Commission Churches

The Commission Leadership Conference 2025 & More

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I hope you enjoyed the baptisms last Sunday morning at Welcome Church; it’s always a joy to see people taking this step of faith!

This coming week has some key events in it too:

  • Our Life Group hosting teams will be getting together on Saturday evening for a “Life Group Hosts Celebration”, with a Prosecco reception, and some great food, music and activities
  • Christopher will be continuing our ‘Romans’ preaching series on Sunday morning – don’t forget your Romans book if you have one
  • On Sunday evening we’ll gather for our next Prayer Meeting from 6pm til 7pm. I’ll be leading us through our time together; please make it a priority. Why not attend as a family? You could even help your kids join in and learn to pray
  • Then on Wednesday (12th) we have our next Try Alpha evening. It’s not too late to invite friends to attend this with you. If you want more information about Alpha or need to book tickets please use this link.

Leadership Conference 2025

We’re part of a family of churches called Commission. There’s an excellent Commission event taking place in June this year, which we wanted to let you know about. The Commission Leadership Conference will take place at Citygate Church, Bournemouth, from Wednesday 18th to Friday 20th June 2025.

This event is for anyone in our Commission churches, across all the nations where we’re working, who holds a leadership position of any kind, inside or outside the church: small group leaders, kids leaders, youth leaders, trustees, serving team leaders, workplace and community leaders and more – if you lead something then you’re invited!

Some great speakers

Alongside the excellent worship and ministry, there are some great speakers at the conference, including:

  • Dave Devenish
  • Rachel Wilson
  • Mike Betts
  • Natalie Williams
  • Adrian Holloway
  • Vinu Paul
  • Emmanuel Pothen
  • Simon Argent

AND many more, including two of our very own from Welcome Church: Luke Simone and Christopher Hawes.

Luke will be flying in from Brazil to speak in a seminar, and Chris will be preaching the main session on the Friday morning. It’s shaping up to be a great event.

Most of our office team will be attending this year, and we wanted to let everyone else know about it too. All the details, prices and timings can be found using this link. If you do book a ticket, please let us know so we can look out for you at the event.

See you at the weekend!

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Some Welcome Church Updates – Jan 2024

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Here are a few updates about what’s been going on at Welcome Church recently:

Solar Panels

Solar Panels have now been installed across the roof of the Chapel and have been up and running since Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday afternoon we could see that they were powering the whole of the chapel (although it was a ‘low demand’ time) as well as powering all of the heating in the front building and the offices. They were also selling power back to the grid.

Darren (our Ops Director) tells me he’s had a greater number of questions from people about the solar panels than about anything else we’ve done since the pandemic so, if you have any more questions, I just know he’ll be really glad to hear from you 😉

Before
After

Big thanks to Pierre for the before and after photos taken from his flat in The Marches.

Sundays

Sunday numbers have grown again this term with a significant increase over January 2023. Our 11am meeting is feeling quite full, so we’re looking at what steps we can take to seat people more efficiently and maximise the room that we have available – watch this space. The 9am meeting is also growing in size, but does still have a bit more space than 11am so, if you want a slightly less crowded environment, easier parking, the best selection of pastries and an earlier finish, do consider moving to the 9am meeting – no pressure, but perhaps a good option for some people.

Elders Week Away

Our Elders week away went really well, and we appreciate all who prayed for us during that time.

We covered a lot of ground together and came away encouraged, and with a plan for seven specific areas of church life that we want to focus on over the next two years. I won’t list those here today because we will now take time to reflect, pray and refine things a little first, but I may come back to this in a subsequent blog.

Church Gate

Last week CAF Bank did their valuation on our site for the new mortgage, which brought us another step closer to getting the keys to Church Gate. We expect that we will soon be in a position for our solicitor to proceed to exchange and completion.

Alpha & Alpha Plus

Our Alpha course has been underway since the start of January, with more than 20 guests in regular attendance. This week we also launched Alpha Plus, which is for people who have completed Alpha and want to explore things further. This launched on Wednesday with more than 30 guests. Please pray for both of these courses: that people have a great time, that they keep coming along and that they encounter Jesus for themselves.

COMING SOON: The Commission Leadership Conference

One last thing I want to mention is the Commission Leadership Conference, which is coming up at the end of February (Wed 28th Feb to Fri 1st Mar).

This event (not to be confused with The Commission Festival in August) is for anyone in a Commission church who holds a leadership position of any kind, inside or outside the church – if you lead anything at all you’re invited!

The theme this year is ‘Leading Like Jesus’. We’ll be learning from the characteristics of Jesus’ ministry and in particular his example of serving and shepherding. The conference will be about inspiring us to lead with humility and courage, remembering that Jesus came to serve, not to be served. Speakers this year include Rico Tice and Michael Reeves(two of my personal favourites). I’ll be leading a seminar at some point myself too, as will Darren.

This event runs during term time on a Wednesday to a Friday, and it’s in Bournemouth, so I appreciate it won’t be accessible to everyone, but we wanted to highlight it for anyone who is interested and available. It costs £65 to book for the three days, and day tickets and an online option are also available. You would also need to factor in travel, meals and perhaps a hotel.

The Welcome Church Office Team will be in attendance, along with some from our Eldership Team, and if you want to be there too then you can book using this link. Do please let us know if you book so that we can look out for you at the event. We will aim to have dinner together on one of the evenings too.

Stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

It’s A Big Week At Welcome Church

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This Sunday (12th Nov) is a big one for Welcome Church for two reasons:

1. It’s a Gift Day

This will be the first of three Gift Sundays for us to buy Church Gate (the building next door to us). You can find out more about why we want to buy Church Gate by clicking here, and the details of what it will cost by clicking here.

This week I was at “Commission Prayer and Fasting”, an event that pretty much does what it says on the tin: we get together as teams from our UK churches to seek God and pray. At the event I was lovingly ‘pounced on’ by a leader from another church who felt God wanted him to share something with me:

“I see a brick wall in front of you, filling your vision. God says not to worry about it. He’ll get you past the wall. He has it all in hand …”

I always find these sorts of moments encouraging, but this one really made me smile because here’s the view from my office window, a view of Church Gate:

“I see a brick wall in front of you”

Ahead of Sunday please be praying about what God is calling you to give personally. We have a big challenge in front of us, but we have an even bigger God who is our provider. Let’s be in faith for what He will do through us over the next three weeks as obstacle after obstacle is cleared out of the way.

“Lift up your heads, you gates;
lift them up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of glory?
The Lord Almighty – he is the King of glory”
(Psalm 24v9-10)

2. On Sunday we have our next Encounter Evening

We’ve done several of these now, but this one is a bit different; it’s a big one! On the evening we will be served by a guest band from Kings Church Epsom. Jo and Meg recently spoke at a women’s conference at Kings Church. They were really impressed by the whole worship experience, and wanted us to experience it too.

Kings Church is unusual amongst our Commission family at the moment: it’s our only majority black church in the UK so far. They have a different style of worship than we’re used to, and I know we’re going to be blessed. Please come ready and expectant to encounter God, and please feel free to invite people from other churches to join us too, or anyone else you think will be blessed.

All welcome. Come as you are!

A Big Goodbye ☹️

This week we also said a sad goodbye to Kimberley and Luqman who fly back to India tomorrow (Friday 10th). They have been a real gift to us this year and we will miss them a lot.

The office team had a shared lunch with them on their last day with us (and 1 or 2 others popped in to join us too). We took time on the day to talk about what we love and appreciate about them both, and to share some memories and pray for them. There were tears, but I think that this mix of joy and sadness is all part of being part of the family of God.

I had my final goodbye with them both in the office today (Thursday). They even returned some of my missing books 😃. Do pray for them as they head home, not least because, at the last check, their luggage was 13kg overweight …

Stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

Prayer Requests – Nov 2023

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Here are some things we would love you to be praying about this month:

Gift Sundays

Our Gift Days to raise the finance we need for Church Gate are on Sundays 12th, 19th and 26th November. We would love everyone to be praying for this – for God to supply all we need as a church, and for Him to speak to each of us personally about what He is calling us to give.

A booklet is available with all the info you need to know, so do pick one up on Sunday morning or get in touch with the office to ask for a copy. It will tell you WHAT we are doing, WHY we are doing it, why we are doing it NOW (which is key to the whole thing), HOW MUCH it will cost and what we are asking YOU to do.

Baptisms

This Sunday we have baptisms at both morning meetings. Please pray for all those getting baptised.

There is a special need for prayer for 2 of those being baptised at 9am. They have come to us from a nation where to convert to Christianity could cost them their liberty and perhaps their life. Both came to faith in their own country. Both are fleeing persecution.

For this reason these two baptisms and testimonies, will not be live-streamed – we will switch the live-stream off at this point. We are also asking that no photos are taken or posted anywhere. The testimonies are well worth hearing, but you will have to be there in person at the 9am meeting to hear them.

If you are planning to be at the 11am meeting that day there might be room for some to stand at the back from about 10.15am if you want to arrive early and catch this part of the 9am meeting.

CST

CST is the “Commission Students to Thirties” event taking place on Saturday Nov 18th at Hope Church, Winchester. This year the theme of CST is about being ‘All In for Jesus‘. There will be great worship, great talks, time to connect with God and some good food too.

I would appreciate your prayers because I’m preaching the opening message at CST this year. Please pray that it connects well with people and helps to grow and stretch their faith.

If anyone isn’t booked in to CST and wants to know more, then do follow this link here for more information and a link to the booking page.

Luqman and Kimberley

Luqman and Kimberley, our two leadership trainees from India, finish their year with us next week, and will then head home to Goa. They are going to be greatly missed and will leave a hole in both our Office Team and our hearts ☹️. They have been a joy to have around and we’re sad to see them go.

Please pray for them as they return to India, that God will direct their steps into whatever He has next for them, and please do give them big hugs and lots of appreciation this weekend. Sunday 5th November will be their last Sunday with us.

Carol Services

Bookings for our Carol Services open this weekend. They will be held on Sunday 10th December this year, at 2pm, 4.30pm and 7pm. On Sunday we will give out all the information you need, and I’ll post it in my blog too, but please do be praying already about who you could be inviting and for all the preparations to go well. Please also pray for lots of people to sign up to attend.

A few other bits for prayer

In case that lot’s not enough to keep you busy praying, here are a few more things:

  • Reuben and Lucy get married this Saturday: pray for them as they start married life together
  • I’m leading the Commission ‘TLM’ training day on Saturday 11th Nov: the topic is ‘Grace for Ministry’
  • Our Alpha Course have their ‘Holy Spirit Day’ on Sat 25th Nov: pray for people to encounter the Holy Spirit and give their lives to Jesus

Stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

 

Commission UK: Changing My Role

/ Steve Petch / 4 Comments

As a church we’re part of an international family of churches called Commission, and it’s a good family to belong to. 

We’ve been blessed at Welcome Church over the last year by some excellent visiting speakers from various parts of our Commission family, including Simon Argent, John Groves, and Tim Blaber (all from the UK), and Sydney Nevis, Vinu Paul and Wellington Gomes (all from India). 

A good number of people from Welcome Church are booked into various Commission training programmes that are running this year too, and I know they’ll be great (I’m even speaking on one of them myself 😉)

This summer we were blessed by the Commission Festival, and lots of us were involved in helping to make that event happen. The bookings for next year’s festival are open and a good number have booked in already – don’t miss it!

What’s Changing?

Most of you will know that, for several years, I’ve been part of the Commission UK Leadership Team. I’ve had a range of responsibilities and have taken the lead on several events and initiatives, as well as helping to give oversight to other churches. The role has taken a growing portion of my time and focus, and it’s been a joy to do, not least anchoring the adult meetings at the recent Festival and preaching in one too (what a huge privilege that was!)

At Welcome Church we’ve also been increasingly busy over the last couple of years, and we’ve seen significant growth in numbers. We’re praying this continues.

I’m very excited about what’s ahead for us as a church, and there are a number of new opportunities and initiatives on the horizon that will require my energy and commitment for us to continue to thrive and to flourish.

With this in mind I wanted to let you know that, in July this year, I made a decision to step aside from the Commission UK Leadership Team for the next season of life and ministry. This will free up some much needed time to prioritise Welcome Church, and my family. 

I chose not to say anything publicly about this decision before the Commission Festival, in order to avoid any confusion around the role I was playing there, and also to allow some clear space to reflect on the decision and discuss it with the right people, and for God to speak into the decision too, which He has most definitely done (and that’s another story!)

The future

As a church we remain part of Commission, and are committed to the vision of seeing 1000’s of lives transformed through 100’s of churches in 10’s of nations. We will continue to build our connections with India – we’re really excited about those and have been connecting well with the Commission India team 🇮🇳. We will still be involved in many Commission events and activities going forwards. We will still be going to the Festival in the summer. Jo is still part of the leadership of the Commission Collective who lead worship at the Festival. There may also be some areas where I continue to serve our wider church family too.

I do feel some sadness about my decision to step aside from the team, but I also feel a deep sense of peace that it’s the right call to make, as well as a growing excitement about our future together at Welcome Church.

Hopefully I’ll see you on Sunday morning for the launch of our brand new Autumn Preaching Series, and then again at 7pm for our Prayer and Vision evening where we’ll be reflecting on the last year together and talking about the year ahead.

Stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

Welcome Back!

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

It’s September, the sun is out at last and kids are back to school, which means it’s also the start of another church year. I’m excited for everything God has in store for us as at Welcome Church in the year ahead – bring it on!

I hope you had a good summer and, whether you got to go away and enjoy some sunshine or were stuck in the UK with the cold and rain, I hope you at least got some time to relax.

One of the highlights for us as a church this year was of course …

The Commission Festival

Over 400 from Welcome Church attended the Festival this year, along with thousands from other Commission churches across the UK and further afield. We had a lot of fun and were well looked after, as well as enjoying some great teaching and ministry.

Huge thanks are due to a lot of people who served, cooked, cleaned, entertained us and set up and set set down, but a special mention goes to Richard and Audrey, Hannah, Crispy, Mark, Uti and Christopher who all went the extra mile to make our church site safe, welcoming, fun and a great place to be. Big thanks also go to all of Richard’s set up and clear up teams – you know who you are!

Here are some photos to show just a little of the fun we had:

There were same great talks and seminars at the Festival, and we’ll publicise links to those as soon as they are available (early next week I’ve been told). Don’t forget we’ll be going again as a church next year, and the sooner you book the cheaper it is. At the moment you can even sign up to pay monthly and spread the cost. Here’s a link to the booking page.

The Year Ahead

There’s a lot to look forward to as a church in the year ahead, starting with Terry Virgo, the founder of Newfrontiers, preaching for us this Sunday (10th September).

On Sunday 17th September we’ll have a Prayer and Vision Evening at 7pm at our building to talk about what’s coming up and the plans we have. Please put it in your diary now – you won’t want to miss it.

Stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

Some Important Things To Pray About – July 2023

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Hello lovely Welcome Church people! We would value your prayers this month for the following key things:

1. Buildings

We’re keen to work out how to create more space for our growing kids and youth work. On Sunday mornings we’re currently relying on The Annex (THE CUBE!) for extra space. The Annex is great, but we don’t own it and it will be redeveloped at some point, so we need to either build or buy a more permanent solution.

Mike Deavin and I met with the architect of our current building recently, and he’s looking at what’s possible on our site. We want to find a solution that will serve the needs of our young people, and also serve the church and the wider community all week long.

We love and value our young people and want to serve them well, so please be praying for wisdom and a clear way forward. I’m excited to see what doors God will open for us.

2. Newday

At the end of July our youth will be heading off to the annual ‘Newday Youth Festival’ at the Norfolk Showground in Norwich 🎪. This year it runs from Monday 31st July to Friday 4th August. So far we have around 80 young people booked to attend. Each year Newday helps our youth to grow in their faith, building solid foundations for the future.

Please pray:

  • That our youth stay safe and have a great time
  • That they encounter God and grow in their faith
  • For the leaders and the many helpers who are taking them and serving them during the event (they need our prayers! 🙂)
  • For the practical arrangements (For example, just this week the coach company we booked announced that they’ve gone bankrupt … 🚌 … we’ve got time to solve that problem, but we’d love to avoid any more last minute headaches or unforeseen problems)

3. Commission Festival

Commission Festival is on the Bank Holiday weekend at the end of August ⛺️⛺️⛺️

We’ll be joining with Commission churches from around the UK for times of worship and teaching, and a whole lot of other fun and games too. This event helps build our togetherness as a church and as family of churches. It connects us to our Apostolic mission around the world, and it also serves our children and young people well.

We currently have around 370 people from Welcome Church booked in, which is more than we’ve ever taken to an event like this before. For us it’s a bit like we’re running a festival within the festival!

It’s still not too late to book in and join us (click here for details) and don’t forget you can get a 40% discount if you sign up to serve.

A LOT of people from Welcome Church are either serving at the Festival, or serving our church site at the Festival in a range of different ways. I can’t possibly name them all, but each one is greatly appreciated.

Please pray:

  • For the event to go really well and for God to move powerfully
  • For the weather – we’d like lots of sunshine please ☀️
  • For Darren, our Ops Director, who is leading the delivery of this brand new Festival for Commission, working with their staff team and an event management company. It’s been a massive undertaking and he’s gone above and beyond to get this done
  • For Richard who, along with an awesome team from our church, is leading the operational delivery of our Welcome Church site at the Festival
  • For Jo, who leads four worship team and is also leading the worship for the event (alongside Sean from City Gate Church, Bournemouth)
  • For Harriet who is co-leading ‘Unique’, a ministry for children at the Festival who have additional needs
  • For Dub, Meg, and Robin and Anna who are all responsible for various seminars
  • For myself – I’m responsible for anchoring the adult meetings and I’m also preaching on the Saturday evening

If you have any questions about the festival, please do ask. One more thing:

Do you want to go to the Festival for free?

If so, Compassion UK are looking for some outgoing, faith filled and friendly volunteers to help on the Compassion stand at the Festival. In return they will provide a free ticket for the event along with your food and any travel expenses. All you need to bring is yourself, your camping equipment, and faith in what God can do.

If you want to know more about this opportunity please let us know in the church office and we will put you in touch, but please don’t leave it too late!

Stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

Updates: Italy, Newcomers Lunch and Training

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Thanks to all who prayed about the various things I highlighted in my last blog post. Here are a few updates:

Insieme

Insieme (Italian for ‘together’) was the Commission Italy conference I spoke at last weekend, along with Chris Kilby from Life Church Southampton. We were connecting with two churches in Ladispoli, near Rome, who are looking into Commission.

It was a joy to connect with these Italian Churches and spend time with them in worship, prayer and teaching, and also to get time to talk with the Italian leaders about the future. Our teaching on the grace of God was well received and impacted people’s lives and faith. Thankfully there were good people on hand to translate as we went along. We also got the chance for a (brief) visit to Rome on one day to take some selfies and also to enjoy some great food.

Some of the Italian leaders are now hoping to join us at Commission Festival this summer as a next step in our developing relationships.

Newcomers Lunch

Our Newcomers Lunch on Sunday went really well. It was attended by 63 adult guests (!) in addition to the table hosts and a number of children. Like Woking as a town, the guests represented a wide variety of nationalities and backgrounds, which we always love to see.

Dub led the event through brilliantly and the majority of those who attended will now come to our Belong, Believe, Become course too. It’s good to see new people joining us each week, so please be on the front foot to befriend them. Why not make it a personal goal to meet at least one new person at church every Sunday morning?

Training Scholarships

Recently we promoted the Commission training courses, which enrol each September and are a superb way to grow in your faith, and connect more widely with our Commission family of churches. Lots of people have expressed interest, however we’re aware that, for a few, the course fees might be a barrier, so we’re delighted to launch our Welcome Church training scholarships 😀

We’re offering a limited number of scholarships for those who otherwise would not be able to participate in a Commission training course for financial reasons. Most of the scholarships will cover 50% of the course fees, although there may be exceptions where we can offer a larger scholarship. Sadly, it’s unlikely that we will be able to fund every application.

To be eligible for a scholarship you must:

  • Belong to Welcome Church
  • Be serving in one of our teams
  • Be in need of financial support to attend the training course
  • Commit to attending all the training sessions for the course you’re applying for and to submitting all assignments as required

If you’d like to put yourself forward for a scholarship, please apply here.

Applications will be reviewed on a ‘rolling’ basis, and decisions will be made by a panel. If you have any questions regarding scholarships or training, Christopher Hawes would be happy to chat to you.

We hope this means that everyone who wants to, has the opportunity to participate in these excellent courses. 

And finally …

I know that parking on a Sunday can sometimes be tight, but let’s at least try not to imitate this unfortunate driver who accidentally left their vehicle at Welcome Church over the weekend 😃.

Apparently no one was hurt, but sadly we do have a bit of a repair job to do now! Police are aware and the vehicle should be recovered soon.

Remember, you can stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

Things To Pray About – June 2023

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Here are some important items of Welcome Church news that we’d love you to know and to pray about – including a trip to Italy 🇮🇹.

Alpha

We currently have 30 guests attending Alpha on Wednesday evenings, and a further 6 guests attending a daytime Welcome Tots mums’ Alpha course. The topic this week is “How Can I Have Faith?”

The Holy Spirit Day, which we run as part of the Alpha course, will take place on Saturday 1st July. Please pray for every guest to encounter Jesus and start a journey of faith

Newcomers Lunch

Our Newcomers Lunch is on this Sunday, and currently more than 40 guests have signed up to attend. Big thanks go to Hazel and her team who will be cooking the meal. Please pray for Dub as he leads this event and for our guests to grow in their sense of connection to Welcome Church and to start to feel like ‘Welcome Church is their church’.

The Big Summer Picnic

Plans for the Welcome Church Big Summer Picnic on Sunday 9th July are coming together well (click here to sign up). Please pray for good weather on the day and that we have a lot of fun. Everyone is welcome to attend, but do please sign up on the link above so we know you’re coming.

Welcome Works

Welcome Works are the various ministries that we run as a church, to help people in need in all sorts of different ways. Three of these to particularly pray for this month are:

  1. JOB CLUB: Our Job Club team is led by Neil Willis. Those in attendance are taught the key skills they need to handle job interviews and job applications so they can find and keep employment, often for the first time. The current course has 16 guests
  2. FRESH START: Our Fresh Start team is led by Dawn Wallace. It helps people overcome low level addiction and make a fresh start. The current course has 4 guests
  3. GET ONLINE: This is a brand new service for us, and starts this month. The team will be led by Steve Barter. Get Online helps people to learn basic computer skills, and learn how to access the internet safely, including such things as shopping and paying bills online – something many of us take for granted and rely on every day

Please pray for each of these courses, including all those who are in attendance and the teams who are running them. The goal of all of our Welcome Works is not only to help people in need – which is a great reflection of Jesus’ heart as revealed to us in Luke 4v16-21 – but also for them to encounter Jesus through us.

Office Team Wellbeing

We have had a couple of challenging incidents over recent weeks with members of the public acting in unhelpful ways towards our office team. I won’t go into details, and we do have sensible procedures in place, but please do pray for God’s loving protection over our office team day by day.

Italy: Insieme 2023

On Thursday this week (the day this blog comes out) I will be flying off to Ladispoli in Italy to speak at a conference called ‘Insieme’ (which is Italian for ‘Together’). The conference is for some Italian churches who are in the process of getting to know and perhaps join our Commission family of churches.

The theme of the conference is ‘Enjoying The Grace Of God’. I will also get to enjoy the company of Norman and Jane Bave, formerly of Welcome Church, who now live in Italy and will be in attendance at Insieme.

Please pray for me while I’m away, and also for Jo who is speaking at a Conference at Kings Church Epsom on Saturday. Please pray for Chris Kilby from Life Church Southampton who is leading the Insieme conference, and also pray that we would all be able to discern together what the future might look like in terms of these churches and their growing link to Commission.

I’ll be flying back on Monday, and remember, you can stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

Commission Festival – LATEST UPDATE

/ Steve Petch / 1 Comment

I’m looking forward to Commission Festival this year more than ever. It will be FOUR YEARS since we’ve been able to go away as a family of churches together like this – the last time was summer 2019.

In case you don’t know already, Commission Festival is our annual camping event, taking place over the August Bank Holiday weekend, where we gather with churches from across our Commission UK family. We will get to enjoy all the fun of last year’s Welcome Church Big Weekend Away, camping together as a church, but we’ll also get access to a whole lot more in terms of fun, games, events, inter-church sports competitions, teaching, worship, kids work, youth work and more. The dates for this year are 24th to 28th August at the Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. If you hate camping you can always arrange a caravan (as Jo and I have done) or stay offsite in a local B&B or Hotel.

As a church we have more people booked in than we’ve ever had before, so don’t miss out. Prices go up after 10th April, and if you book before the end of February you can opt to pay in instalments. If you sign up to serve you’ll get a 40% discount too, and this year we will also cater for everyone who books in from Welcome Church … for free.

Alongside the usual range of excellent speakers including Guy Miller, Vinu Paul, Chris Kilby, Tim Blaber and more, there are a few specific things happening that I wanted to mention to whet your appetite for the event (and these are just a taster of what to expect):

Kemi Koleoso from Jubilee Church London will be speaking in one of the main morning sessions. Kemi is an incredibly gifted preacher and she will help build our faith to new levels.

Andrew Bunt will be speaking in two seminars and also in one of the youth meetings. Andrew is the author of ‘Finding Your Best Identity: A Short Christian Introduction to Identity, Sexuality and Gender’. Andrew will be helping us understand and find a Biblical approach to these challenging topics both as churches, and also as parents and families. This is a topic that many have been concerned about, so make sure you’re there to get informed and equipped.

Natalie Brand, author of ‘Priscilla, where are you?’ and ‘Prone to Wander’ (as well as a number of other books) will be speaking in two seminars, one on ‘raising female theologians’ and one on ‘struggling when God seems distant’.

Additionally some people from our Welcome Church family will be contributing too. Our very own Jo is working with Sean (from Citygate Church in Bournemouth) to organise and deliver the worship for the event; the ‘Commission Collective’ have even been song writing. Meg is leading a seminar. I understand that Robin and Anna may be on the seminar list too and I’m sure other familiar faces will appear along the way.

I’m going to be preaching one of the main evening sessions myself, probably on the Saturday evening. It would be great to have a crowd from Welcome Church there to encourage me with your smiles and to pray that I don’t mess it up 🙂

As a church (and knowing the British weather) we’ve booked the biggest marquee we’ve ever had. It’s been described as “so big that our church will go home thinking that Commission Festival was an indoor event” 😂. On top of all this I hear rumours that we’re due to see the return of the Welcome Church silent disco, and a whole range of other fun events in our own marquee too.

We don’t want anyone to miss out on Commission Festival, so if you have any questions or concerns please ask. And please don’t delay booking as prices will go up nearer to the event.