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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