Faith

EAT, PRAY, LOVE: A Simple Strategy for Impacting Lives This Autumn

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

Hi everyone! This is Dub Everitt, Outreach Pastor at Welcome Church. I’m jumping in on Steve’s blog this week to share our exciting Autumn outreach strategy:

We’re currently in the middle of a powerful preaching series titled “Loving People Towards Jesus.” Throughout this series, we’ve been reminded that Jesus is passionate about reaching people who don’t yet know Him—and He calls each of us to play a part in that mission. We are called to reach out in love, on His behalf, to the people around us.

In previous years, our church has hosted incredible invitational events like Fun Days, Firework Nights, Carol Services, and our special Invite Sundays. These “Hop, Skip & Jump” events connected hundreds of people to Welcome Church, with many deciding to explore faith further through Alpha or by attending our Sunday services.

This year, however, we’re shifting gears. Instead of large invitational events, we’re focusing on empowering each one of you to engage personally with the people in your world through a simple and memorable approach:

EAT, PRAY, LOVE

No, we’re not talking about the book or the movie! These three memorable words are designed to help us all focus on a clear, three-step outreach strategy for this term.

1. EAT…

… at A Taste of Alpha and during our Autumn Alpha Course
This year, we’re inviting everyone at Welcome Church to experience Alpha for themselves at a special event called A Taste of Alpha. It’s a fantastic opportunity to enjoy a mocktail, watch an episode from the new Alpha Film Series, and discuss it over a delicious two-course meal.

This event gives you firsthand experience of what your friends will encounter if you invite them to Alpha. We’ve already seen hundreds attend, and if you missed it, there are limited spots available for Wednesday, October 2nd. Click here to book your place for 2nd October

Once you’ve experienced A Taste of Alpha, we’d love for you to invite a friend to Try Alpha on Wednesday, October 16th—the first week of our eight-week Alpha Course. Your friend can check it out and, if they enjoy it, they’re welcome to continue for the remaining weeks! Click here to book for Try Alpha

2. PRAY…

… for your friends
Many of us have already made a list of three or more people we’re praying for daily. If you haven’t done so yet, take a moment now—ask God to bring to mind three people He wants you to pray for daily, and write their names down.

It’s a powerful thing to remember that God not only hears our prayers but also moves in the lives of the people we lift up to Him. Before you speak to your friends about God, speak to God about your friends!

3. LOVE…

… your friends towards Jesus
Sometimes, sharing Jesus with others can feel like a daunting task. But perhaps a better way to think about it is this: Jesus has given us people to love towards Him.

During His time on earth, Jesus poured out love, kindness, mercy, and compassion to everyone He encountered. Now, He asks us to reflect that same love to those around us, showing them what His love looks like in action.

In fact, He’s equipped us for this! As Romans 5v5 reminds us,

“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us“

This promise is true for each one of us who follows Jesus—including you!

So, let’s live lives of compassionate love and kindness towards the friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, and anyone else God places in our path. Let’s trust that through us, they will experience Jesus’ love—and that this love will be a step toward their own encounter with Him.

Jesus is deeply passionate about our town and the people around us. He’s placed you and me in their lives to be a blessing and a signpost toward Him.

Let’s all commit to EAT, PRAY & LOVE this autumn, and watch as God does amazing things!

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An Update On Luke Simone: on mission in a Favela in Brazil

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Luke Simone has been part of our Welcome Church family for over 30 years, although you may not have seen him around very much recently! Why? He was a finance lawyer in London and New York before God called him to work among the least and the lost in Brazil.

Casa Cruzeiro

The work Luke started in a Favela (a slum) in Rio has steadily progressed from the first act of simply opening the doors of his living room almost a decade ago. When the neighbour’s rooftop could no longer support the number of people who were coming for prayer and to hear a simple Bible story, he and a friend established “Casa Cruzeiro” – a community centre and school grounded in the gospel and located at the highest point of the Rio slum that has become his home. 

Luke and the small team now serve up to 200 children and teenagers (and their wider families) each week, offering a safe and welcoming space for vulnerable, marginalised and disenfranchised youth in a neighbourhood fractured by gang violence and poverty.

Why is this needed?

Many of the young people in the Favela leave school illiterate or struggle with even the most basic principles of maths and Portuguese. The school they’ve established in the heart of the community now has over 70 students (aged 5 to 75) providing essential tuition to the poorest, who are often failed by the school system. The teachers also provide counseling to the younger children who frequently show signs of trauma through abuse in their homes or the loss of family members due to gang violence.

As the young people leave school, the team gives additional support and career counseling for the next steps, together with an opportunity to offer places on pre-vocational courses, providing simple and practical steps that enable those they work with to be able to eventually provide for themselves and their families. 

Alongside all this is the gospel, and they’ve had the incredible joy of seeing young people give their lives to Christ, get baptised and be discipled – no small thing in the Favela.

What does it look like to be on mission far from home?

Living in the Favela is not without risks. Gun violence and drugs are among the many day to day issues, alongside poverty, abuse and neglect. Despite all this, as Christopher shared in his preach last Sunday (quoting Paul from 1 Thessalonians):

“We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thess 2v8)

Luke and the team’s overriding goal is to love and serve their neighbours, without an agenda, by sharing their everyday lives. They are aiming to live out the call of Christ day by day and to shine the light of Jesus in the darkness that is all around.

The work in this slum is very much a marathon rather than a sprint, but they are seeing lives impacted by the power of God with a goal of community-wide transformation – a break in the cycle of violence and brokenness faced by those on the margins. What Luke and the others have established is a “community within a community,” where disciples are made, relationships are strengthened and dignity is restored.  

Welcome Church is on this mission too

Welcome Church takes mission (both at home and abroad!) very seriously. Luke doesn’t do this work alone!

As a church we have been, and we remain, very much part of Luke’s sending, with groups praying and raising financial support for the ongoing needs.

How YOU can get involved:

If you want to know more about this, or you’d like to to support Luke in this mission to Brazil there are several ways to do that:

1. Get the newsletter: If you want to receive a regular newsletter from Luke, please use this link to send an e-mail to let him know – he will add you to the list.

2. Join the prayer group: There is a prayer group from Welcome Church who meet to pray for Luke and Casa Cruzeiro regularly. If you want to join them, please also use this link to send an e-mail and let him know – details will then be sent.

3. Give Financially: as a church we give to Luke each month out of our regular giving, HOWEVER there are a number of people who have wanted to give directly (in addition to their normal giving to Welcome Church) – and this has made all the difference. If you’d like to give directly to this work (either a one off gift or a regular monthly amount) you can do that by giving it to Welcome Church, and letting us know it’s for Luke Simone. We can then claim Gift Aid on your gift (if applicable) and pass both the gift and any Gift Aid on to Luke.

If you want to ask more about any of these things, please drop an email to Darren in the Church Office using this link.

Find out more

You can see more of Luke’s story by clicking here for a great video, but if you’d like to meet the man in person, he will be around this Sunday, at both the 9am and 11am meetings. I’ll be interviewing him briefly about his experiences in Rio and he’ll also be around to chat in person.

Here are some great photos from Casa Cruzeiro 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.

Church Gate – Our Next Big Adventure

/ Steve Petch / 7 Comments

Over the last few months we’ve prayed several times about Church Gate, which is the building next door to ours. I believe this is now our next big adventure as a church!

The Story So Far

In January 2020 we opened our brand new Chapel building and, at the same time, we redeveloped our old Church building (often now referred to as ‘the front building’) to serve our various ministries, including our children’s and youth work, and to provide new offices, kitchens and more.

Unforeseen Challenges

Coming out of the pandemic, Welcome Church has grown significantly – much faster than any of us anticipated. One unforeseen problem this has caused is that, as a church with many families in it, the number of children and youth who attend each Sunday are more than the front building can accommodate.

At the moment Welcome Kids Seniors and Welcome Youth cross the road each Sunday morning to meet in ‘The Cube’ (above Useful Wood). This is a good solution for now, but we do not own that space and in time it will be redeveloped for housing.

Alongside our growth in numbers, we also have a growing focus on social action in response to Jesus’ call on us to be “good news to the poor”. One ministry we would like to start is a community grocery, bridging the gap between the food bank and a supermarket for the poorest families in our town. For many this could be a lifeline and a great way for people to connect with our church and with Jesus.

In conversation with Woking Borough Council we’ve looked at various premises in Woking, but nothing has yet been found that provides the space we need, in a venue that works for us in terms of accessibility, cost and location.

The Church Gate Solution

Church Gate, a three storey open plan office building, is next door to us, and has been empty for more than 6 years. The owners have recently received planning permission to add two extra stories to it and to develop it as residential accommodation, but we decided to contact them anyway, and they agreed to meet with us and let us look around the building.

On viewing Church Gate it quickly became apparent that it could meet our needs as a church. It could provide us with:

  • Space to serve our children’s and youth work
  • Space for a community grocery and for other social action projects in the future
  • More space for meetings and ministries all week long – both for us as a church and as a facility to serve our town
  • A few more parking spaces (always handy to have!)

In short, we believe Church Gate offers the right space for our needs, so with this in mind we shared with the owners our heart and our vision to serve the community and do good for our town. We asked them not to develop it into flats but to sell it to us instead, and they agreed to come back to us with a price.

Negotiations

Negotiations started off with a gap of several million pounds but, following a professional valuation, lots of discussion and a whole lot of prayer, last week we were able to agree on a fair price in line with the valuation, so …

… WE ARE GOING TO BUY CHURCH GATE

What’s next?

In November we will hold Gift Days as a church, and we’ll all have a chance to give financially to this exciting new adventure. Next week I’ll share more information about that.

We recognise we’re on a short time scale, but we’re also aware that this is a unique opportunity and we need to respond to it in a timely way, whilst the door is open.

These Gift Days are our big opportunity to step up and give sacrificially. Let’s give as an act of worship. Let’s give to build a better future. Let’s give to take part in what God is doing with our church at this time.

Our giving to this adventure is a chance to invest in our church, our children, our youth, the gospel, our work among the poor in our town, and the Kingdom of God, and let’s not forget it’s also an investment in our future together. Generations of this church before us have given sacrificially to get us to where we are today; now it’s our turn to step out in faith and to sow financially into the future.

In the weeks ahead I’ll share more information about the price we’ve agreed, and about what we now need to do – and there are lots of practical steps we will need to take – but at this point we only want to ask you to do one thing: to pray.

Please pray that the sale moves ahead smoothly and that the finance comes together quickly. And please pray for God to speak to YOU about what he wants YOU to give. Between us we have a significant amount of money to raise, but I believe we can do this together.

Listening to God

During the negotiations, looking at Church Gate out of my office window and praying and dreaming about what God might do, I felt God remind me of a parable Jesus told:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13v45-46)

That parable is not really about buildings, but I felt a whisper in my heart that, to us, Church Gate would be like that pearl of great value. I believe this is a great opportunity that God has put in front of us, and that we need to be prepared to sacrifice to get in on this adventure; it will be costly but it’s worth it, so lets go for it together. More information will follow in the weeks 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.

Important and Urgent! PLEASE PRAY!

/ Steve Petch / 6 Comments

Hello Welcome Church. We have a very important prayer request and would ask you ALL to please pray, pray and pray again.

Yesterday Mike Deavin and myself, along with Darren Forsdyke and Dub Everitt, met with the representative of the owner of a significant building near to us in Woking. We had a look around the building and discussed how we might be able to get use of it for us as a church, perhaps by buying it.

After viewing the building I explained all that we do to serve our community and to help those in need around us. I explained how the church exists to bring hope to people. I explained how we need more space for all that God is doing through us. I explained our calling to be good news to our town and to serve the poor. I explained that we wanted this building to enable us to continue what we do and to enable us to do even more.

If we were able to take ownership, it would be a significant game changer for us as a church, enabling so many things we want to do to serve the poor and carry out our social action programme, including space for some new initiatives we are thinking of such as a community grocery. It might also release space for our children’s and youth work, preparing us for the day that the Annex (The Cube) is redeveloped.

It would not be right at this stage to say what or where this building is (so please don’t even ask) but all four of us all came away feeling that this could be something God is leading us into. The representative we met with is now going away to speak to the owner to see if there is a way forward, and if so at what cost.

Please pray:

  • That God would give us favour with the owner and his representative
  • That God would open this door to us so that we can bring even more salt and light to this town, and serve our community well, especially at this time of growing need
  • That we can take ownership of this building for a fair price
  • That finance would be released to make this possible

I will tell you more when I’m able to, but as you pray please be open to what God might say to you and please share that with us.

At this time of need I believe God has a big calling on us as a church to bring the good news of the Kingdom of God in all we do. Why not stop what you’re doing and pray right now?

Thank you in advance

Some Suggested Summer Reading – 2023

/ Steve Petch / 4 Comments

Summer is here and the weather’s been amazing – long may it last 😎

If you’re anything like me, some of your summer break will be spent with your nose in a book so, alongside all the fun novels, I wanted to recommend some books that will do you good. Why not find space for one of them in your suitcase and give it a go?

Deeper by Dane Ortlund

This book answers the question: “How do Christians grow in their faith?”

We all know it’s meant to happen but we can be confused about HOW it’s meant to happen. Dane doesn’t give us a formula or technique, and he’s not calling us to “try harder and do more”. Instead, drawing from both the Bible and from some of the great examples set by believers from church history (with some great CS Lewis quotes 🙂) he points us back to Jesus and to the deep truths of the Christian faith,

If you only read one of my suggestions, read this one.

I recommended another book by Dane Ortlund on a past occasion, and you can read about that one here.

Gender Quality by Stefan Liston

What did God intend when he created both ‘male’ and ‘female’? What does the Bible teach us about the value and purpose of both men and women? What does God’s creation intention mean for us as Christians, as we try to faithfully live out God’s plan at home and in the church?

Stefan is an elder at Revelation Church in London, and a great preacher and communicator. This well researched and easy to read book explores two very different perspectives, and challenges us to think and act Biblically, seeking out the unity and the diversity that God intended for us.

Finding Your Best Identity by Andrew Bunt

At one point in Andrew’s childhood he thought he might be a girl in a boy’s body. As he grew older he discovered he was same-sex attracted. For many years he believed he was a freak and a weirdo. In this short book Andrew explores the different ways that we can seek our identity, blending his own story with cultural awareness and careful Bible teaching.

Andrew will be speaking on this theme at Commission Festival this year, both in the youth meeting and in a seminar open to all of us. It’s an issue we see being discussed in the media every day, so let’s make sure we understand it well and know God’s heart.

The Reason For God by Tim Keller

I was saddened to hear the news of Tim Keller’s death this year. I’ve always loved and appreciated his books so, in light of his death, I wanted to recommend a personal favourite. This is a book that you can share with anyone who’s interested in faith, whether they’re a Christian or not.

Tim addresses some big questions such as:

  • Why does God allow suffering?
  • How can a loving God send people to hell?
  • How can one religion be ‘right’ and the others ‘wrong’?
  • Hasn’t science disproved Christianity?

It was first published in 2008, so it’s not new but it’s still a great read.

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.

Growing To The Next Level

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

Some from our Welcome Church team have been in Peterborough this week at an event called ‘Growing To The Next Level’, and it’s been a huge blessing.

The focus was on “Missional Expansion”.

Some highlights:

Dave Smith from Kingsgate Church in Peterborough kicked off the event talking about Isaiah 54v2-3 (from The Message translation), “Clear lots of ground for your tents! Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big! Use plenty of rope, drive the tent pegs deep. You’re going to need lots of elbow room for your growing family. You’re going to take over whole nations; you’re going to resettle abandoned cities”. This set the scene for the whole event, pointing us to God’s heart for His Kingdom to expand as we build Holy Spirit filled churches who are on fire with evangelism and bring transformation to our communities.

Darlene Zschech from Hillsong Australia spoke about God’s heart for mission from Isaiah 61/Luke 4: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor …”. She talked about how encountering Jesus in worship transforms us from the inside out so that we start to express Jesus’ heart in our lives, which includes caring for those in need. She explained how true worship flows over into doing good to others, and highlighted the importance of all we do as churches to serve the community, especially those in need. (Let me encourage you to get involved with that in some way, if you’re not already).

Josh Howard from India talked about the growth they’ve seen, with 16,000 churches planted since 2015. They are a ‘house church’ movement, so their approach is very different from ours and not one we feel called to adopt, but we can learn from their ‘principles’ whilst applying them contextually within our own calling as a church – and there was lots for us to learn from him! Josh talked about how God doesn’t NEED us (we are not the saviour) but that we need to know that God does WANT us, and will work through us (which is our privilege). Josh called us all to think beyond addition towards multiplication, and we all left his talk with a desire to look way beyond what we currently see and have vision for. It was a clear call to think much bigger and have faith for a whole lot more.

Rachel Gardner from Youthscape called us to face up to the reality of living in a ‘post-Christian’ nation, where we are surrounded by people who KNOW FOR SURE that “Christianity is irrelevant, implausible, oppressive and powerless” whilst they actually know almost nothing about real Christianity. She challenged us about the need to “recover our mission” and find fresh ways to proclaim the Kingdom of God that address the culture we actually live in today. Our “Belong, Believe, Become” approach is something we’ve already done towards this, but there is much more we can do.

Other highlights from our time away included some fantastic worship and ministry times, some great seminars, and a lot of fun had together as a team.

The event was a mix of talks, seminars, coaching and group work done together as a church team. We left with a structured ‘action plan’ for how to take our key learnings forward together. I won’t post that plan here – that’s our tool to use as a team – but we will now look to work it out over the next 24 months, so watch this space for what’s ahead.

Following this event the rest of the team headed home to Woking whilst I travelled on to Enfield for a gathering of the various Newfrontiers UK Apostolic Teams. (I’m writing this from a Travelodge in Enfield.) I’m here as part of the Commission UK Team, along with Chris and Jo Kilby from Life Church Southampton. It’s been a great event so far. See you at the weekend.

Some Helpful Resources For Our New Preaching Series

/ Steve Petch / 5 Comments

Last Sunday we started our new Welcome Church preaching series on John’s gospel. We’ll be working through the first 12 chapters of John week by week from now until the summer, and I’m really looking forward to it. We’ve given the series the highly creative title of “The Gospel of John”, with the added strapline “A Matter Of Life And Death”.

Christopher kicked off the series on Sunday by taking us through the first 18 verses of chapter 1, usually called “The Prologue”, and this Sunday I’ll take us through the rest of the chapter. If you missed it or you want to listen again, you can access the first talk in the series by clicking here.

Resources

Christopher mentioned on Sunday that I would blog some resources this week to go with the series. These could be useful if you want to do further study and go a bit deeper, or if you want a resource to aid discussion in your Lifegroup meetings.

There are five resources I’m going to mention at three different levels, although there are literally hundreds of other great resources available too. I’ve added links to Amazon for each one, but these are actually available from all sorts of places, including from Origin Books in Jubilee Square, who we love to support if we can.

1. Entry Level

A really good entry level resource is:

John for Everyone by Tom Wright

This is written for people at every different stage of faith. It’s a great entry level book that will do you good and you can easily read it from cover to cover. This could work really well for Lifegroups to use together.

2. Intermediate level

If you want to go a bit deeper then I would recommend any of these three:

John 1-12 For You by Josh Moody

This book is deep but also concise, and includes questions for reflection. It covers the twelve chapters we’re looking at in our current series.

Holman NT Commentary Volume 4, John by Kenneth O Gangel

The Holman series of commentaries are well designed for people who are leading Bible studies or preaching. They are well laid out and go chapter by chapter through a book with good depth to them and some application questions. This could really help if you’re looking to lead Bible studies on John.

The Message of John: Here Is Your King by Bruce Milne

This is part of the ‘The Bible Speaks Today’ series, which is a consistently reliable set of Bible commentaries that won’t steer you wrong. It goes deeper than the Holman series and follows the text verse by verse more closely. You could actually use this book as a daily devotional.

3. Advanced Level

The Gospel of John: a commentary by Frederick Dale Bruner

Christopher and I both love this commentary on John’s gospel. It’s well written and full of fresh insights, but be warned: it’s an academic text, it’s not cheap and it may not be for everyone. We’re NOT suggesting you rush out to buy this unless you’re inspired to do some serious study. If you are, this would be an awesome resource to have … but only if you’re really going to use it … otherwise it may look impressive on your bookshelf but it won’t help you very much! 🙂

We really hope you enjoy this new preaching series and that it helps you to grow in your faith. Do let us know your thoughts as we go along.

Welcome Church, The Future – Part 1: Looking Back

/ Steve Petch / 4 Comments

On Sunday (May 8th) we had our Welcome Church Vision Evening looking at ‘Where we’ve been, where are now and, most importantly, where we’re heading in the future‘. This week I’ll be blogging about some of the key items we covered. This is part 1 of 5.

The pandemic created some big challenges for us all, both personally and as a church, yet we’ve known God’s blessing all the way through; He has done great things for us!

In the run up to the pandemic a lot had changed for us as a church in a short space of time, including a new name and logo, a new website, a new vision and mission statement, a new culture being outworked, a new approach to outreach, a new approach to belonging AND the launch of our brand new purpose built building in the heart of Woking. In some ways the pandemic could not have come at a worse time for us with Lockdown closing our building just a few weeks after it opened!

Despite this God has blessed our church beyond all expectation

We’re now back meeting together in person across two meetings each Sunday morning with kids work and youth work, and we’re seeing new people come and join us regularly. To encourage you, here are some Welcome Church statistics from the last couple of years:

  • 4 people have joined our staff team: Christopher Hawes (Preaching and Discipleship), Uti Anyaegbunam (Ops. Manager), Hannah Oliver (Ops. Assistant) and Juliet Bauermeister (Comms. Manager)
  • 147 have attended an Alpha Course
  • 123 have attended our new Learn Groups (Bible Course, Prayer Course, etc)
  • 457 signed up to attend Life Groups in the January refresh (plus there are a whole load more who we know attend but didn’t actually sign up … so cheeky!!!)
  • 104 have attended our various CAP courses (Fresh Start, Job Club, Life Skills, Money Course)
  • 79 people have been baptised
  • 46 children attended the Welcome Kids Weekend Away
  • 192 people attended our last 2 Newcomers Lunches (both since Lockdown ended)
  • 96 people have attended our ‘Belong, Believe, Become’ course in 2022 alone

Additionally your generous giving as a church has beaten all expectations throughout the pandemic. We beat our budget in both 2020/21 and 2021/22, so on behalf of the Eldership Team and the Trustees let me say a huge THANK YOU!

We’ve also given lots away to some key causes over the last two years:

  • £19,000 was given in 2020 to help feed people in need through our Commission churches in India
  • £36,000 was raised in 2020 to support Your Sanctuary
  • £33,000 was given just recently to help our churches in Ukraine serve their communities during the ongoing conflict there
  • £19,000 was given to provide buildings for some of our Commission churches in Bangladesh and to support some of our other works in that part of the world too

In fact, as well as financing what we do as a church, we gave away over £158,000 last year alone, including to support both the work of our Commission church family and some other excellent local causes including Woking Food Bank and Woking Street Angels.

These are all good signs that God is at work in and through our church. We have a lot to be thankful for, so let’s be on the front foot to give God the glory for all he’s doing, even as we face some sadnesses, some sicknesses and some losses amongst our church family too.

“The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy” Psalm 126v3

Where do we go from here?

Looking back at God’s past faithfulness brings great encouragement, faith and hope for the future. Tomorrow I’m going to blog about our brand new vision statement as a church which will now begin to shape where we go in the future.

New Year, New Challenges

/ Steve Petch / 3 Comments

It was great to start our New Year as a church yesterday by gathering together for worship. The sermon was about “Being a worshipper when times are tough and life is not what you expected” (which may be a key message for us all this year as we face so many unknowns.) The sermon itself was a last minute message pulled together because the scheduled preacher had a positive PCR test for Covid on New Year’s Day; let’s hope it’s the only time this happens.

One thing I’ve found challenging during the pandemic is that so much rapid change and uncertainty makes it hard to plan ahead and cast vision for where we’re going as a church. For example, as we approached the Carol Services this year the biggest question in my head was not ‘Will they go well?’ but ‘Will they be allowed to go ahead?’ Instead of hoping people from the church would bring guests, I was just hoping people from the church would turn up themselves. Some did 🙂.

It’s hard to plan with so much uncertainty, and with that in mind the “Vision Evening” planned for Sunday 9th Jan will now be delayed until we know that our plans will actually be allowed to be delivered. This week we’ll be away for a few days as an eldership team (minus one due to Covid!) specifically to pray for our church and hear from God for the year ahead; please keep us in your prayers.

A challenge for 2022

As 2022 begins it’s not too late to take on the challenge of reading through the Bible in a year. It will do your faith so much good! It’s not something I do every single year, but this year I’ll be going for it again. You may have done this before. You may have tried it and failed. It may be a completely new idea to you. How about giving it a go in 2022?

“But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.” Psalm 1v2-3 (from the NLT, which is a really readable translation)

If you fancy taking on this challenge here’s a link to a pdf of a great reading plan. It covers the whole Bible over 52 weeks. You can bookmark it, download it or print it from this link. This is the plan I’ll be using in 2022.

I like this plan because it has readings for five days each week, rather than seven, something that works better for me. You could even read all five days in a single session on one day each week if that works best for you. Or you could tackle the Old Testament readings on one day, Psalms/Chronicles on another day and the New Testament readings on a third.

Bottom line: I love the lay out of this plan and, although it’s already Jan 3rd, you’re absolutely not too late to start (though of course you could start at any point during the year!) If you do go for it, let me know how you get on. It really will do you good.

The Winter Warmer: another challenge

One last thing to mention in case you missed it is that our Winter Warmer, scheduled for Friday 7th Jan, has been postponed to Friday 1st April. This event will involve dancing and sharing food and we felt it could be unhelpful right now with Covid levels as high as they are.

Here’s the challenge: we’re going to need a new name for the event.

Suggestions so far include ‘The Easter Extravaganza’ and ‘The Spring Spring’. Can you do better than that? All suggestions welcome. Winning suggestion wins a free ticket. Seriously 😃.

What’s God been up to in YOUR life?

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

On Sunday 9th January we’re looking to have a ‘Testimony Sunday’ at Welcome Church. This will be an opportunity for some of us to share a short ‘testimony’ of what God has been doing in our lives over the last two years during the pandemic. We did this on a previous occasion before the pandemic and it was a huge blessing and encouragement; we need to do it even more now that we’ve lived through this challenging time of loss and separation.

So, if Welcome Church is your church and you have a short testimony (2 – 3 minutes) of God’s faithfulness during the last two years – His presence in times of challenge, an answer to prayer, some way He’s spoken to you or worked in your life or provided for you – we want to hear from you!

We’re looking for a few people to share in each meeting so we can all be encouraged together and give glory to God. If you want to volunteer then please get in touch with Dean Guy by emailing care@allwelcome.uk. We’re really looking forward to hearing from you.

Psalm 145v3-6: “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.
One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts”