Month: March 2024

Happy Easter! (and a few updates)

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

We’re looking forward to a great Easter Weekend at Welcome Church. Here are a few bits of news to keep you up to date, and also some prayer requests:

Prayers for the council

My Easter weekend begins this evening: I’ve been invited by the Mayor of Woking, Cllr M Ilyas Raja, to open tonight’s Council Meeting at the Civic Offices with prayers. It’s only a short slot but it’s a great chance to pray in person for our council as they make key decisions about the future of our town. Do be praying for wisdom for them all at this time. It seems that the financial challenges being faced in Woking are only just starting to bite, and worse may be yet to come as services come under pressure. Let’s pray for our town.

Church Gate

We had hoped to exchange contracts on Church Gate, the building we are buying, today (28th March) but sadly this has been delayed due to some small last minute queries being raised by banks and solicitors. This has been made worse by people raising queries and then immediately going on holiday … 🙄

Anyone who’s bought a house will know how drawn out these things can be! Please do pray that we exchange contracts next week. We are keen to get started on our plans for the future of Church Gate as soon as possible.

Good Friday

We’ll meet as a church at 7pm on Good Friday, for an hour or so, to worship, hear from the Bible, and take communion together. I’ll be giving a short talk reflecting on the cross.

Children are welcome to attend if you feel they are old enough to access this kind of meeting, but please be aware that there is no kids work, so they will need to remain with their parents/carer at all times. The meeting will be live-streamed at WelcomeChurch.online. Do join us one way or the other for a great chance to connect with Jesus on Good Friday.

Easter Sunday

Our Easter Sunday meetings, at 9am and 11am, will both include baptisms. 17 people are expected to be baptised with us that day. There will be a chocolate Easter gift for everyone who attends, so do invite your friends and family to come with you. Please also be encouraged to pray for all of those being baptised.

EARLY WARNING: It’s clock change Sunday, so the clocks will go forward one hour this Sunday morning. Don’t get caught out 🙂

Holidays

The church offices will be closed on both Good Friday and Easter Monday, and our Welcome Cafe will not be operating on Easter Monday either. A number of the team have also booked some days off next week, including myself. I’ll be back again for Sunday 7th though, when I’ll be launching our new preaching series on the book of Exodus. Don’t miss it!

Whatever you’re up to this weekend I hope you have a great Easter.

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Welcome Church Trustees – An Update

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In addition to being a church, Welcome Church is also a registered charity. Being a charity means we can claim Gift Aid on people’s giving, which makes a big difference to what we are able to do as a church to serve our community.

As a charity we have a team of Trustees who are responsible to ensure we operate in ways that are safe, legal and in line with our charitable purposes. Technically speaking the trustees are …

“accountable for the management and administration of Welcome Church in pursuit of the Welcome Church charitable objects as set out in the Company’s Articles of Association.” 🙂

That’s quite a mouthful!

This doesn’t mean the Trustees carry responsibility for the spiritual government of the church or for the leadership of it; responsibility for that sits with the Eldership Team, supported by many other faithful and gifted leaders.

Among other things the Trustees act as the employer for the staff and set the staff salaries. They also agree budgets, agree and review policies and help to keep us abreast of legal changes that could affect us.

Our Trustees usually serve in the role for a three year period, after which they can either step off the team or they can be re-engaged for another three year term. This cycle means we get a good balance of fresh faces, and also of long term wisdom and experience.

Changes

There have been a number of changes to our Trustee Team over the last couple of years, so I wanted to give an updated list of who our trustees now are. First here’s a photo montage to help you recognise them:

In order of appearance:

Mike D is Chair of the Trustees. He joined the church in 1978 (46 years ago!) and has been part of our church family ever since. Mike worked for over 50 years in the construction industry and has served the church in many different roles over the years too. He is also a Trustee of The Useful Wood Company, a social action project started by people from Welcome Church a few years ago.

Mike R has been part of Welcome Church for 17 years. He works as a Chief Underwriting Officer for the UK division of a global insurance company. Mike also serves the church as an elder.

Debo F joined Welcome Church in 2018. She works as a Maritime Law Solicitor and serves the church as part of the Sunday Production Team and the prayer team.

Mel C (who is not a Spice Girl) has been part of Welcome Church for around 7 years. She works in financial audit as a Senior Manager. She serves the church as part of the worship team, the youth team, youth worship, prisons ministry and as a CAP Money Coach. 

Nick H has been a part of Welcome Church for 40 years. He has spent his career working in People related roles, including HR roles within Global Financial Services companies in London. You may also see Nick early on a Sunday morning, as he is one of our Sunday Meeting Managers.

Robin W has been in the church since he was 21 (a total of 43 years). He is a Senior Independent Director for two insurance companies, and a Trustee/Director for the amazing charity Christians Against Poverty (CAP) who we love to work with. He also serves the church as an elder.

Lisa G has been part of the church since 1991. She works as a solicitor and serves the church in both youth work, and in leading the Bereavement Course. She has had many other roles in church life over the years too.

We are well served

I’m sure you’ll agree we are being well served by a highly skilled group of Trustees who each add expertise and experience to the mix. Please do express your appreciation to them all, and support them with your prayers and encouragements.

Lastly, I’d like to say a personal THANK YOU to those who have faithfully served as Trustees during my time at Welcome Church but have, as the right moment came along, stepped aside from the team, namely Phil M, Peter G, John F and of course our much beloved Alan H, a former church elder and trustee who sadly lost his fight with Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic. We miss you.

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Compassion at Welcome Church: an update & an upcoming trip to Togo

/ Steve Petch / 2 Comments

In April this year I’ll be flying off to Togo! 🇹🇬 Here’s what’s going on:

In 2019, Welcome Church launched a partnership with Compassion UK, focussing on Togo in Western Africa. Togo is one of the least developed countries in the world and Compassion work in partnership with local churches there to see children released from poverty in Jesus’ name. They bring a lot of this about through a sponsorship model, through which you can sponsor a child and build a relationship with them through letters, photographs and prayer.

Compassion are Christ centred, Church based and Child focussed – values that connect well with us at Welcome Church, and they work to help the poorest of the poor. Jo and I have sponsored children with them for many years now, and it’s been a joy to write letters to those children and receive updates, photos and letters in return.

Our Church Partnership

When we launched this partnership with Compassion we gave people the chance to sponsor a child in Togo, and many responded to that (another chance will come up to do that in May this year!)

We also gave 10% of our June 2019 Building Project Gift Day to a UK government backed “matched funding” initiative for Compassion to fund Child Survival Projects in Togo. We gave just over £40,000 to that appeal which, due to the matched funding initiative, was doubled to £80,000.

This is vital work because, in Togo, 1 in 20 babies die before their first birthday, mostly from preventable causes, and 1 in 58 women die due to pregnancy or childbirth. These are shocking statistics, and Compassion are working to change this through their Child Survival Projects, which are run by local churches in Togo. As a result of our giving a new Child Survival Project was opened.

Latest Update and a Trip

On Sunday 14th April I will be flying out to Togo for 5 days, with Compassion, to see the project we’ve funded first hand. During this trip I will also get to meet some of the children we are sponsoring, including a girl who Jo and I sponsor. Please pray for this trip!

We recently received an update on the Child Survival Project. It’s a great report with lots of photos and includes an encouraging letter from one of the mothers who has been helped. The report is attached, so please be encouraged to download it and read it.

tg0941-child-survival-update-february-24Download

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Welcome Church needs your help!

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If you’ve been around Welcome Church for a while you’ve probably noticed that we’ve grown a lot numerically over the last couple of years, and much faster than we expected. We’re often seeing around 1000 people on a Sunday morning now and new people are still appearing regularly. This is great news, and what it now means is that:

  • The 9am meeting has grown well, but still has space for more people to attend
  • The 11am meeting has grown a lot more, and is now almost full (and occasionally overfull)

11am being full is a nice problem to have … but it’s still a genuine problem, especially because we want to continue to grow and reach new people, so we need your help.

The way forward

Assuming we continue to grow (which is not guaranteed, but we pray it continues) we will need to make more space somehow; perhaps we need to make the space in order to continue to grow.

We could, of course, create space by starting a third Sunday meeting at a different time, or by starting a new ‘site’ of Welcome Church in another part of town, or by some new ‘church plants’ being sent out … any or all of these are possible in the future as God leads us.

HOWEVER … right now our big focus is on getting Church Gate up and running (click here for details) and we expect that this will absorb most of our teams capacity for the next season.

Thankfully, at this point in time, we do have another option to create some more space on Sundays … so with this in mind we want to make a few requests of those who call Welcome Church their church.

Some requests for those who usually attend at 11am

Firstly, for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of our mission to Woking, we would like to ask for at least 50 adults (plus their families) who currently attend the 11am meeting each week, to move to the 9am meeting instead. It’s a big ask, we realise, but we would ask you to please take this request very seriously. It could be the single most evangelistic thing you do all year.

There are some advantages to attending at 9am: easier parking, better choice of pastries, and an earlier finish, leaving you more of the day free to enjoy.

We would love at least 50 brave pioneering people, plus their families, to make this call for the sake of all that God is calling us to as a church . Maybe there are a couple of life groups who might make this call together. Please pray and ask God: is it me/us?

Obviously we don’t want everyone to do this, so it would help a lot if you could let us know that you’re making the switch by emailing us (click here for a link). Some have done this already – thank you. We will have to work through the impact on serving rotas too, so it will really help for people to let us know.

Secondly, for those who don’t move to 9am, you could help a lot by filling up from the front and using every seat – just 2 empty seats in each row is 80 empty seats in the meeting, so please use them all 🙂

Some requests for those who usually attend at 9am

Firstly, please don’t start attending at 11am – we have no room for you 🙂 – please stay where you are!

Secondly, please be on the front foot to invite guests and welcome new people. 9am has grown more slowly than 11am, but it is still growing with new people.

Thirdly, we actually need a few more people to serve in some key areas at 11am! This may sound counter-intuitive with the extra number of people in attendance at 11am, but the needs are actually greater at this meeting too, and many who attend are still new to us. It means that the demands for serving have grown more quickly than those ready and able to do so are available. Maybe you could consider attending at 9am, but serving at 11am one week in three? If you’re up for this adventure please let us know by emailing us (using this link) and we’ll be in touch

One more thing

Please pray for God’s wisdom and timing in all we do – especially that he would guide us clearly in terms of starting any new meetings or sites in the future, and also that we’d get the keys to Church Gate by the end of March. Of course, if we continue to grow, every step like this will only be a temporary step!

I’m looking forward to the next chapter in our adventure together as a church, whatever that may be. Thanks in advance for your help!

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