Month: November 2023

‘Carol Service For Woking’: An Update and Some Requests

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

Our Welcome Church Carol Services are going to be fantastic. At the time of writing (Thursday am), a total of 1741 tickets have been booked across all three services. In addition to these bookings, many people will be serving in various ways. Of course, there’s still room for more people to book. We’re excited to announce that the Mayor of Woking, Councillor M Ilyas Raja, will be joining us for the 2pm service this year.

Each Carol Service will include Christmas Carols that everyone knows, sung to the tunes everyone knows, along with videos, readings and a short Christmas themed message. We will finish with free mulled wine, mince pies and other refreshments. Children’s parties will be taking place alongside the 2pm and 4.30pm services, so you and your friends can relax and enjoy the service.

Seven Simple Requests

We have some simples request to put in front of you all, so please have a read:

1. Please invite people

There are now just 10 days to go, so this is the perfect moment to invite friends, family, neighbours and colleagues to join you. There is no easier church invitation to make than to a Carol Service, so let’s go for it together. To book tickets for yourself or your guests please click on this link or on the picture below.

2. Please arrive on time

We will open the doors at least 20 minutes before each service starts, but it will take time to drop children off and get everyone seated. It would really help the services go well, if people could arrive in good time. We are able to provide free parking in the Town Centre ‘Red, Yellow and Blue’ Car Parks as usual, using the car park machines in our Front Building, but please remember that car parks may be busier than normal due to Christmas shopping, especially at 2pm, so do allow a little extra time. There is no parking available in our own Car Park except for those with a blue badge who have pre-booked a disability parking space.

3. Please allow yourself to be seated

This one is really important. The Welcome Team will be showing people to their seats again this year, so please allow them to do that and please fill every seat. On a normal Sunday you may like to sit in a certain place, or to leave a gap between you and the next person, or to save a seat for your friend. Numbers at the Carol Services mean that none of these things are possible. Please allow the welcome team to show you to the next available seat(s). If you want to sit with someone specific, please arrive together. Please remember that the Welcome Team are all volunteers, so lets make their job easy for them this year …

4. If you can’t attend, please cancel your tickets

If you’ve booked to attend and can’t now make it, or you booked more tickets than you need, please amend or cancel your booking. This is especially true of the children’s parties, some of which are now completely full. If you know you can’t make it, please release your tickets so someone else can attend.

5. Please don’t come for a 9am or 11am meeting 🙂

It happens every year: precious, faithful people turn up in the morning for church as usual. Please remember that the Carol Services are the only meetings we are holding that day. Our normal 9am and 11am services are not happening on the 10th, although we will be there to set up and to rehearse. The Carol services are at 2pm, 4.30pm and 7pm.

6. Please attend one service and serve at another

We have three serving teams that could do with a little extra help this year:

  • Brew Crew
  • Welcome Team
  • Kids work (for those who have a current valid Welcome Church DBS check)

If you are able to help in any of these areas, please let us know. Ideally we would encourage people to attend one service, and to serve at another one.

Why not step up to help as part of the Brew Crew or the Welcome Team, even if it’s not something you normally do? If you have a current Welcome Church DBS, why not help with one of the kids parties? If you can help in these areas please contact the church office or let us know in person on Sunday morning.

Finally, and most importantly:

7. Please pray

Let’s pray for the Carol Services. We can all do that during the week ahead, but let’s also gather together to pray.

This Sunday, 3rd December, we will gather to pray for one hour from 7pm to 8pm at Welcome Church. The Carol Services are the greatest evangelistic moment of our year, and our biggest meetings by far. Let’s ask God to pour out His blessing on it all, and for many guests to start a journey towards seeing Life Transformed Through Jesus.

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This Sunday: Preparing for our last Gift Day

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

This coming Sunday (26th Nov) will be the last of our three Welcome Church Gift Sundays for buying Church Gate (click here for more info). We’ve made great progress with our giving for this so far, but we do have a bit further to go to hit our target. I’m looking forward to Sunday 🙂

‘All In’

These Gift Days are an ‘All In’ moment for our church. We’d love everyone who’s part of Welcome Church to participate in proportion to their faith and their ability. Because of this, at the end of the meeting this week our Kids and Youth will be joining us for the ‘giving moment’. We’ll get to worship God together and to give as we do that, thanking Him for all He provides for us.

As a team we’ve felt from the start that giving towards Church Gate should be a ‘church family’ moment. Our goal has been for everyone to participate in some way, including our children and young people. That moment will come on Sunday morning, and parents will have an opportunity to enable their kids or youth to come to the front and joyously give to this project. 

We wanted parents to know about this in advance for two key reasons:

1) Because this is a great discipleship opportunity

Gift Days don’t come around very often, and buying a building comes along perhaps once in a generation. We want all our young people to be able to say they participated in buying Church Gate, and that they gave to God from their hearts, regardless of the amount.

As they participate, our children and young people will learn about the practice of giving to God, and, even more importantly, they will learn about God’s provision for us – that he gives us what we need and is a generous Father. The world will teach our kids that money should be held onto, that it will bring us security and happiness, but Jesus came to free us from slavery to money, and release us into the cheerful generosity that characterises our Heavenly Father.

We believe this will be as good an opportunity as we ever get to teach our kids about how we can worship God through our generosity. Given that children tend to learn more by what we do than by what we say, let’s not miss this moment; let’s enable our children and young people to participate in what God is doing though us as a church. Whether we have kids or not, let’s all model something together as a family as we step out in faith together.

2) So you can be ready to help your children join in

If you’re a parent we would encourage you to plan a moment during this week where you talk about Church Gate to your kids and ask them to think and pray about what God would like them to give. These conversations can be so encouraging, especially as children are so often much quicker to get excited about giving than we are.

You’ll probably need to remind them (and yourself!) to bring their money on Sunday, or if you’d prefer, you can give them some of your own money to put in, enabling them to participate in the offering that way. Doing that is actually a great picture of how God enables us to give, by providing us with all that we have. You may also need to actually get some cash out for them – so much of our spending these day is done through contactless payments that we rarely have cash in the house!

Remember: don’t worry about the amount. We talked last week about the widow who gave two small coins (see Mark 12v41-44). In Jesus’ Kingdom, it’s not about the amount, it’s about developing a generous heart that loves Jesus. Whatever your kids sincerely give will be lovingly and joyfully received by Jesus; He loves a cheerful giver, no matter their age! 

A last thought

The Bible teaches parents to “bring (children) up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6v4), and to “Start children off in the way they should go” (Proverbs 22v6). This Sunday is a great opportunity for some family discipleship, so go for it parents, and let’s go for it as a whole church family together too. See you on Sunday!

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Our New ‘Giving Points’

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

This Sunday (19th Nov) will be the second of three Gift Sundays towards buying Church Gate (for more information about that please click here).

Some people have asked how the giving went on week 1 … but no one should see a job half done (or 1/3 done as it is in this case!) We’ll give the full results on Sunday Dec 3rd. At this stage I’ll just say this: we made a great start, and we still have a way to go, so let’s step out in faith together. I’m looking forward to Sunday 🙂

Giving Points

Aside from the Gift Days, as a church we are funded only by people’s generous giving (plus a small amount of building rental income). We don’t get money from a ‘Head Office’ or from anywhere else. As a charity, all that we do as a church, all that we do for our town and all that we give away comes from what people give.

In the past, like most churches, we used to pass an ‘offering basket’ on a Sunday morning, and people would give as part of their worship. We stopped doing that when Covid began (we had to!) and we never started again. The reason for not re-starting came down to a significant cultural change: almost all of the giving had moved online.

Well before Covid struck we’d already reached a point where passing the basket had become slightly embarrassing! Person after person passed the basket on, but put nothing into it because they’d already given online by standing order. People were giving very faithfully, but it didn’t look wonderful, especially to guests!

With this in mind, we’re not going to start passing the baskets again in the foreseeable future, but we do want to make giving as easy as possible for all who want to take part. We recognise that not everyone is able to give online, and that some people simply prefer to give by cash or by cheque, and that’s 100% fine. Our goal is to make giving as accessible as possible for everyone, and let’s not forget that regular giving is part of our worship as Christians. To help with this …

We have installed three giving points

The giving points can be found next to each of the ‘pads’ that are used for the church car park: two are in The Chapel and one is in the front building. Here’s a photo of each of them, with a close up of the one by the rear Car Park doors. If you Zoom in close on one of them you’ll see Deano in the background pretending to do some work:

In The Chapel by the Welcome Lounge
In The Chapel by the rear car park doors
A close up
In the front building – see if you can spot Deano

Each giving point has three parts to it:

  • A small, electronic giving pad that you can use to give by card and by phone. If the screen is blank just push the little button on to top get it started
  • A sign with instructions for using the giving pad. It’s very easy and you can even add your name and details so we can claim Gift Aid if appropriate
  • A black metal ‘post box’ where you can post cash or cheques or envelopes – these are emptied regularly!

Whilst it’s a bit easier for us administratively when people give online, however you choose to give and whatever the size of your gift, we hugely appreciate it. Let’s all just go for it in faith in whatever way works best for us.

On behalf of the whole team, let me say a big THANK YOU for all your faithful giving.

2 Corinthians 9v6-7 says:

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Why does God love a cheerful giver? Because God is a cheerful giver!

He is a generous and compassionate Father, and He promises to provide for us as His children. He has given us all we need for life and godliness. It’s impossible for us to out-give Him, so let’s give faithfully, as part of our worship, trusting Him to meet all of our needs.

If you have any questions about using a Giving Point, please just ask us, we’ll be happy to help, and if you want to find out about giving online then please just follow this link. Thanks!

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It’s A Big Week At Welcome Church

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

This Sunday (12th Nov) is a big one for Welcome Church for two reasons:

1. It’s a Gift Day

This will be the first of three Gift Sundays for us to buy Church Gate (the building next door to us). You can find out more about why we want to buy Church Gate by clicking here, and the details of what it will cost by clicking here.

This week I was at “Commission Prayer and Fasting”, an event that pretty much does what it says on the tin: we get together as teams from our UK churches to seek God and pray. At the event I was lovingly ‘pounced on’ by a leader from another church who felt God wanted him to share something with me:

“I see a brick wall in front of you, filling your vision. God says not to worry about it. He’ll get you past the wall. He has it all in hand …”

I always find these sorts of moments encouraging, but this one really made me smile because here’s the view from my office window, a view of Church Gate:

“I see a brick wall in front of you”

Ahead of Sunday please be praying about what God is calling you to give personally. We have a big challenge in front of us, but we have an even bigger God who is our provider. Let’s be in faith for what He will do through us over the next three weeks as obstacle after obstacle is cleared out of the way.

“Lift up your heads, you gates;
lift them up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of glory?
The Lord Almighty – he is the King of glory”
(Psalm 24v9-10)

2. On Sunday we have our next Encounter Evening

We’ve done several of these now, but this one is a bit different; it’s a big one! On the evening we will be served by a guest band from Kings Church Epsom. Jo and Meg recently spoke at a women’s conference at Kings Church. They were really impressed by the whole worship experience, and wanted us to experience it too.

Kings Church is unusual amongst our Commission family at the moment: it’s our only majority black church in the UK so far. They have a different style of worship than we’re used to, and I know we’re going to be blessed. Please come ready and expectant to encounter God, and please feel free to invite people from other churches to join us too, or anyone else you think will be blessed.

All welcome. Come as you are!

A Big Goodbye ☹️

This week we also said a sad goodbye to Kimberley and Luqman who fly back to India tomorrow (Friday 10th). They have been a real gift to us this year and we will miss them a lot.

The office team had a shared lunch with them on their last day with us (and 1 or 2 others popped in to join us too). We took time on the day to talk about what we love and appreciate about them both, and to share some memories and pray for them. There were tears, but I think that this mix of joy and sadness is all part of being part of the family of God.

I had my final goodbye with them both in the office today (Thursday). They even returned some of my missing books 😃. Do pray for them as they head home, not least because, at the last check, their luggage was 13kg overweight …

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Prayer Requests – Nov 2023

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

Here are some things we would love you to be praying about this month:

Gift Sundays

Our Gift Days to raise the finance we need for Church Gate are on Sundays 12th, 19th and 26th November. We would love everyone to be praying for this – for God to supply all we need as a church, and for Him to speak to each of us personally about what He is calling us to give.

A booklet is available with all the info you need to know, so do pick one up on Sunday morning or get in touch with the office to ask for a copy. It will tell you WHAT we are doing, WHY we are doing it, why we are doing it NOW (which is key to the whole thing), HOW MUCH it will cost and what we are asking YOU to do.

Baptisms

This Sunday we have baptisms at both morning meetings. Please pray for all those getting baptised.

There is a special need for prayer for 2 of those being baptised at 9am. They have come to us from a nation where to convert to Christianity could cost them their liberty and perhaps their life. Both came to faith in their own country. Both are fleeing persecution.

For this reason these two baptisms and testimonies, will not be live-streamed – we will switch the live-stream off at this point. We are also asking that no photos are taken or posted anywhere. The testimonies are well worth hearing, but you will have to be there in person at the 9am meeting to hear them.

If you are planning to be at the 11am meeting that day there might be room for some to stand at the back from about 10.15am if you want to arrive early and catch this part of the 9am meeting.

CST

CST is the “Commission Students to Thirties” event taking place on Saturday Nov 18th at Hope Church, Winchester. This year the theme of CST is about being ‘All In for Jesus‘. There will be great worship, great talks, time to connect with God and some good food too.

I would appreciate your prayers because I’m preaching the opening message at CST this year. Please pray that it connects well with people and helps to grow and stretch their faith.

If anyone isn’t booked in to CST and wants to know more, then do follow this link here for more information and a link to the booking page.

Luqman and Kimberley

Luqman and Kimberley, our two leadership trainees from India, finish their year with us next week, and will then head home to Goa. They are going to be greatly missed and will leave a hole in both our Office Team and our hearts ☹️. They have been a joy to have around and we’re sad to see them go.

Please pray for them as they return to India, that God will direct their steps into whatever He has next for them, and please do give them big hugs and lots of appreciation this weekend. Sunday 5th November will be their last Sunday with us.

Carol Services

Bookings for our Carol Services open this weekend. They will be held on Sunday 10th December this year, at 2pm, 4.30pm and 7pm. On Sunday we will give out all the information you need, and I’ll post it in my blog too, but please do be praying already about who you could be inviting and for all the preparations to go well. Please also pray for lots of people to sign up to attend.

A few other bits for prayer

In case that lot’s not enough to keep you busy praying, here are a few more things:

  • Reuben and Lucy get married this Saturday: pray for them as they start married life together
  • I’m leading the Commission ‘TLM’ training day on Saturday 11th Nov: the topic is ‘Grace for Ministry’
  • Our Alpha Course have their ‘Holy Spirit Day’ on Sat 25th Nov: pray for people to encounter the Holy Spirit and give their lives to Jesus

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