Leadership

The Commission Leadership Conference 2025 & More

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

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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Welcome Church Trustees – An Update

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In addition to being a church, Welcome Church is also a registered charity. Being a charity means we can claim Gift Aid on people’s giving, which makes a big difference to what we are able to do as a church to serve our community.

As a charity we have a team of Trustees who are responsible to ensure we operate in ways that are safe, legal and in line with our charitable purposes. Technically speaking the trustees are …

“accountable for the management and administration of Welcome Church in pursuit of the Welcome Church charitable objects as set out in the Company’s Articles of Association.” 🙂

That’s quite a mouthful!

This doesn’t mean the Trustees carry responsibility for the spiritual government of the church or for the leadership of it; responsibility for that sits with the Eldership Team, supported by many other faithful and gifted leaders.

Among other things the Trustees act as the employer for the staff and set the staff salaries. They also agree budgets, agree and review policies and help to keep us abreast of legal changes that could affect us.

Our Trustees usually serve in the role for a three year period, after which they can either step off the team or they can be re-engaged for another three year term. This cycle means we get a good balance of fresh faces, and also of long term wisdom and experience.

Changes

There have been a number of changes to our Trustee Team over the last couple of years, so I wanted to give an updated list of who our trustees now are. First here’s a photo montage to help you recognise them:

In order of appearance:

Mike D is Chair of the Trustees. He joined the church in 1978 (46 years ago!) and has been part of our church family ever since. Mike worked for over 50 years in the construction industry and has served the church in many different roles over the years too. He is also a Trustee of The Useful Wood Company, a social action project started by people from Welcome Church a few years ago.

Mike R has been part of Welcome Church for 17 years. He works as a Chief Underwriting Officer for the UK division of a global insurance company. Mike also serves the church as an elder.

Debo F joined Welcome Church in 2018. She works as a Maritime Law Solicitor and serves the church as part of the Sunday Production Team and the prayer team.

Mel C (who is not a Spice Girl) has been part of Welcome Church for around 7 years. She works in financial audit as a Senior Manager. She serves the church as part of the worship team, the youth team, youth worship, prisons ministry and as a CAP Money Coach. 

Nick H has been a part of Welcome Church for 40 years. He has spent his career working in People related roles, including HR roles within Global Financial Services companies in London. You may also see Nick early on a Sunday morning, as he is one of our Sunday Meeting Managers.

Robin W has been in the church since he was 21 (a total of 43 years). He is a Senior Independent Director for two insurance companies, and a Trustee/Director for the amazing charity Christians Against Poverty (CAP) who we love to work with. He also serves the church as an elder.

Lisa G has been part of the church since 1991. She works as a solicitor and serves the church in both youth work, and in leading the Bereavement Course. She has had many other roles in church life over the years too.

We are well served

I’m sure you’ll agree we are being well served by a highly skilled group of Trustees who each add expertise and experience to the mix. Please do express your appreciation to them all, and support them with your prayers and encouragements.

Lastly, I’d like to say a personal THANK YOU to those who have faithfully served as Trustees during my time at Welcome Church but have, as the right moment came along, stepped aside from the team, namely Phil M, Peter G, John F and of course our much beloved Alan H, a former church elder and trustee who sadly lost his fight with Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic. We miss you.

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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.

The Commission Leadership Conference

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We’re part of a family of churches called Commission, and together we’re on a mission to see thousands of lives transformed, through hundreds of churches, in tens of nations. The recent pandemic has thrown up all sorts of challenges, not least that we’ve been unable to gather for our annual Connect Festival event – but that doesn’t mean we aren’t getting together.

In September this year we’re running a leadership conference, and I’d love lots of us to be there. The event is being held from Wed 28th to Fri 30th September at Citygate Church in Bournemouth. It’s aimed at anyone who leads anything at any level in our church or in the workplace or community. If you don’t lead anything right now but think you might like to one day, you should book in too.

The theme for the conference is:

“Leading for the glory of God”

The conference will include a mix of teaching, worship, seminars and ministry, along with a chance for us to hang out together socially as we enjoy food and maybe even a walk on the beach. Some from our church will be staying over in Bournemouth for the whole event, others will travel down each day, so I’m sure lift shares can be arranged where needed.

Booking is now open and you can click here to go to the booking page. Early bird ticket prices are available until 31st May (there is a small price increase after that, but don’t let that put you off)

This event will be a great investment in our future together as a church and a real encouragement to us all, and the short video below will tell you a bit more about it:

Welcome Church, The Future – Part 3: Leadership

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On Sunday (May 8th) we had our Welcome Church Vision Evening. This week I’ll be blogging about some of the key items we covered. This is part 3 of 5. (You can find Part 1 by clicking here)

Releasing more leadership

As a growing church we’ve recognised the need to release more leadership to help us move forward as a church, and we’ve realised that it can’t be done simply by adding ever larger numbers of people to an Eldership Team that grows and grows. We have a great Eldership Team here at Welcome Church (I would say that) but we recognise a need for more voices, and for more diversity of voices, and also that we can’t effectively lead a church of this size through an eldership team that meets once a week in an evening; we need more gifts to be released.

With that in mind, coming out of our prayer week away together as Elders in January, we made a decision to release two new teams to support the Eldership in shaping and delivering the church’s vision going forward. We have now released the following two leadership teams:

1. An Executive Team

The Executive Team is a small team designed to keep us moving forward in the right direction week by week, reviewing what has gone before and planning for what’s coming up. This team is able to respond rapidly to what needs to be done day by day, to deal with issues as they occur, to troubleshoot problems and to care for the staff team and volunteers. It’s also about ensuring that there’s a seamless relationship between Operations and Ministries, which has not always been the case.

This team consists of myself (Lead Pastor), Darren (Ops Director) and Christopher (see below), along with regular input from Dub (Outreach Pastor) with his excellent outreach gift. All of us are employed by the church and available all week long. This team brings Ops and Ministries together in one team, under the oversight of the Eldership, with freedom to get on and move us forward rapidly in line with Eldership vision and strategy. So far it’s working well, but there’s exciting development too:

We’ve given Christopher a change of job title to Executive Pastor

This means that Chris is being released with more freedom and authority, and will also deputise for me as needed. I’m sure you’ll agree Chris is already having a good impact on us. I’ve been impressed with his leadership skill, his strategic thinking and his ability to see and grasp all the issues, not to mention his fast growing preaching gift. So we’re stepping him into this new role where he won’t replace me but will be leading more freely over lots of what we do.

For clarity, I’m not going anywhere! I’m still the Lead Pastor and I feel very called to the role. The reality is that as well as being Lead Pastor at Welcome Church, I have a wider role within Commission which takes a portion of my time each week. For example, I lead the Commission Hub Team that provides care and oversight to all UK churches, I’m part of the Commission UK Team and am chairing that while Guy Miller is on sabbatical and I’m regularly involved with helping other church Eldership Teams. This outside ministry is part of how we’re called to serve as a church. Having Chris in his new role is supporting and releasing me more in all I do both in Welcome Church and elsewhere. 

As an Eldership we have also released:

2. A Strategic Team

This team is a mix of men and women who we want to speak into and help shape our strategy as a church; it’s about supporting the staff and the Executive Team as they turn Eldership vision into reality; it’s also about speaking into that vision and strategy so that as an Eldership we hear from a wider range of voices with greater diversity of thought and life experience. 

This team has already been meeting and has already started to help shape things. The team as it stands includes Dub, Dean, Chris and myself from the Eldership Team, alongside Darren and Uti from Ops. We’ve also included Meg , Jo, Beryl and Simon. These are all people who I know we would recognise as gifted leaders and who already carry weight in the church.

Beryl, Darren, Dean, Steve, Uti, Jo, Meg, Simon, Chris, Dub. The cats are not actually part of the team, but they’re still important.

We meet each month to talk about strategy, to shape what’s coming up and to speak into our key issues and events. As an eldership we’re delighted with the result of releasing this team; it’s already influencing things in a good way.

We still believe in eldership

For clarity, neither of these teams is replacing our Eldership. Our theology hasn’t changed. Eldership is Biblical; Elders are given by God to oversee the affairs of the church … but they don’t have to lead everything. Part of their role is to release and oversee other gifted leaders and to create an environment where everyone can flourish.

Tomorrow I’m going to blog about our exciting plans for the autumn.