Here are a few Welcome Church updates and Prayer Requests for December 2025 – enjoy!
Belong Believe Become
In November and December we ran our latest Belong Believe Become course, known as BBB. BBB is a three-week course, and we love everyone who is new to us as a church to do it if they can. It’s a great way for people to get to know who we are as a church, and for us to get to know them.
At the end of the latest course, 67 people made the decision to say that Welcome Church is their church, which is a wonderful sign of the growth God is continuing to give us.
Prayer: Let’s give thanks to God for the last course, and let’s pray for everyone who’s new to really find their place. Let’s also pray for God to continue growing us as a church so that more lives can be transformed through Jesus.
The next BBB course starts on Thursday 5th March, for three consecutive Thursdays. You’ll get a great meal each week and a chance to connect well to the church. If you’re connecting to Welcome Church and you’ve not yet done this course, it’s for you! You can sign up already using this link.
Open Doors
We loved having Howard S from Open Doors with us back in November. You can hear the talk he gave on this link here. Following Howard’s visit we made a gift of £5000 to Open Doors as a church and they sent us this reply:
“Thank you so much for your kind gift of £5,000 to strengthen your persecuted church family around the world who are risking it all to follow Jesus. Thanks to your prayers and support, our brothers and sisters know they are not alone and can stand strong in their faith.“
9.5 million persecuted believers were helped through Open Doors last year, and millions more were prayed for. Here’s a link to a 3-minute video for more information on the impact that’s being achieved – please do give it a watch.
Howard also asked for as many of us as were willing, to sign the Arise Africa Petition, through which The African Church is calling upon the global community to ensure that Christians and other vulnerable individuals in sub-Saharan Africa are treated with dignity in the face of huge persecution. It asks for:
- Provision of robust protection from violent militant attacks
- Justice through fair prosecutions of the attackers
- Healing and restoration to be brought to all affected communities
The petition is intended to be presented to the African Union, United Nations, EU and local governments around the world in 2026. If you want to sign the petition or read more about it, please follow this link.
Prayer: Please be praying for the persecuted church around the world, and if you need resources to do that more effectively, here’s a link to Open Doors website – it’s full of inspiration for your prayers.
Hardship Fund
Our Hardship Fund has been a blessing to a number of people in our church who needed a little help at this time of year. Gifts totalling £12,750 were given to people this December, and I want to thank our Life Group leaders, Pastoral Team and various ministry leads for helping us identify where the biggest needs were.
Don’t forget, you can always give to the hardship fund. Just make a gift to Welcome Church as normal but let us know that it’s intended for this fund.
Prayer: Let’s give thanks to God for the generous giving of so many people in our church, and let’s be praying for Him to continue to meet all of our needs as a church.
Compassion UK
We love our partnership with Compassion UK, sponsoring children in Togo in Africa. If you want to know a bit more this link will help
Compassion have now created a dedicated webpage for our church! It shows the very real impact that we’re having as a church through our combined child sponsorships: do check it out here – it’s very encouraging!
Prayer: if you sponsor a child, please pray for them, and write to them too. (BTW – if you’re not sure what to write then ChatGPT can really help…)
And if you don’t yet sponsor a child and you’d like to, please just ask us how.
Christmas
Last Sunday afternoon I had the joy of speaking at Hope Church Guildford’s Carol Service. It was a lovely occasion, and I’m told that 14 people completed a form to say that they prayed with me to commit their life to Jesus. It was also the largest event they’ve ever held as a church, with hundreds in attendance, so a real privilege for me to be there.
Prayer: Please be praying for this lovely and fast-growing church
Our own Carol Service For Woking events are being held this Sunday – 14th December. As it stands today roughly 2,600 people have booked to attend, and we expect this to grow again in the coming week (please click here to book your free place)
Details for our full Christmas programme at Welcome Church can be found in a previous blog post: Christmas At Welcome Church – I’m especially looking forward to our all-age services on Sunday 21st, which Stephen D and Cassie S will be running. Get ready for a treat!
Prayer: Please be praying for God to meet with people at our Carol Services this weekend
Job Vacancies
Please don’t forget that Welcome Church is recruiting at the moment. For information on the jobs that are available and how to apply please click here
Prayer: Please be praying for the right person to fill each role
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