Month: June 2024

Church Gate: Gift Days

/ Steve Petch / 2 Comments

This Sunday will be the first of two Gift Sundays for Church Gate, our new building. Church Gate is an amazing resource we’ve been entrusted with by God, and now we need to step up and fulfil our responsibility: we need to get it ready to serve our children, our youth and the many people who are in need across our town.

We talked all about this last Sunday, so if you missed what was said (or want to hear it again 🙂) please click below to listen:

I won’t talk in this blog about numbers and how much we’re looking to raise this time, instead I simply want to encourage participation by us all. Let’s each take some time to pray and ask God what he wants us to do, and then let’s step out in FAITH, HOPE and LOVE.

A Hand Up

By the way, if you don’t yet understand why the Foodbank in Woking is so busy and why what we are doing with Church Gate is so necessary for people in our town, check out this BBC news article. This is Woking. This is part of our town, and it’s not the only area with problems.

Let’s get the grocery and cafe done and let’s crack on with all the social action we’ll be building around them. God’s heart is for the poor, and I believe Jesus has lots of people he wants to reach through us as we give them “a hand up, not a hand out”.

Of course Church Gate is also going to be key for our children and our young people too. Let’s go for this together. When we look back in years to come it will be so good to be able to say, “I played my part in making that happen”. What a great investment in God’s kingdom!

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It’s Election Time: Help Needed Please!

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On Thursday July 4th the UK General Election is being held. We are a polling station for our local area, which means no one is allowed to enter the chapel that day except to vote. (We will be running week 2 of our scheduled “Belong, Believe, Become” course that evening as normal, and will talk to attendees about arrangements)

Help Needed!

The polling station is open from 7am ’til 10pm, and lots of people will come through our doors that day, many for the first time. These people are also our closest neighbours. We would love to live up to our name, Welcome Church, so we’d like to serve free tea, coffee and cakes in the front hall for anyone who turns up to vote.

This means we’re looking for some friendly, chatty, welcoming people, who have time available that day, to help us serve people and chat to them – what a great chance to connect with our neighbours! If you have a free hour or two and are happy to help, you can sign up for one hour time slots using this link here – and do feel free to sign up for more than one slot if that works for you. It would be great if we could cover the whole day between us 🙂

(One small point of clarity: we are not political as a church, and this is not a chance to lobby people on how they vote. This is about making friends and showing a true Welcome Church welcome)

Three Useful Election Resources

I mentioned the engaGE24 website a few weeks ago, a Christian website which has information about policies, video interviews with Christian MPs and more. They even have an ‘election quiz’, where you can find out which party’s policies you most align with by answering a series of questions.

If you’re still unsure who to vote for, here are links to two more great Christian resources. Like us, none of these resources will tell you which way to vote, but they are designed to help you think.

Firstly: in May, Jubilee Plus launched “Voting Like Jesus”. Jubilee Plus approach this from the point of view of caring for the poor, and base what they say around the call of Micah 6v8 to, “Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly” before God. The link above will take you to their website, where you can read it all through online or download a copy. We have a few hard copies available, but only a few, so do start with the website.

Secondly: the Christian Institute have launched Election Briefing 2024. This is an interactive website where you can view information by party or by issue, and see where the parties stand on whatever matters most to you. The Christian Institute’s focus is almost entirely on ethical and moral issues, viewed from a Biblical perspective. We have a few copies of their booklet available too, but you can download a PDF copy here.

Enjoy!

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Your Last Chance To View Church Gate

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The tours of our new building, Church Gate, have been very popular this last week, and it’s been great hearing all the feedback. Here’s a tiny selection of just a few of the comments made so far (we’ve been giving out feedback forms):

“The building is so much bigger than I expected – it just keeps on going!”

“I feel a real sense of peace looking round Church Gate, despite the work that now needs to be done. Having more room for age appropriate activities is something my kids will really enjoy.”

“It really is right next to our current church building! I feel like it’s an extension of our church. Parents can feel safe to drop the kids next door. All the plans are good but my favourite part is the Grocery and Welcome Cafe for the poor. We have God’s blessings and we know what to do. Church Gate will be a hope for many people!”

“As part of Welcome Youth the fact there will be loads of space for us is so great”

“I’m excited by the opportunity to really grow the social action aspect of what we do as a church – to go to the next level of caring for our community”

“As a parent I’m excited at the potential of a custom space for our children’s work”

“It excites me that there is such a clear, big vision for Church Gate.”

“The outdoor space will be a blessing for our youth“

“This is a key enabler for our growth as a church“

“I feel deeply emotional because I know that I will not be alive to see all that comes from this; future generations will be blessed and I get to sow into them today as others in the past have done for us. It does my heart and soul good.”

“The vision for this is great; a lot of lives will be blessed”

Wow! And that’s just a tiny selection of the comments made so far. If you haven’t booked a tour yet please be aware that this Saturday (15th) is your last chance because work will start as soon as possible. You can book onto a tour by clicking here.

By the way, we now have power inside Church Gate and the lights are on!

A Very Special Guest

I’m delighted that our friend Vinu Paul is over from India this coming week. Vinu leads the team that oversees the Commission Churches in India, and he also gives input to our team here at Welcome Church. He won’t be speaking for us on a Sunday during this trip because he’s mainly here for meetings with the Commission UK Team and will be needed elsewhere.

Whilst he’s here though, he will be meeting with our eldership team and will also be joining us for the 12pm Church Gate tour on Saturday. I reckon he’ll have travelled further than anyone else to see the new building … 🙂

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I’m Hosting A Book Launch!

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No, I haven’t written a book myself (as if I have the time!) but my friend Jenny Sanders is a Christian author and her latest book, Polished Arrows, has just been published.

I had the privilege of writing the forward for this book (check out the pic below 😃) and, on Wednesday evening from 7pm to 8pm, I’ll be hosting an online book launch where we’ll hear from the author and find out a whole lot more about it.

Polished Arrows is about how God works in us to shape our lives to fulfil His calling, shaping us from rough and ready material into His ‘Polished Arrows’, ready to be fired wherever He sends us. Ultimately this is a book about God’s discipleship of us, a process that is often surprising and sometimes painful.

Each chapter of the book is rooted in the experience of a character from the Bible, and this is then set alongside the reality or our lives today. At the end of each chapter there are questions that could work really well in a Life Group or other small group setting. So, if you long to have greater Kingdom impact and you’re up for God’s shaping process, then this could be a great book for you, but be warned – it touches on some pretty big issues!

If you fancy joining the online book launch, let me know and I’ll make the Zoom link available for you, and if you want to check out the book for yourself you can do that on this link here or you can buy it using this link. (It’s also on Amazon)

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Church Gate Open Days – why bother?

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I’m looking forward to our first Church Gate open day this Saturday (8th June). This will be a great opportunity for Welcome Church people to look around our new building and see the size of the challenge that we’ve taken on – before it becomes a building site!

If you haven’t booked a slot yet, you can do so on this link here. There are further opportunities on the evening of Monday 10th June (click here) and the morning of Saturday 15th June (click here).

Why should I bother to come to an open day?

Although it might be tempting to sit back and wait for the work to be done (as someone said, “I’ll see it when it’s finished” …) I would love as many of us as possible to make the effort to see the new building as it is right now.

Despite all of us having busy diaries, there are several reasons for this:

1. Ownership: we need to own this project together as a church, and to do that we do need to actually come and see what’s going on – it’s OUR building.

2. Prayer: we all need to be praying for this project and for those leading it, and a visit will help to inform our prayers.

3. Insight: we would love to hear from you after you’ve visited. What is important to you about this project? What is God saying to you prophetically? Do you have any wisdom to impart to the team? (“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed” – Proverbs 15v22)

4. Inspiration: we would love people to get inspired for what we’re doing together. Let’s get inspired about our social action, inspired about our kids work and inspired about our youth work. Perhaps God may even have a role for you to play that you don’t yet know about!

Gift Days

Lastly, let me please remind you that we have our next two Gift Days for Church Gate scheduled for Sunday 30th June and Sunday 7th July.

Our goal is two raise at least £2m over 2 years. We’re well on the way towards that target (£1.3m pledged/given so far) but let’s all be praying about what God is calling us to give this time round. We don’t want anyone to give more than God is calling them to, but we don’t want anyone to give less than He’s asking them to either.

Let’s all get involved in this Church Gate adventure that God is leading us into as a church.

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Election Hustings for Woking Churches

/ Steve Petch / 1 Comment

With the General Election coming up, you might like a chance to hear directly from the people who would like us to vote for them. With this in mind an Election Hustings for Woking has been organised for all the churches in town. In case anyone is unsure, a ‘hustings’ is defined as ‘a meeting at which candidates in an election can address potential voters’, and it’s usually done as a question and answer session.

The hustings will take place at Woking United Reform Church, at 7.30pm on Friday 14th June, and we’ve been told that candidates for all of the main parties will be there.

If you would like to ask the candidates a question, it should be emailed in advance, and the details to do this are in the image below – make sure it’s a good one! Our special thanks go to Lucy and the team at the URC for organising this for us all.

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