Month: February 2023

Commission Festival – LATEST UPDATE

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

I’m looking forward to Commission Festival this year more than ever. It will be FOUR YEARS since we’ve been able to go away as a family of churches together like this – the last time was summer 2019.

In case you don’t know already, Commission Festival is our annual camping event, taking place over the August Bank Holiday weekend, where we gather with churches from across our Commission UK family. We will get to enjoy all the fun of last year’s Welcome Church Big Weekend Away, camping together as a church, but we’ll also get access to a whole lot more in terms of fun, games, events, inter-church sports competitions, teaching, worship, kids work, youth work and more. The dates for this year are 24th to 28th August at the Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. If you hate camping you can always arrange a caravan (as Jo and I have done) or stay offsite in a local B&B or Hotel.

As a church we have more people booked in than we’ve ever had before, so don’t miss out. Prices go up after 10th April, and if you book before the end of February you can opt to pay in instalments. If you sign up to serve you’ll get a 40% discount too, and this year we will also cater for everyone who books in from Welcome Church … for free.

Alongside the usual range of excellent speakers including Guy Miller, Vinu Paul, Chris Kilby, Tim Blaber and more, there are a few specific things happening that I wanted to mention to whet your appetite for the event (and these are just a taster of what to expect):

Mike Pilavachi, well known for his role in Soul Survivor, is going to be speaking on the opening night and you really won’t want to miss it. Mike is also speaking in the youth meeting on the Friday morning.

Kemi Koleoso from Jubilee Church London will be speaking in one of the main morning sessions. Kemi is an incredibly gifted preacher and she will help build our faith to new levels.

Andrew Bunt will be speaking in two seminars and also in one of the youth meetings. Andrew is the author of ‘Finding Your Best Identity: A Short Christian Introduction to Identity, Sexuality and Gender’. Andrew will be helping us understand and find a Biblical approach to these challenging topics both as churches, and also as parents and families. This is a topic that many have been concerned about, so make sure you’re there to get informed and equipped.

Natalie Brand, author of ‘Priscilla, where are you?’ and ‘Prone to Wander’ (as well as a number of other books) will be speaking in two seminars, one on ‘raising female theologians’ and one on ‘struggling when God seems distant’.

Additionally some people from our Welcome Church family will be contributing too. Our very own Jo Petch is working with Sean Theunissen (from Citygate Church in Bournemouth) to organise and deliver the worship for the event; the ‘Commission Collective’ have even been song writing. Meg Ochieng is leading a seminar. I understand that Robin and Anna Willison may be on the seminar list too and I’m sure other familiar faces will appear along the way.

I’m going to be preaching one of the main evening sessions myself, probably on the Saturday evening. It would be great to have a crowd from Welcome Church there to encourage me with your smiles and to pray that I don’t mess it up 🙂

As a church (and knowing the British weather) we’ve booked the biggest marquee we’ve ever had. It’s been described as “so big that our church will go home thinking that Commission Festival was an indoor event” 😂. On top of all this I hear rumours that we’re due to see the return of the Welcome Church silent disco, and a whole range of other fun events in our own marquee too.

We don’t want anyone to miss out on Commission Festival, so if you have any questions or concerns please ask. And please don’t delay booking as prices will go up nearer to the event.

Introducing Our Newest Staff Team Member: Mark Caldeira

/ Steve Petch / 2 Comments

As a church we’ve grown a lot in recent months, so our staff team also needs to grow for us to continue to meet the demands of all that needs to be done. One area where we’ve been particularly stretched is our Operations Team, and I’m delighted to announce that we’ve invited Mark Caldeira to join our team full time, as an Operations Manager, from March 6th. Mark won’t be replacing any of our current operations staff; he is needed in addition to them.

Mark is married to Alverna and they have a daughter called Skye who will be 3 years old next month. They are joining us from Mumbai, India where they’ve been part of Living Hope Church, a Commission church led by Vinu Paul. This connection is how I first came to know Mark several years ago and also how I learnt of his move to the UK.

Alverna works for JP Morgan, a financial services company, and last month she was relocated from Mumbai to their offices in Canary Wharf, London – this is the reason behind the family’s relocation to the UK, and why Mark has become available to us.

Mark has vast amount of relevant experience that he will bring to Welcome Church. He started his career working as an Audio Engineer for a recording studio in Mumbai, before moving into church work as Media Director for Living Hope Church and as Vinu Paul’s PA. After this he became the Operations Manager for Living Hope Church and then more recently stepped up to became the Operations Coordinator for the whole of Commission India, which has well over 200 churches across the network.

Mark will bring us expertise in administrative logistics, event and conference management, facilities management, finance & budgeting and IT, and also has experience in improving operational productivity and processes. His skills also include audio, video, media, lighting and sound recording, which I’m sure we’ll put to good use.

Let’s be on the front foot to welcome Mark, Alverna and Skye as they move into Woking over the next few weeks and become part of the Welcome Church family.

Looking to the future we will also need to grow our pastoral staff, especially in the area of co-ordinating our Life Groups and expanding our preaching team. Do be praying as we seek God’s guidance for the way forward in this area of our church life too.

It’s A Blog Resurrection

/ Steve Petch / 2 Comments

It’s been a really busy season for us as a church. We grew numerically by more than 30% last year, which means more than 200 extra people now join us each Sunday. The result has been full meetings, full car parks, full kids & youth work, full Life Groups and many other challenges too.

As a team we’ve had a lot to do to keep on top of all that God is doing in our church, especially as we also ran our Hop, Skip and Jump plans through the Autumn which were full on! It’s been fun but exhausting!

As a result a few things got dropped along the way last year – including the joy of writing my blog. Having chatted as a team we’ve decided that it’s time for “a blog resurrection” – after all, we are resurrection people 🙂

Going forward I plan to get a blog post out every week. The aim is to communicate to Welcome Church people about all that’s going on in Welcome Church and in our wider Commission church family, and to celebrate our journey together

Don’t forget, if you subscribe you’ll get the posts straight to your in box. Enjoy!