeply to the world, not remove us from it.

+ Explore contemplative prayer resources

Cave, Refectory, Road — Ian Adams: the three images of stillness and prayer, hospitality, and engagement with the world that have helped shape our community. Explore Cave, Refectory, Road
The Ways We Pray — Church Mission Society: Ian Adams gathers examples of prayerful presence through Scripture, silence, creation, movement, beauty, brokenness and communal prayer. Explore The Ways We Pray
Society of the Holy Trinity — Contemplation Practices: practical introductions drawing on Benedictine, Franciscan, Ignatian and Carmelite traditions, including the Examen, walking prayer, Jesus Prayer and imaginative prayer. Explore contemplation practices
Launde Abbey: retreats and Quiet Days offering space for prayer, silence, walking, rest and joining a daily rhythm of worship. Explore retreats at Launde Abbey
Lectio 365 - Lectio 365 is a free daily devotional resource that helps you pray the Bible every day. There is also an excellent Families edition
Church of England Daily Prayer - Access web-based full-text versions of CofE Services of Daily Prayer, which are available in both Contemporary (Common Worship) and Traditional (Book of Common Prayer) forms and for all times of the day. Audio files are also available. With links to Time to Pray and Daily Prayer Apps.
Celtic Daily Prayer - online resources from the Northumbria Community (abbreviated from their excellent published books with a cycle of prayers and readings)
Pray as you go - Pray As You Go is a daily, audio prayer app that helps you to encounter God wherever you are. This will help you to pray whenever you find the time, but particularly whilst travelling to and from work or study.

Centering Prayer (one way to pray with Silence)

‘Choose a sacred word as a symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within – e.g. Lord, Jesus, Father, Kyrie, Abba, Love, Peace, Mercy. Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word. When you become aware of thoughts, return ever so gently to the sacred word. At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.’ [adapted from Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer, Crossroad Publishing, 1996].

+ What to expect at Compline

“Compline” is the ancient monastic service of “Completion”. In the 8th century, Benedictine monks began a pattern of praying eight times a day: Matins (before dawn), Lauds (at sunrise), then Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Vespers throughout the day (each about three hours apart). Finally, at bedtime, Compline. Today, Anglican prayer books offer four such ‘offices’ – morning, midday, evening, and night. Like most prayer offices, Compline includes a confession, a reading from the Psalms and other Scriptures, written and responsive prayers, and a time for silence or extemporaneous prayer.

This final service of the day is an opportunity to reflect on the day that has passed, to peak through a small window of Scripture into the Big Story of God’s ongoing encounter with his people, and to draw on words hallowed by tradition as “a way to wade into the ongoing stream of the church’s communion with [God],”* as Tish Harrison Warren expresses it. She goes on to explain “Scripted prayers—the prayers of Compline, the Psalms, or any other received prayers—are not static. As we pray them, we read our own lives back into the words we pray. Our own biographies shape our understanding of these prayers as much as these prayers shape us and our own stories.”

Want to find out more? A good place to start is Tish Harrison Warren’s excellent book “Prayer in the Night; for those who work or watch or weep”. An American Anglican priest, she combines her own personal experiences of prayer in a time of suffering [trigger warning: miscarriage and bereavement] with a rooted and thoughtful unpacking of the wonderful ancient tradition of Prayer in the Night.

*Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night (pp. 7, 125). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

Some of us regularly pray “Night Prayer” from home too, either using the Lectio 365 app, or the Church of England “Time to Pray” app or website or the Northumbria Community website

Preparation

We stop and allow the day we have actually lived to come into God’s presence. There is space for reflection and, often, penitence, with a sandtimer holding the space.

The Word of God and Silent Contemplation

We pray a psalm, hear a short passage of Scripture and then hold a ten minutes silence, perhaps to reflect or to simply rest in God's presence. Our large Northstowe sand timer helps us hold that space without somebody needing to watch the clock. Afterwards respond with words Christians have prayed across generations. The Nunc dimittis — Simeon’s song of peace at the end of life and at the end of the day — draws us towards rest.

Silent Prayer

In silence, we hold before God ourselves, other people and the world, before sharing in the "collect" - a prayer to collect together our prayers and those of others praying with us in homes and chapels around the world.

Conclusion

Finally we entrust ourselves to God’s keeping through the night and receive a blessing.

Those who want to can simply go home, allowing the last words they speak that evening to have been words addressed to God. It can feel slightly strange the first time. We have found it wonderfully freeing.

Sometimes, we meet up again outside to chat as we walk home, or to head on to the Tap and Social for a final drink.

Growing as a community

New? Register interest

+ Trips, pilgrimages and shared worship

Not all of our contemplative life happens at home. Sometimes we go somewhere together — walking a pilgrimage route, visiting a cathedral or college chapel, or joining worship led by a choir.

These trips give us a different way to practise attention. A long walk creates space for conversation, silence and prayer to unfold at another pace. Entering an unfamiliar chapel or hearing worship carried by a choir can help us notice something diffferent.

Pilgrimage

Our walks are usually simple and sociable, with space for both conversation and quiet. Along the way we may pause for prayer, share a poem, story or song, notice the landscape, or simply keep walking together. The point is not to turn every mile into an activity. Pilgrimage gives us time to let the journey itself become part of the prayer.

Sharing in worship elsewhere

At other times we visit places such as Cambridge colleges to share in Evensong, a choral Eucharist or another service led by their choir and worshipping community. These evenings allow music, liturgy, Scripture, architecture and the prayers of another community to carry us for a while. We may talk together beforehand or afterwards, but there is no need to analyse everything we have experienced. It is enough simply to have been there, meeting with God, together.

Why we go

Trips like these help widen our contemplative life beyond our usual patterns. They remind us that prayer can be encountered in movement as well as stillness, in landscape as well as living rooms, and in the worship of other Christian communities as well as our own.

Different setting, same invitation: to become more attentive to God, to one another and to the world around us.

+ Where we started

The Compline Community began in the earliest days of Northstowe, when fewer than 150 homes were occupied. Around an All Hallows’ Eve campfire, local residents told us they were looking for something deeper — as one person put it, “some chicken soup for my soul.”

So, under the working name "Chicken Soup for the Soul", we began meeting monthly: watching NOOMA films, sharing honest conversation and trying different forms of prayer together.

People have come and gone, and Northstowe has grown around us. Along the way, we have listened to and learned from Quakers, Catholics and other Christian traditions beyond our formal ecumenical partnership, as well as receiving the gifts of the Anglican, Baptist and United Reformed traditions within it.

The name and practices have changed, but the instinct remains: to listen, experiment and allow this community to keep emerging in response to the people, place and God we encounter.

+ Still no real name... but we do agree on this...

“Compline Community” hasn’t always felt like the perfect fit — it only captures one strand of what we do. We're still working on what to call ourselves. But we do know who we are!

We are a community shaped by shared practice — a rhythm of prayer, silence, learning, and hospitality:

We are welcoming and non-judgemental, offering space where people can take their first steps in encountering God.
We honour silence as much as words, trusting that God meets us in stillness as well as in speech.
Our life together includes liturgical prayer (Compline, Choral Evensong), Communion — both spoken services and shared meals — alongside book discussions, contemplative silence, and spiritual practices.
We are rooted in new monastic traditions, drawing on ancient rhythms to shape life in today’s world.
We trust that doctrine and orthodoxy are held within the liturgies we share ecumenically, while recognising that teaching and reflection can continue to deepen faith and understanding.
Our ecumenical roots lie in Churches Together: formally the Local Ecumenical Partnership (Baptist, URC, and CofE), with a Shared Vision alongside the Quakers and Methodists, and deepening links with Roman Catholics.
Within the Northstowe Church Network, we are a missional and worshipping community — a true church home for some, and for all a strand that contributes fully to the festivals, shared worship, and community life of the wider network.

Whatever your background — whether you are just starting to explore your spirituality, or a pilgrim dusty from the journey — you are welcome to rest in God’s presence with us.

Compline Community is church

The Compline Community has a distinctive contemplative rhythm, but it is not a spirituality group sitting alongside the “real” church.

Here we gather around Scripture and prayer. We share Communion. We deepen relationships. We explore faith and doubt. We seek God together and allow our common practices to shape the way we live beyond the gathering.

For some people, Compline Community may be their main expression of church for a season. Others also gather at Pathfinder Sundays, Network festivals, pilgrimages, Communion services or elsewhere.

There is no need to fit everything in, and no expected route through.

The Compline Community is one of the ways our one shared church takes shape — and one place within a much bigger journey together.

Part of the wider Northstowe Church Network

The Compline Community is one of the communities of hope within the Northstowe Church Network.

Alongside Pathfinder Church, Little Explorers and other parts of our shared life, we are part of one local ecumenical church, rooted in Northstowe and connected to the wider Christian Church.

Each community brings different gifts to the whole.

Compline brings a particular commitment to prayer, stillness, deep attention, spacious conversation, sacrament and hospitality.

And it is shaped in return by the people, questions and life of the wider Network.

Together we are praying, exploring and sharing.

Explore all our Communities

See what's coming up Network-wide

Stay in touch

Come and rest awhile

You don't need to know the words;
You don't need to have read the book.
You don't have to speak.
You don't have to be good at silence.
And you don't need to arrive having had a particularly prayerful day.

Come with the day you have actually had. There will be space to arrive; to pray; to listen.
And space simply to be present to God and to one another.