Across the UK many churches are reporting a season of significant momentum and growth, and that’s true for us at Welcome Church too.
We’re now consistently gathering around 1,100 people each Sunday morning, and often it’s quite a lot more than that. It’s wonderful to look around the chapel and see new faces each week as people decide to make Welcome Church their spiritual home, but growth always brings challenges!
One challenge we have is that we’re gradually running out of room.
Responding To The Squeeze
If you attend our 9.30am meeting, you’ll have experienced moments when it seems that all the seats are full! There is a little more room at our 11.30am meeting, but thatt’s also now filling up week by week.
Our initial instinct as an eldership team was to identify a second venue in Woking and launch a third Sunday morning meeting (in the 10.30am slot). Whilst this remains a hope for our longer term future, the right venue just hasn’t opened for us yet.
But we refuse to sit back, cross our arms, and watch people get squeezed out while we wait, so we did something this church does well: we started praying.
During our Sunday evening prayer meeting back in May, I looked across a room that was packed with young people passionately worshipping God, and in that moment I felt what I think was a prompt from the Holy Spirit: “Don’t wait. Be faithful with what I’ve already given you”. I also felt a rise of faith for the evening as a possible next step for us AND I sensed a need to make more of discipling our younger people.
So I brought all of this to the team to weigh and, following prayer, planning, and our best attempt to discern the way forward, we believe it’s time to take a step of faith.
The plan
Following our 21 days of prayer in January, we will be launching a third Sunday meeting at 6.30pm each week.
We plan to start this from Sunday 7th February.
And This Is About More Than a Space Solution
This isn’t only about finding a practical fix for crowded meetings. This new initiative is about making room in several different ways:
- Room for more people in Woking to encounter the life-transforming love of Jesus.
- Room for more outreach and mission.
- Room for deeper community.
- Room for passionate worship.
- Room for unhurried ministry.
- AND room to intentionally invest in, stretch, and release the next generation of leaders.
That last one is key. We are intentionally creating space to develop fresh gifting, so you might see some younger faces preaching or leading from the front sometimes.
But this is not a “youth service”!
This is still a full, vibrant expression of Welcome Church, open to every age group. It will feature the same preaching series, the same depth of worship, and the same level of welcome and hospitality. For those who choose to attend in the evening, you won’t miss out on anything by not being here in the morning.
And I believe we’ll reach all sorts of different people as we take this step. The only logistical caveat is that we won’t be running our standard morning-style children’s work during the evening meeting initially, though we will keep this under review as the congregation grows.
Fresh Options
We want to be clear that we are not asking people to come to church twice a Sunday, BUT this move does increase our offer and our options:
- For our Sunday Morning Teams: If you serve on our kids, youth, or other ministries during the morning meetings, you’ll be able to attend the evening to receive and to engage with God for yourself
- If Sunday mornings are difficult for you to get to for some reason, you don’t have to miss out
- AND I know that culturally some people just prefer an evening meeting
We are also creating two significant new opportunities:
First for our Youth: Our Youth Pastor, Cassie, will be launching a dedicated, older youth meeting straight after the 6.30pm service finishes. It’s going to be an intentional space for them to go deeper than they do on Fridays.
Second, for our Lifegroups: After the evening service, we will be able to throw open the building for Lifegroups to meet together on-site. If meeting at the church building on a Sunday night works for your group, let us know, or maybe it’s time for you to start a new Lifegroup.
An Invitation to You
Over the next few weeks, our teams will be working behind the scenes to map out the finer operational details, but right now, I want to ask you to do two things:
First, please pray intentionally. Pray for the team, and for the launch of the new service. Pray for wisdom and direction. Pray for growth across our church to continue (in every way – not just numbers). And pray for leaders to be raised up, teams to be formed, and for many people in Woking who don’t know Jesus yet to find their way into our evening meetings.
Second, ask God if YOU should be part of this. If you’re currently sitting in a packed morning meeting each week, would you consider making the 6.30pm service your Sunday meeting instead? It might just free up the seat someone else needs to hear the gospel for the first time on a Sunday morning.
You’ll get to meet with Jesus and with your church on a Sunday evening instead. And let’s be honest—enjoying a lazy Sunday morning lie-in and a relaxed Sunday lunch ahead of church isn’t the worst trade-off in the world!
So let’s step into this season with expectation for all God wants to do next
