Sunday Meetings

Some Welcome Church Updates – Jan 2024

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

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.

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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.

What’s God been up to in YOUR life?

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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”

Changes To Our Sunday Meetings

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Since the pandemic began we’ve made regular adjustments to how we run Sunday meetings, and this will continue in the months ahead. Remember, we only restarted 9am and 11am meetings with kids work eight weeks ago. As it stands we’re still on a journey towards a new normal, so this September we’ll be taking some more steps towards that with some small adjustments as follows:

  • From this Sunday (19th Sept) we’ll still meet at 9am and 11am, but we’ll now be aiming for meetings that are 1hr 15 mins in length (which is pretty much what they’ve actually been all along 😃) 
  • We may begin to reduce the size of the socially distanced seating area since less people want to use it for this purpose. We will ensure there is enough space there for all those who feel the need for it
  • Children will continue to be in for the worship time and then go out to their groups, but their groups will now run until 10.30am for the first meeting and 12.30pm for the second meeting. This will give us 15 minutes that we can use for prayer ministry, for catching up with one another and for people to have tea/coffee together before collecting children
  • From Sunday 26th September we will reintroduce tea/coffee after each meeting
  • We will also reintroduce communion regularly on a Sunday, and begin to make space to pray for people in person too

Because we’re being warned that the pandemic is ‘far from over’ and that some restrictions might be reintroduced, we’ll continue to broadcast the 9am livestream for now (although we do encourage everyone who can attend in person to do so). We’ll also be ready to make further changes as needed, in line with official guidance for churches.

It goes without saying that we should all be careful and vigilant. If you have symptoms of Covid or have tested positive for Covid in the last ten days (with or without symptoms) you should not attend in person; this is not going to be a winter to ‘push through that cold and keep going’!

As we make changes let’s remember that we are a charismatic church; we should expect to encounter God’s presence and for people to use spiritual gifts; we want the genuine presence and power of God to be experienced by us all. With this in mind, although worship times are still a little shorter, let’s expect some God focused, encouraging contributions to help us in our worship. All we ask is that you come forward and use the microphone so everyone, including the livestream, can hear you.

I’m looking forward to an exciting autumn as we continue our new preaching series, I’m looking forward to meeting with my church family, I’m looking forward to encountering God’s presence and I’m even hopeful that we might get to celebrate Christmas together this year too.