Welcome Church

Mother’s Day Plans at Welcome Church

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

We’re looking forward to a big Sunday this weekend at Welcome Church. It’s Mother’s Day, and we’re going to be giving thanks for LOTS of new babies who’ve been born into our church over the last year or so.

Baby Thanksgiving

A baby thanksgiving, sometimes referred to as a dedication, is a great opportunity for us to give thanks to God. It’s not a Christening or a baptism, but it is an act of worship to God, as parents make promises before God, and we as a church stand with them and pray for them. It also follows the example of Jesus, who was presented to God as an infant at the Temple.

On the day we’ll also ‘lay hands’ on these children as we pray for them and bless them in the name of Jesus, using some very well known words from Numbers 6v24-26:

“May the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.”

According to Hebrews 11v20-21, blessing someone is something we can do by faith, so we really can and should expect God to hear us, and to bring great blessings into the lives of these children and their families. Let’s go for this in faith together!

At our 9am meeting we currently have 10 babies lined up to be prayed for, including one set of twins, and at our 11am meeting we have 14 babies ready to be prayed for. It’s not too late to join them if you didn’t realise this was going on, or if you just forgot to sign up. Do get in touch with the church office and let us know.

Marking Mother’s Day

In addition to praying for the babies and their families, we’ll also be marking Mother’s Day with special refreshments: there will be pancakes available for all on arrival, in addition to our usual coffee, tea and pastries.

We’ll also be giving a chocolate gift to every woman who is with is on the day – young or old, whether you’re a mum or not –  because you all bring so much to our church family!

Below is a photo of a painting that Sabrina did to mark the occasion for us this year; you’ll be able to view the original on Sunday.

Invitations

This Sunday could also be a great opportunity for you to invite someone to church. Why not invite mum, grandma or great grandma if they are still with you? If you have grown up kids, why not invite them? If none these apply to you, invite a friend anyway.

We’ll have a great meeting with excellent free refreshments, lively worship, a poignant video and a clear message about Jesus, to accompany giving thanks to God for all the new life He has given us. And you could even go out for lunch together afterwards.

I look forward to seeing you at the weekend

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Church Gate – latest updates and prayer requests

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Our plans for Church Gate are continuing to move forward. In case anyone is unsure, Church Gate is the three storey office block next door to our current site. We’ve bought it and are in process of redeveloping it for use as a Social Action Hub with a Community Grocery on the ground floor, and also to serve our Children’s and Youth work each week too.

This week an inspection of the roof was carried out, so I took the opportunity to take a closer look myself – courtesy of the cherry picker. Well… why not?

For clarity, I don’t know much about roofing but I enjoyed the ride despite an innate fear of heights. I also took note of how much higher the cherry picker at the Hilton Hotel behind me was – I don’t think that’s a job for me!

Progress Update

In terms of a progress update, things continue to move forward on track:

  • Various building surveys have been carried out (such as the one on the roof)
  • Some grant applications have been submitted. Benefact Trust came back very quickly with a grant of £80,000, and we are now waiting to hear back from some others, including our biggest application which is to Your Fund Surrey
  • The floor layouts have been finalised
  • The architects drawings are in
  • Planning Permission for a new entrance has been submitted, and we expect to hear back during April (we are not expecting this to be a problem)
  • A thorough refurbishment of the lift has been commissioned
  • Various other quotes are coming in
  • The main part of the project is going out to tender next week, with quotes expected during April, and building work expected to begin over the summer for completion during the autumn
  • The Grocery team are in process of finalising an agreement with The Message Trust who we will be working with for the grocery
  • Outstanding Gift Day pledges continue to be fulfilled, alongside a few extra gifts too – so a big thank you for that. By the way, it’s still not too late to give to this amazing project!

In summary, things are moving ahead well and I’m looking forward to seeing the hoardings go up and the building work begin.

Prayer requests

Please be praying about this project as it goes ahead. Here are some specific prayer requests:

  • For a simple ‘YES’ to our planning application. As I said above, we’re not expecting any issues, but let’s not be complacent
  • For the release of significant grant funding, especially from Your Fund Surrey
  • For good quotes for the work to be done, with prices we are happy to pay
  • For wisdom as we pick the best main contractor to work with
  • For a great relationship to be formed with The Message Trust
  • For the whole Grocery Team – especially Helen who will be leading a lot of this through in the months ahead
  • For God to release all the finance we need to do this well
  • For no unexpected surprises – talking of which…

What about the state of the roof?

We knew there were a couple of leaks from the roof when we bought the building, and this week was the moment the situation was assessed properly. The outcome was not as positive as our best hopes, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been either.

In summary, repairs are needed to the flashing around the gutters, and some of the metal panels you can see from below need to be replaced or overlaid too. It’s a bit more work than we’d hoped for, but not outside our range of expectations, and with what we’d seen inside it could have been a whole lot worse.

We can’t call this an unexpected surprise, since we knew this was a real possibility from the start, but please be praying that there are no unexpected extras across the rest of the project as the work goes forward.

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Go Nine: Creating Space For Growth

/ Steve Petch / 1 Comment

As a church, our vision is to see Life Transformed Through Jesus, and our Sunday meetings play a vital role in that.

Both of our meetings are growing, but the 11am meeting is now reaching capacity on some weeks, and this is the meeting where we see the most first-time guests and have the greatest potential for numerical growth as a church.

When the meeting gets full it can be hard for visitors to find a seat—especially families or groups arriving together. If people feel there’s no room, they may not come back.

With this in mind we’re launching a new initiative called Go Nine

What is Go Nine?

Go Nine is very simple: to create space for more people to encounter Jesus at Welcome Church, we’re asking for 150 committed, pioneering individuals  – including children and youth – to move from the 11am meeting to the 9am meeting on a long-term basis.

We know this is a big ask for those who move, but our church has always been willing to be flexible and make sacrifices for the sake of the gospel—it’s in our DNA. We are people who take the gospel seriously, so I know this will be taken seriously too.

What do you want me to do?

If you’re already committed to the 9am meeting, we’re not asking you to do anything other than to pray for this initiative, and get ready to welcome some more new people.

If you attend the 11am meeting, we’d love you to take some time to pray and reflect on whether this is the right move for you to make. Please discuss it with others you know and love in the church—and don’t forget to factor in the impact on any children you have and on there friendships too. Let’s do this in community and not just make solo decisions. LifeGroup leaders: you might even decide to move as a whole group.

If you do decide to move then we don’t want you to do it straight away – we’ve set aside Sunday 11th May as ‘Moving Day’.

Why 150 people?

We don’t want everyone, or even most people, to move – only 150.

Here’s the big picture:

  • The 11am meeting is about 110 adults larger than 9am
  • On any given Sunday, up to ⅓ of the church is absent for various reasons
  • Roughly 25% of attendees are in the children’s and youth work each week

Adding these facts together, if 150 people (including children and youth) move to 9am, this will free up some helpful space for more people at the 11am meeting each week, whilst keeping that meeting strong and also not overcrowding the 9am meeting.

It gets full sometimes!

Next Steps

On Sundays at the 11am meeting we’ll be giving out response cards for you to take away, pray through, and discuss with others. We’re not looking for a quick decision—we want this to be a faith-filled, prayerful step.

If you feel called to move, then you can then return your card to a dedicated Go Nine response box on a Sunday morning, or you can drop it into the church offices.

The deadline to let us know is Easter Sunday (April 20th).

That gives us three weeks before ‘Moving Day’ to work through any implications for our serving teams and to be ready. By the way, we’re assuming that people’s current Sunday serving roles will move meeting with them; this is not a time to stop serving, though it could be a time for some to step up!

When do we want people to move?

We’re not asking anyone to move immediately. Remember we’ve set aside a specific date:

The 11th May is Moving Day!

Do I have to move if I don’t want to?

Not at all! We don’t want everyone to move from 11am to 9am – only enough to create some extra space. If you’ve prayed about it and feel that staying at 11am is right for you, there’s no pressure to move. We’re also aware that many people, for a whole host of reasons, regularly vary which meeting they attend, and that’s fine – we have room for flexibility. The Go Nine initiative won’t be for everyone.

Got More Questions?

If you have questions then please head over to our dedicated Go Nine webpage. You can access that by clicking here. It has lots more information and answers to some common questions.

Let’s remember why we’re doing this:

Back in 2017 (Yes! It was almost eight years ago!) we asked for some people to move from the 9am to the 11am meeting because it was struggling. That decision helped 11am grow well, just as we’d hoped, and it’s now our biggest meeting! Now, to keep reaching new people, we need to take action again. Go Nine is simply the next step in creating a healthy culture for growth.

All welcome, come as you are.

Thanks in advance for taking this seriously and thanks for all your prayers

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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.

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Welcome Church is Recruiting

/ Steve Petch / 2 Comments

A New Pastoral Lead

I shared in a blog at the start of this year that we would be looking for new some new, employed members of the Welcome Church team this year, and we’re excited to say that our new Pastoral Lead is the first role we’re looking to fill.

We need to increase our ability and capacity to respond to the more urgent and immediate pastoral needs of the church, and we also need to prepare to support the increasing pastoral needs that will come both with further growth, and through our Welcome Works ministries, such as the upcoming community grocery. 

Who are we looking for?

We’re looking for someone who can lead the planning and the practical delivery of pastoral care across the church. They will also bring leadership to our small group ministries – our ‘LifeGroups’ and ‘LearnGroups’. These small groups will become increasingly important for maintaining our family culture and ethos, as we become a larger church and are key to pastoral care too. 

The right person will be someone who does some of the ‘doing’ – such as responding to urgent pastoral needs – but we’re also particularly looking for someone who can enable and support the skilled and dedicated leaders we already have operating in these areas; we are looking for a leader of leaders who’s able to think strategically about how we care well for those who God brings into our family, and who can build teams and work through others.

This is a key role in our church and a senior one.

We’ll be searching for the right person through a number of avenues, and one of those is through this blog. If you’re interested to know more, we’ve developed a job specification and details of how to apply which you can access via this link. Please don’t be shy in coming forward if you feel something stirring in your heart and think this may be something you’d like to explore further, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch for a confidential chat – we’d love to hear from you.

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Time To Have Your Say

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Hello! It’s Dub Everitt here, Outreach Pastor at Welcome Church, and I’m excited to be guest-writing Steve’s blog this week!

I want to update you on the renovation of our new building – the ‘Church Gate’ office block – and invite you to take action today to help make a huge difference in our community.

An Incredible Journey So Far

Many of you played a vital role in our gift days in November 2023 and June 2024, helping us raise an incredible £2 million toward the £3 million purchase of Church Gate, which we completed (with the help of a mortgage!) in May 2024. Of the money given so far, £400,000 has been set aside towards the renovation costs.

One of the key ways we’ll use this space is to launch a Community Grocery – a project that will provide affordable food and essential support services to those who need it most.

What Is A Community Grocery?

A Community Grocery is a ‘social supermarket’ designed to help families struggling with the cost of living. It’s an initiative founded by The Message Trust in Manchester, offering deeply discounted food while preserving dignity and choice for members, who can select the items they need to best support themselves.

For just £5 per year, people can sign up for membership, and then they can shop for between £5 and £12.50 a week, saving up to £50 per week—that’s £2,500 a year!

But it’s more than just groceries. Members can also connect to our other initiatives such as debt advice, money coaching, cooking courses, mental health & wellbeing groups, job clubs, and more. In 2024, we helped 169 individuals through these services, and this new space will allow us to expand our impact to reach 1,000 grocery members in our first year.

This is a project that will change lives in our community.

Where Are We Now?

We’ve been working closely with our architects, Plan A – the same team who were behind the design of our chapel, which we opened in 2020. The renovation plans for Church Gate are now complete, and the costs for redevelopment and for fitting out the building have been estimated at £1.2 million.

We have the first £400,000, and we’re now working hard to secure the remaining £800,000 through grants. If all goes to plan, we’ll start construction in June or July and open the doors before the end of the year.

It’s Time To Ask For Your Support!

We recently submitted our first grant application to a Christian Grant Funder, and the feedback was amazing:

“Hi Dub, just to let you know I’ve read your draft and it’s EXCELLENT! Honestly, brilliant. I have no doubt our trustees will want to make a contribution. I wanted to congratulate you on such a well-planned project that is clearly going to change (and probably save) lives.”

This funder will confirm their decision by mid-February, so let’s be praying for a positive outcome!

The largest grant we’re applying for is £497,000 from Your Fund Surrey, part of Surrey County Council. We’ve had great conversations with their team, and we’re preparing our application ahead of the February 28th deadline.

But we now need your help to get it across the line.

Here’s Your Call To Action!

To help our application to succeed, we need to show strong local support – and that’s where YOU come in. We are now looking to gain at least 1,000 comments on Surrey County Council’s “Have Your Say” webpage to demonstrate how much our community supports this project.

At the time of writing, we have 692 comments, which means we still need 308 more.

Can you take 2 minutes to help?

If so, it’s very quick and easy to do, and fairly self-explanatory. Here are the four steps:

1. Click on this link to go through to the Have Your Say webpage

2. Hit the big smiley face on the page.

3. Leave a short comment about why you support the Community Grocery and any other comments you may want to make, and then add your email address when prompted to do so

4. Check your e-mails for a link to click on to confirm that the comments you made are yours. If the link doesn’t arrive do check your junk box too

That’s it—you’ll be done before your kettle boils!

Your endorsement, along with others, could help to secure nearly £500,000 to support people in need across our town.

One Last Thing: Please Spread the Word!

Once you’ve shared your comment, please pass the link to the Have Your Say webpage on to others: to your friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, or anyone who cares about making a difference in our community. Please feel free to share it on your social media feeds too.

The more people we can get behind this, the greater the impact we can have together.

Thanks in advance for all your help

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This Sunday at Welcome Church

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I hope you’re enjoying our new preaching series on Romans – I think we’re off to a great start.

This Sunday at Welcome Church we have a guest speaker, and he won’t be speaking from Romans. He’s a church planter from a context of persecution and this means that, for security reasons, we won’t be able to livestream our Sunday morning meeting as we normally do, or post the message on the internet afterwards. Please let me encourage you to be there in person if at all possible.

Our guest will be speaking at both the 9am and 11am meetings, and we’ll also gather for a prayer meeting at 6pm (All welcome. Why not bring your kids and teach them to pray?) where he’ll share some more stories, and help us to pray for what’s going on in his part of the world. This means that even those serving on kids and youth on Sunday morning this week will get a chance to hear him speak and connect to what’s going on.

I look forward to seeing you at the weekend.

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Welcome Church Staff Team Updates

/ Steve Petch / 1 Comment

Happy New Year!

I know it’s a bit late to say it, but this is my first Welcome Church blog post of 2025! Thanks for reading this far 🙂

We had a great Christmas and New Year season at Welcome Church. I talked about our Carol Services in a previous post, and this year we also introduced a Watchnight Celebration as a brand new event on New Year’s Eve. It was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to next year already. Put it in your diary now!

New Year’s Eve at Welcome Church

Staff Team Updates

We have some important changes happening within our church staff team this year.

As the church grows, so do the demands on our team, and we’ve certainly felt the strain of being understaffed in 2024. If you haven’t worked for a church I know it’s hard to imagine what people do all day, but believe me: we are incredibly busy.

For clarity, Welcome Church has more than doubled in size since I arrived 7 years ago, but the employed team is smaller now than it was back then. Everyone is running flat out, and we’ve only survived thanks to some very kind and committed office volunteers who we appreciate so much.

I’d like to share four updates:

First: Jonathan and Sabrina – Leadership Trainees

Jonathan and Sabrina’s time with us will come to an end in June this year, giving us roughly five more months to enjoy and appreciate their contribution. They’re currently praying about their next steps, which are complicated by some VISA challenges. Let’s support them in prayer as they seek God’s will for the future.

Second: Dean – Pastoral Care

Dean, one of our elders, has been working full-time on staff for more than 10 years now. Starting from January 20th, he’ll reduce his hours to three days a week, returning to his passion for architecture on the other two days. In time, he may step out of his staff role entirely. This creates a gap in pastoral care that we’ll need to address.

These first two changes further stretch an already understaffed team. Recruitment will be essential this year, and details on that will follow at the right time. Watch this space 😮

Third: Organisational Leadership

To help the church thrive into the future, we need to strengthen our organisational leadership, which is all about how we steward and align all of our resources to fulfil our vision effectively. This will require some big-picture thinking and also some adjustments to some of our policies, procedures, and ways of working.

To address this, after discussions with the Eldership Team and Trustees, I’ve invited Robin W to step into a new role on an interim basis. Starting immediately, Robin will work two days a week over the next year, focusing on reshaping our organisational leadership. His work will also help us define the future shape of the staff team and help to refine how we operate as a growing church. Part of Robin’s success will be that he replaces himself at the right time and steps back out of the role.

This is an unexpected but exciting step for Robin, and he feels God has been leading him to this role for a while now. I’m eager to make the most of this opportunity to prepare us for the future. It also means he’s stepping back from being a Trustee for the next season. In a business this role might get called Chief Administrative Office, but as a church we’re giving it the title ‘Executive Pastor’ – which leads into the fourth update…

Fourth: Christopher Hawes – New Job Title

Christopher has held the title Executive Pastor for a couple of years, although his role was very different from the one Robin will be taking on and we used the title in a completely different way. To better reflect his actual responsibilities, Christopher’s new job title will now be Teaching Pastor. While his job role remains unchanged, we feel this title better captures his primary focus, and he’s fully supportive of the change.

More changes to come

These are the first four changes for 2025, and several more will follow as we seek to grow and strengthen the staff team. Let’s all show our love and support to each of these individuals as they step into what God has both for them and for our church in this new season.

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Christmas At Welcome Church

/ Steve Petch / 1 Comment

Last Sunday we had our “Carol Service For Woking”, and what a day it was! We held four services across the day, with more than 2,400 people involved, either attending as guests or giving their time to serve in many different ways.

Whilst the younger children enjoyed fun Christmas parties in the front building, those of us in the chapel were treated to some incredible carols and performance pieces, alongside videos, readings and a short talk from yours truly. Somehow the event team even gave us fireworks and indoor snow! I was blown away by it all, and I’m still finding snow piled up in various places…

It would be unfair to single out any individual for comment, because so many people went above and beyond to make the day happen. Personally the thing that stood out to me most was the quality of our musicians and singers who knocked it out of the park time after time. To say I was impressed is a massive understatement. I’m looking forward to next year already!

If you weren’t able to attend or you just want to re-live the fun, you can watch the service for yourself on this link:

I want to say a very big THANK YOU to everyone who was involved, and who gave their time to serve in all the different ways. You are all amazing and I hope you had fun. Here are a few pics from the day too:

Christmas Dates

We have a great programme events still to come across the festive season:

Sunday 22nd December: Family Meetings at 9am & 11am

On Sunday 22nd we’re holding all age meetings, suitable for everyone. This offers us a chance to be together as a whole church family, across all the generations. Each meeting will last around one hour and we’ll have a lot fun.

Our Welcome Team and Brew Crew will be hosting us superbly as always, and our amazing Welcome Tots leaders are providing a small team to run the Tots room for any parents of 0-3s who would prefer to make use of it.

Christmas Day: join us at 10am

On Christmas Day we’ll have one, all age meeting at 10am. It will be about 45 minutes long and suitable for all. Parents: if your children would like to bring/wear a gift they’ve received there may be a chance to share it with everyone, and don’t forget to wear your own Christmas jumper too.

Sunday 29th December: no meetings

We won’t be meeting on Sunday 29th December this year. We hope you enjoy doing something festive and fun with family and friends instead.

Tuesday 31st December: Watch Night Celebration, from 10pm until 2025

We are gathering for our very first Watchnight celebration on New Year’s Eve to thank God for all he’s done in 2024, and to commit the New Year to him. Come and join us to pray, worship and celebrate!

If you’re planning to come to Watchnight it would help us if you would click here to let us know you’re coming. There is absolutely no requirement to do this – you’re free to just turn up, and I know some won’t decide until the last moment. Letting us know is simply about helping us work out a few details in terms of seating and refreshments.

Sunday 5th January 2025

We’ll be back to our usual 9am and 11am meetings on Sunday 5th, with kids and youth work in full swing too. I’ll be preaching an encouraging message to kick off the New Year and I’ll also be sharing important news about a few changes within our Staff Team. Please don’t miss it!

Welcome Church Office Closure

After a very busy year, the church offices close this Friday afternoon, 20th December. We will reopen with a ‘skeleton crew’ on Thursday 2nd January, and be back to full strength on Monday 6th. We’re all looking forward to a good break, and I hope you get one too.

Thanks for reading, and let me wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

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

Some Key Items For Prayer – December 2024

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We would love you all to be praying for our church and for our nation in the weeks ahead. Here are a few key items to pray for during this Christmas and New Year season:

Carol Services

Our Welcome Church ‘Carol Service For Woking’ is running on Sunday 15th December – please do invite your friends. You can book your free tickets by clicking here.

We’re running four services on the day, at 11am, 2pm, 4.30pm and 7pm. Tickets have been going fast, with over 2,300 people booked to attend so far this year. The 7pm meeting will also be live-streamed.

Please pray that the whole day goes well, that everyone involved in putting the services on would be fit and healthy, and that lots of people would connect to Jesus and come back to join us as a church again in the year ahead.

Alpha

The final night of our latest Alpha Course took place on Wednesday this week. Around 90 people completed the course with us this term, exploring the big questions of life and faith.

Please pray that we will see lots of these people connecting with us over the Christmas and New Year season, and coming back for the ‘Alpha Plus’ course in the New Year. Please also pray for many to find a personal faith in Jesus.

By the way, I want to say a special THANK YOU to all those who made this course possible, especially the kitchen and serving teams who have really gone above and beyond this term.

Church Gate

Although the actual building work has yet to begin on Church Gate, and may not start for a few months yet, lots of work is being done to get everything ready behind the scenes. We’ve had the first price estimate back on the renovation work to be done, and are now finalising what we will actually do, making sure we balance our ambitions against our budget!

The next stage will be to apply for planning permission for some of the changes, to get quotes from builders, and to apply for certain grants. Remember that our goal is to provide dedicated space for our children’s and youth work, alongside some extra social action space, and to open a Community Grocery to serve people in need in our town. We would like to see this work completed and Church Gate open in 2025.

Please pray for the all the items listed above, and especially that we would find favour with some of the grant funders, who have so far made positive noises, and please pray for the whole team working to deliver this project.

Staff Team

I would value your prayers for our staff team this Christmas. It has been a very busy term and we are currently understaffed in some key areas too. I would observe that there has been significant pressure felt by the team at certain points and everyone is tired.

We will be looking at the size and make up of our staff team again in 2025, but it will take a little time to do this well, and will also require more resource. In the mean time, please be praying for the team to be well rested and refreshed for the year ahead, and for God to provide all the finance and staff required to build the church well into the future. Please also pray for the many volunteers who give their time for free, week by week – we love and value all of you so much.

The Assisted Dying Bill

As you probably know, the Assisted Dying Bill was brought before Parliament in November, and was sadly approved. This represents a significant shift in how our society values and approaches the sanctity of life.

At this point it’s restricted to those with a terminal illness who have less than six months to live, but the pressure is already on for access to be widened, just as it’s been widened in every nation where it’s been legalised. In Canada, 1 in 20 deaths is now by this kind of assisted suicide, and in Belgium and the Netherlands it’s now legal to do this to children.

Of course this is not an easy or straightforward issue, and it stirs strong feelings on all sides, but as followers of Christ, our response must be rooted in the teaching of the Bible, and not in emotional stories. We believe in the God-given dignity and worth of every person, from the beginning to the end of life, and hold that life is a sacred gift to be cared for, even in the face of suffering.

Sadly our local MP’s in Woking and Guildford, both voted in favour of the bill. Whilst we would not expect people who don’t follow Jesus to hold a Biblical worldview, we should of course bear this issue in mind (along with the many other issues at stake!) when it’s our turn to vote again.

In the meantime I urge us to pray for all who carry the weight of making such decisions, as there are more stages to go in this bill. I encourage us to pray fervently for our nation, its leaders, and those most directly impacted by this decision. Please pray that our nation will turn away from this slippery slope towards the devaluing of human life.

Of course, we also need to consider how we, as individuals and as a church, can be a tangible source of support and hope to those navigating end-of-life challenges, and we must also show lots of love and grace to those who disagree with the Biblical viewpoint on this issue. Thank you for standing firm in your faith and for being a community that reflects the love of Christ in all circumstances.

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