Finance

Some Welcome Church Updates – February 2025

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Spring is in the air, daffodils and crocuses are appearing in the garden, and it will be March on Saturday. As we come to the end of February, here are a few Welcome Church Updates and prayer requests to keep you in the picture:

Grant Applications – some good news

Our grant application to Your Fund Surrey, who we are applying to for funding towards launching our new Community Grocery, went in last week. We received over 1000 positive comments on the Your Fund Surrey website, which we were very pleased with.

Here is a word cloud we received from Your Fund Surrey about the comments people made:

And here is a Pie Chart showing how positive people felt:

The application is for just under £500,000, and we will hear back about it in June. Please pray for a positive outcome.

In the meantime we also applied to an organisation called The Benefact Trust, who are a Christian grant funder. They replied very quickly with a “YES”, and we received a cheque from them this week for £80,000. This is a wonderful encouragement and a sign of God’s provision for us as a church.

We are looking at some other grant funders now too, and would love to raise £800,000 in total from grants, so do pray for this whole process.

Big Weekend Away

This month we opened the booking for our Welcome Church Big Weekend Away which takes place on the Bank Holiday weekend in August – Friday 22nd to Monday 25th August 2025.

Roughly half of the available places have been booked so far, so don’t delay booking – you could miss out. When it’s full it’s full!

The weekend away takes place at Braggers Wood Camp Site in the New Forest. We have the whole place to ourselves this year.

You’ll get to enjoy connecting with others from Welcome Church over delicious meals (all included), fun activities, day trips, or simply relaxing in our marquee. We will also seek God together as a church family, enjoying times of worship and teaching, and looking at what it means to belong to His family. We’d love to see you there; there is something for everyone!

As a special offer there is a 25% discount on all bookings made before 1st May. To book your place please use this link.

Baptisms

This Sunday morning, 2nd March, we will be baptising people at our 9am and 11am meetings. We’ll be baptising a total of 8 people, 4 in each of our meetings.

Baptisms are always a great moment to celebrate what God is doing in our church and a great opportunity to invite friends to church too.

Please be praying for all those getting baptised this weekend.

New Pastoral Lead

Don’t forget, as I posted in my blog earlier this week, we are now looking to recruit a new Pastoral Lead for Welcome Church. This is a full time, senior role, based in our church offices. The details of the vacancy can be found by clicking here.

We have had some interesting contacts so far, but please don’t hesitate to share this opportunity far and wide. In the mean time we would really value your prayers that God leads us to the right person to fill this key vacancy.

Some other employment opportunities will follow as the year goes by, so watch this space for those too.

Stay connected with everything happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog for weekly updates sent straight to your inbox

Church Gate Gift Day Results

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On Sunday we announced the results of our latest Gift Days for our Church Gate project. It was an incredible result, and in case you missed it here’s the figure as it stood on Sunday morning:

Since Sunday morning I believe it has gone up a little higher, but I’m still waiting for the full details on that.

Thanks

The main thing I want to do in this blog is say a very big THANK YOU, on behalf of the whole Eldership Team, to everyone who gave a gift, large or small. It was a joy to see people of all ages taking part, from across the many different nationalities that make up our church. I also loved seeing people who’ve been part of the church for many years joyfully giving alongside others who’ve only just joined us. Wow!

100% of the money given will go towards the purchase (now completed) and the delivery of Church Gate, and when we add this to the money raised during the Gift Days that we held in November, it means that what has been given and pledged now reaches our initial target: to raise £2m in 2 years – except we’ve done it in just 8 months 😮

Moving forward

On Sunday September 15th we will hold a Prayer and Vision evening to kick off the new term (details to follow). We’ll give a full update on that evening about where we’ve got to and how we plan to go forward. For now though, let’s give glory to God for all He’s done for us. It’s a joy to be part of such a generous church and to be on this great mission together.

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.

This Sunday: Preparing for our last Gift Day

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This coming Sunday (26th Nov) will be the last of our three Welcome Church Gift Sundays for buying Church Gate (click here for more info). We’ve made great progress with our giving for this so far, but we do have a bit further to go to hit our target. I’m looking forward to Sunday 🙂

‘All In’

These Gift Days are an ‘All In’ moment for our church. We’d love everyone who’s part of Welcome Church to participate in proportion to their faith and their ability. Because of this, at the end of the meeting this week our Kids and Youth will be joining us for the ‘giving moment’. We’ll get to worship God together and to give as we do that, thanking Him for all He provides for us.

As a team we’ve felt from the start that giving towards Church Gate should be a ‘church family’ moment. Our goal has been for everyone to participate in some way, including our children and young people. That moment will come on Sunday morning, and parents will have an opportunity to enable their kids or youth to come to the front and joyously give to this project. 

We wanted parents to know about this in advance for two key reasons:

1) Because this is a great discipleship opportunity

Gift Days don’t come around very often, and buying a building comes along perhaps once in a generation. We want all our young people to be able to say they participated in buying Church Gate, and that they gave to God from their hearts, regardless of the amount.

As they participate, our children and young people will learn about the practice of giving to God, and, even more importantly, they will learn about God’s provision for us – that he gives us what we need and is a generous Father. The world will teach our kids that money should be held onto, that it will bring us security and happiness, but Jesus came to free us from slavery to money, and release us into the cheerful generosity that characterises our Heavenly Father.

We believe this will be as good an opportunity as we ever get to teach our kids about how we can worship God through our generosity. Given that children tend to learn more by what we do than by what we say, let’s not miss this moment; let’s enable our children and young people to participate in what God is doing though us as a church. Whether we have kids or not, let’s all model something together as a family as we step out in faith together.

2) So you can be ready to help your children join in

If you’re a parent we would encourage you to plan a moment during this week where you talk about Church Gate to your kids and ask them to think and pray about what God would like them to give. These conversations can be so encouraging, especially as children are so often much quicker to get excited about giving than we are.

You’ll probably need to remind them (and yourself!) to bring their money on Sunday, or if you’d prefer, you can give them some of your own money to put in, enabling them to participate in the offering that way. Doing that is actually a great picture of how God enables us to give, by providing us with all that we have. You may also need to actually get some cash out for them – so much of our spending these day is done through contactless payments that we rarely have cash in the house!

Remember: don’t worry about the amount. We talked last week about the widow who gave two small coins (see Mark 12v41-44). In Jesus’ Kingdom, it’s not about the amount, it’s about developing a generous heart that loves Jesus. Whatever your kids sincerely give will be lovingly and joyfully received by Jesus; He loves a cheerful giver, no matter their age! 

A last thought

The Bible teaches parents to “bring (children) up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6v4), and to “Start children off in the way they should go” (Proverbs 22v6). This Sunday is a great opportunity for some family discipleship, so go for it parents, and let’s go for it as a whole church family together too. See you on Sunday!

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.

Our New ‘Giving Points’

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This Sunday (19th Nov) will be the second of three Gift Sundays towards buying Church Gate (for more information about that please click here).

Some people have asked how the giving went on week 1 … but no one should see a job half done (or 1/3 done as it is in this case!) We’ll give the full results on Sunday Dec 3rd. At this stage I’ll just say this: we made a great start, and we still have a way to go, so let’s step out in faith together. I’m looking forward to Sunday 🙂

Giving Points

Aside from the Gift Days, as a church we are funded only by people’s generous giving (plus a small amount of building rental income). We don’t get money from a ‘Head Office’ or from anywhere else. As a charity, all that we do as a church, all that we do for our town and all that we give away comes from what people give.

In the past, like most churches, we used to pass an ‘offering basket’ on a Sunday morning, and people would give as part of their worship. We stopped doing that when Covid began (we had to!) and we never started again. The reason for not re-starting came down to a significant cultural change: almost all of the giving had moved online.

Well before Covid struck we’d already reached a point where passing the basket had become slightly embarrassing! Person after person passed the basket on, but put nothing into it because they’d already given online by standing order. People were giving very faithfully, but it didn’t look wonderful, especially to guests!

With this in mind, we’re not going to start passing the baskets again in the foreseeable future, but we do want to make giving as easy as possible for all who want to take part. We recognise that not everyone is able to give online, and that some people simply prefer to give by cash or by cheque, and that’s 100% fine. Our goal is to make giving as accessible as possible for everyone, and let’s not forget that regular giving is part of our worship as Christians. To help with this …

We have installed three giving points

The giving points can be found next to each of the ‘pads’ that are used for the church car park: two are in The Chapel and one is in the front building. Here’s a photo of each of them, with a close up of the one by the rear Car Park doors. If you Zoom in close on one of them you’ll see Deano in the background pretending to do some work:

In The Chapel by the Welcome Lounge
In The Chapel by the rear car park doors
A close up
In the front building – see if you can spot Deano

Each giving point has three parts to it:

  • A small, electronic giving pad that you can use to give by card and by phone. If the screen is blank just push the little button on to top get it started
  • A sign with instructions for using the giving pad. It’s very easy and you can even add your name and details so we can claim Gift Aid if appropriate
  • A black metal ‘post box’ where you can post cash or cheques or envelopes – these are emptied regularly!

Whilst it’s a bit easier for us administratively when people give online, however you choose to give and whatever the size of your gift, we hugely appreciate it. Let’s all just go for it in faith in whatever way works best for us.

On behalf of the whole team, let me say a big THANK YOU for all your faithful giving.

2 Corinthians 9v6-7 says:

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Why does God love a cheerful giver? Because God is a cheerful giver!

He is a generous and compassionate Father, and He promises to provide for us as His children. He has given us all we need for life and godliness. It’s impossible for us to out-give Him, so let’s give faithfully, as part of our worship, trusting Him to meet all of our needs.

If you have any questions about using a Giving Point, please just ask us, we’ll be happy to help, and if you want to find out about giving online then please just follow this link. Thanks!

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Church Gate – Our Next Big Adventure

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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.

Welcome Church, The Future – Part 1: Looking Back

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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.

On Mission With Commission

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Welcome Church is part an international family of churches called Commission. Each summer we get together with the other UK based Commission churches, and some from further afield, for a festival where we worship together, hear great teaching and have a whole lot of fun and games. For the past two summers this has been cancelled due to Covid, but it’s back on in summer 2022. Connect Festival will run from 25th to 29th August at the Bath and West Show Ground in Shepton Mallet. Please click here to register your interest. Bookings will open soon.

At the Festival each summer there’s usually been an offering to help fund our international mission as a family of churches. It goes to fund church plants, leadership training courses, ministry to the poor, care of churches around the world and more. The offering helps fund some amazing things that we value as a church, and lots of us would normally have given to this offering in person at the event.

Because there’s been no conference in 2021 there’s been no offering, but the mission continues. With this in mind we’d love to invite everyone to consider making a gift to the Commission offering; a gift from Welcome Church. We’d like to ask every person to think about it prayerfully and to give with faith.

If you’re up for this challenge you can give in two ways:
1. You can give online via bank transfer to Welcome Church and mark it as being for the Commission offering. Click here for a link to our online giving details.

2. You can give cash or cheque by putting it in an envelope, labelling it for the Commission Offering and dropping it into the office during the week or into the box at the information point on a Sunday morning. (Please make any cheques payable to Welcome Church.)


Thank you in advance for your giving. We’ll gather it together over the next 2 or 3 weeks and send it as one gift from us all. Here’s a video that explains a lot more about what the offering is for:

Domestic Violence: Helping Victims, Getting Fit

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During Lockdown incidences of Domestic Violence have risen at the same time as charitable giving has fallen , so we’re raising money for Your Sanctuary, a Woking based charity who help victims of domestic violence and their families.

Our Fund Raiser is off to a good start with around £1,500 being raised already and a distance of over 1000 miles being covered so far (which takes us across Holland and Germany and to the far side of Poland …)

We will post distance updates and photos on our Welcome Church social media accounts each weekend, so do look out for those.

You can check out the details of our ambitious plan by clicking here or reading this recent blog. People have been joining in by running, walking, cycling, scooting and even roller skating. However you get about, as long as it’s under your own steam, you’re welcome to join in.

We’ve started a Strava Club too – (“Welcome Church Goes Around The World”). You’re welcome to join that and help us rack up the miles. Why not see if you can top the leader board?

However long or short your daily exercise, every distance counts. We want everyone to join in, whatever their age or fitness level. Don’t forget to submit your distances by emailing them to aroundtheworld@allwelcome.uk.  We don’t mind if it’s in miles, kilometres, yards, centimetres, cubits, stadia, furlongs, fathoms or leagues – we will convert it and add it all up.

Let’s have fun doing this together and let’s give generously to make a real difference. This fun video will tell you more:

John Kirkby, founder of CAP, speaking at Welcome Church

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This Sunday morning, 1st March, we are honoured to have an excellent and much sought after guest speaker at Welcome Church for our 9am and 11am meetings: Dr John Kirkby, the founder of CAP (Christians Against Poverty).

Everyone is welcome to join us for this special occasion.

CAP

About CAP

John started Christians Against Poverty in 1996, when God called him to sacrifice his career in finance and use his knowledge of the industry to help the poor. Since then John has seen CAP develop into an organisation serving tens of thousands of individuals every year, helping those struggling with debt, unemployment and life controlling habits, and equipping people to live well on a low income.

CAP has now helped thousands of people all across the UK to get out of life destroying debt. Our own CAP debt advice centre, which is one of our Welcome Works initiatives, opened in 2019, and is already making a difference to people’s lives. This adds to the work already being done with CAP in Woking by our friends at Christ Church and New Life Church too. You can see the full range of CAP services on offer at Welcome Church by clicking here.

CAP was featured last year in a BBC Two documentary The Debt Saviours, which followed the lives of some CAP clients and frontline workers in the middle of the current UK poverty epidemic. It showed how CAP is committed to transforming lives in partnership with local churches across the UK. CAP has also won many different awards, and John Kirkby himself recently received a CBE. CAP is also recommended by Martin Lewis, Founder and Chair of Money Saving Expert.

Come and join us for the morning

If you would like to hear John, please join us for either our 9am or 11am meeting. There will be great coffee, and tasty pastries and doughnuts available before and after each meeting – all free of charge. As for all our Sunday meetings there will also be kids and youth work taking place.

It’s an absolute privilege to have John with us, so make sure not to miss it.

Here us a link to the event on Facebook too.

Saving Lives, Helping The Poor

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On Sundays June 9th and 16th we will be having the final Gift Days for our New Building Project. We are going to give away a tithe (10%) of what we collect to a project working with the poorest of the poor … and the good news is that every gift we give to them on this occasion can be doubled!

Child Survival

As a church we are already sponsoring many children in Togo through Compassion UK, and it’s a country with a lot of needs. One of the big challenges is around infant mortality and health in pregnancy.

At present in Togo:

  • 1 in 20 babies die before their first birthday … and most of these are from preventable causes
  • 1 in 58 women also die

These are shocking statistics, and Compassion are working to change this though their Child Survival Projects (CSP). These CSP’s are run by local churches in Togo. They work with mothers throughout their pregnancy and for the first year of the child’s life to provide:

  • Medical support
  • Vaccinations
  • Basic provisions – including safe water, hygiene kits and nutritious food
  • Education – on how to care for a child – remembering that many of the mothers are little more than children themselves
  • Skills training – to teach work skills that can help them earn a living
  • Spiritual support and mentoring

These projects are so important that for a short while they are receiving matched funding from our UK Government.

Our donations to this vital work (before Gift Aid) will be matched, pound for pound, by the UK government

So what we give to them will be doubled

This means that if we hit our target of £300,000, and we pass £30,000 on to Compassion, it will be doubled to £60,000 – enough to fund a project for several years.

Jesus told us that he was sent to bring good news to the poor. Let’s join him in that mission as we come to our Gift Days.

If you have any questions, please do ask.