I’m looking forward to our first Church Gate open day this Saturday (8th June). This will be a great opportunity for Welcome Church people to look around our new building and see the size of the challenge that we’ve taken on – before it becomes a building site!
If you haven’t booked a slot yet, you can do so on this link here. There are further opportunities on the evening of Monday 10th June (click here) and the morning of Saturday 15th June (click here).
Why should I bother to come to an open day?
Although it might be tempting to sit back and wait for the work to be done (as someone said, “I’ll see it when it’s finished” …) I would love as many of us as possible to make the effort to see the new building as it is right now.
Despite all of us having busy diaries, there are several reasons for this:
1. Ownership: we need to own this project together as a church, and to do that we do need to actually come and see what’s going on – it’s OUR building.
2.Prayer: we all need to be praying for this project and for those leading it, and a visit will help to inform our prayers.
3.Insight: we would love to hear from you after you’ve visited. What is important to you about this project? What is God saying to you prophetically? Do you have any wisdom to impart to the team? (“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed” – Proverbs 15v22)
4. Inspiration: we would love people to get inspired for what we’re doing together. Let’s get inspired about our social action, inspired about our kids work and inspired about our youth work. Perhaps God may even have a role for you to play that you don’t yet know about!
Gift Days
Lastly, let me please remind you that we have our next two Gift Days for Church Gate scheduled for Sunday 30th June and Sunday 7th July.
Our goal is two raise at least £2m over 2 years. We’re well on the way towards that target (£1.3m pledged/given so far) but let’s all be praying about what God is calling us to give this time round. We don’t want anyone to give more than God is calling them to, but we don’t want anyone to give less than He’s asking them to either.
Let’s all get involved in this Church Gate adventure that God is leading us into as a church.
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I hope you enjoyed our Carol Services as much as I did. I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who helped them go so well!
Here are a few pics to give a feel for what went on:
The following is just a sample of all that I’m grateful for:
Both buildings were beautifully decorated inside and out
The ‘busking’ band who entertained us outside as we arrived did an awesome job
The Welcome Team were on the ball and looked after everyone well
Our worship band sounded the best I’ve ever heard them – they were SERIOUSLY good
We had a great range of people involved with the Bible readings, including a reading in BSL (British Sign Language) at each service. Each service also had live BSL signing that was appreciated by the deaf community
The sound and lighting team were in great form and served us superbly with sound, videos, visuals and a surprise ‘firework’ display for the finale
The Brew Crew delivered top notch refreshments flawlessly, on time, every time
The Welcome Kids and Tots teams went above and beyond the call of duty and the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves
We were able to raise money for a local charity, Your Sanctuary, who work with victims of domestic violence ( I haven’t heard a total yet, but it’s not too late for you to give to that offering)
As a church, between us we invited hundreds of friends, family, neighbours and colleagues to attend
Roughly 2000 people attended in total, adding together the three services and the children’s parties. The Mayor of Woking joined us at 2pm, and we had the Leader or the Council with us at 4.30pm. Those who are especially eagle eyed may have spotted our local MP in attendance too. In addition to these we were joined by representatives of the York Road Project (a local homelessness charity), Woking Borough Council Family Services and the CEO of Your Sanctuary. It really was A CAROL SERVICE FOR WOKING.
If you missed the services or you just want to experience it again, you can follow this link to watch what went on for yourself. I’m looking forward to next year already 🙂
Welcome Church Christmas Plans
Now that the Carol Services are done, I also want to let you know about our plans for the following Sundays, which are as follows:
Sunday 17th December: we will meet as normal at 9am and 11am. This will be the last week of our ‘Faithful’ preaching series. We will also take communion together
Sunday 24th December: we will meet at 9am and 11am for a short, all age, family service to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas together. Welcome Tots will be running as usual for the smallest children
Monday 25th December, Christmas Day: we will not be meeting on Christmas Day this year as we are focusing us on Sunday 24th instead (next year may be different)
Sunday 31st December: we will meet at 9am and 11am and will hear from people sharing testimonies of what God has done in their lives over the last year. Come expectant to be blessed and encouraged, and let’s also be ready to support and cheer people on
Sunday 7th January: we will meet at 9am and 11am and kick off our new year preaching series, ‘Reset Your Life’. This is a four week series to start the New Year, and we’re encouraging you to invite people along to hear it.
We will also kick off 2024 with a week of prayer, starting on Tuesday 2nd Jan. I’ll post details about that next week.
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 Welcome Church Carol Services are going to be fantastic. At the time of writing (Thursday am), a total of 1741 tickets have been booked across all three services. In addition to these bookings, many people will be serving in various ways. Of course, there’s still room for more people to book. We’re excited to announce that the Mayor of Woking, Councillor M Ilyas Raja, will be joining us for the 2pm service this year.
Each Carol Service will include Christmas Carols that everyone knows, sung to the tunes everyone knows, along with videos, readings and a short Christmas themed message. We will finish with free mulled wine, mince pies and other refreshments. Children’s parties will be taking place alongside the 2pm and 4.30pm services, so you and your friends can relax and enjoy the service.
Seven Simple Requests
We have some simples request to put in front of you all, so please have a read:
1. Please invite people
There are now just 10 days to go, so this is the perfect moment to invite friends, family, neighbours and colleagues to join you. There is no easier church invitation to make than to a Carol Service, so let’s go for it together. To book tickets for yourself or your guests please click on this link or on the picture below.
2. Please arrive on time
We will open the doors at least 20 minutes before each service starts, but it will take time to drop children off and get everyone seated. It would really help the services go well, if people could arrive in good time. We are able to provide free parking in the Town Centre ‘Red, Yellow and Blue’ Car Parks as usual, using the car park machines in our Front Building, but please remember that car parks may be busier than normal due to Christmas shopping, especially at 2pm, so do allow a little extra time. There is no parking available in our own Car Park except for those with a blue badge who have pre-booked a disability parking space.
3. Please allow yourself to be seated
This one is really important. The Welcome Team will be showing people to their seats again this year, so please allow them to do that and please fill every seat. On a normal Sunday you may like to sit in a certain place, or to leave a gap between you and the next person, or to save a seat for your friend. Numbers at the Carol Services mean that none of these things are possible. Please allow the welcome team to show you to the next available seat(s). If you want to sit with someone specific, please arrive together. Please remember that the Welcome Team are all volunteers, so lets make their job easy for them this year …
4. If you can’t attend, please cancel your tickets
If you’ve booked to attend and can’t now make it, or you booked more tickets than you need, please amend or cancel your booking. This is especially true of the children’s parties, some of which are now completely full. If you know you can’t make it, please release your tickets so someone else can attend.
5. Please don’t come for a 9am or 11am meeting 🙂
It happens every year: precious, faithful people turn up in the morning for church as usual. Please remember that the Carol Services are the only meetings we are holding that day. Our normal 9am and 11am services are not happening on the 10th, although we will be there to set up and to rehearse. The Carol services are at 2pm, 4.30pm and 7pm.
6. Please attend one service and serve at another
We have three serving teams that could do with a little extra help this year:
Brew Crew
Welcome Team
Kids work (for those who have a current valid Welcome Church DBS check)
If you are able to help in any of these areas, please let us know. Ideally we would encourage people to attend one service, and to serve at another one.
Why not step up to help as part of the Brew Crew or the Welcome Team, even if it’s not something you normally do? If you have a current Welcome Church DBS, why not help with one of the kids parties? If you can help in these areas please contact the church office or let us know in person on Sunday morning.
Finally, and most importantly:
7. Please pray
Let’s pray for the Carol Services. We can all do that during the week ahead, but let’s also gather together to pray.
This Sunday, 3rd December, we will gather to pray for one hour from 7pm to 8pm at Welcome Church. The Carol Services are the greatest evangelistic moment of our year, and our biggest meetings by far. Let’s ask God to pour out His blessing on it all, and for many guests to start a journey towards seeing Life Transformed Through Jesus.
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.
Here are some things we would love you to be praying about this month:
Gift Sundays
Our Gift Days to raise the finance we need for Church Gate are on Sundays 12th, 19th and 26th November. We would love everyone to be praying for this – for God to supply all we need as a church, and for Him to speak to each of us personally about what He is calling us to give.
A booklet is available with all the info you need to know, so do pick one up on Sunday morning or get in touch with the office to ask for a copy. It will tell you WHAT we are doing, WHY we are doing it, why we are doing it NOW(which is key to the whole thing), HOW MUCH it will cost and what we are asking YOU to do.
Baptisms
This Sunday we have baptisms at both morning meetings. Please pray for all those getting baptised.
There is a special need for prayer for 2 of those being baptised at 9am. They have come to us from a nation where to convert to Christianity could cost them their liberty and perhaps their life. Both came to faith in their own country. Both are fleeing persecution.
For this reason these two baptisms and testimonies, will not be live-streamed – we will switch the live-stream off at this point. We are also asking that no photos are taken or posted anywhere. The testimonies are well worth hearing, but you will have to be there in person at the 9am meeting to hear them.
If you are planning to be at the 11am meeting that day there might be room for some to stand at the back from about 10.15am if you want to arrive early and catch this part of the 9am meeting.
CST
CST is the “Commission Students to Thirties” event taking place on Saturday Nov 18th at Hope Church, Winchester. This year the theme of CST is about being ‘All In for Jesus‘. There will be great worship, great talks, time to connect with God and some good food too.
I would appreciate your prayers because I’m preaching the opening message at CST this year. Please pray that it connects well with people and helps to grow and stretch their faith.
If anyone isn’t booked in to CST and wants to know more, then do follow this link here for more information and a link to the booking page.
Luqman and Kimberley
Luqman and Kimberley, our two leadership trainees from India, finish their year with us next week, and will then head home to Goa. They are going to be greatly missed and will leave a hole in both our Office Team and our hearts ☹️. They have been a joy to have around and we’re sad to see them go.
Please pray for them as they return to India, that God will direct their steps into whatever He has next for them, and please do give them big hugs and lots of appreciation this weekend. Sunday 5th November will be their last Sunday with us.
Carol Services
Bookings for our Carol Services open this weekend. They will be held on Sunday 10th December this year, at 2pm, 4.30pm and 7pm. On Sunday we will give out all the information you need, and I’ll post it in my blog too, but please do be praying already about who you could be inviting and for all the preparations to go well. Please also pray for lots of people to sign up to attend.
A few other bits for prayer
In case that lot’s not enough to keep you busy praying, here are a few more things:
Reuben and Lucy get married this Saturday: pray for them as they start married life together
I’m leading the Commission ‘TLM’ training day on Saturday 11th Nov: the topic is ‘Grace for Ministry’
Our Alpha Course have their ‘Holy Spirit Day’ on Sat 25th Nov: pray for people to encounter the Holy Spirit and give their lives to Jesus
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.
If you’re reading this on the day it comes out, it’s only 95 days ’til Christmas … and I’ve already seen Christmas decorations in the shops 🎅🏼!
Even more importantly it’s now only 80 days until our Carol Services. The reason I see that as ‘even more important’is that they are the best and easiest event in the year for us to invite people to, since nearly everyone says yes to a Carol Service invitation!
Anyone who comes to our Carol Services will hear the good news of Jesus, and that’s the most important message they’ll ever get to hear; it’s a message that can change our eternal destiny. With this in mind, we want you to start thinking about the Carol Services NOW.
“A Carol Service For Woking”
Our Carol services this year are on Sunday 10th December, at 2pm, 4.30pm and 7pm, and they’re not just for our church, they’re for the whole town, and for all of the people we know. The first two services (at 2pm and 4.30pm) will include a kids party for younger children so you can drop them off and enjoy the service in peace with your friends.
Just like last year, these will be ticketed events. Tickets will be free for you and your friends to book, and we’ll let you know when the booking opens, but we want you to start thinking TODAY about WHO you’re going to invite, and also to tell you about a way to help make those invitations well.
Building Up To An Invitation
Last autumn we did a series of invitational events for people to invite their friends to in the run up to Christmas. We called it the ‘Hop, Skip, (Sing) and Jump’, naming it after the Olympic Event also known as the Triple Jump, which is a type of jump that enables athletes to jump further than they otherwise would:
The HOP was our September Fun Day
The SKIP was our November Fireworks event
The (SING) was our December Carol Services
The JUMP was our January Welcome Stories series
As people were invited to each successive event, and as relational links were formed, the numbers of guests grew and grew. In the end we were able to share Jesus with hundreds of people at each Carol Service – the largest Carol Services our church has ever seen. As a result, lots of new people joined us in January for our Welcome Stories series. Thanks to all who stepped up and invited people.
This autumn we want to encourage you to take part in …
… Your Own Personal Hop, Skip and Jump
We won’t be running the Fun Day or the Fireworks this year as a church, but we still believe in the power of relational momentum to help people connect with us as a church, and then go on to connect with Jesus. Introducing the people you know to other Christians from our church, builds a relational momentum that helps open the door for them to find Jesus for themselves.
So this year we want to encourage YOU to run a couple of ‘social events’ of your own – a HOP and a SKIP. Maybe you could do one in October and one in November, leading up to an invitation to the Carol Service (the JUMP). At the Carol Service we’ll talk about the amazing good news we have in Jesus, and we’ll invite people to connect with us in the New Year and even to join our next Alpha Course.
There are lots of Hop and Skip events you could do: a quiz night, a cheese and wine evening, a meal, a BBQ (weather permitting), a board games night, a pub night, an afternoon tea, a walk, a sporting event, a shared fireworks night and more. The key thing is that you don’t do it alone! Invite your friends who you’d like to see at the Carol Service to each event you do, and use it as a chance to introduce them to some of your friends from church.
There are lots of contexts you could do this in: you could do it as Life Group, or with just a few people from your Life Group, or with a group of friends from church, or as a couple of families together – whatever works for you and your friends at the life stage you’re currently in.
We’d love you to go for one event in October, and one in November, and then to invite those same people to a Carol Service on Sunday 10th December. And don’t just invite them to the service, why not also open your home? “All round ours for mulled wine and Christmas cake afterwards” or “Come for lunch with the kids and then we’ll all go on to the Carol Service together” – whatever works best for you.
The Greatest Christmas Gift Ever
The greatest gift God ever gave us is Jesus. This Christmas is your best opportunity to share that gift with the people in your life who don’t yet know Him. Let’s go for it together!
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Hello Welcome Church. We have a very important prayer request and would ask you ALL to please pray, pray and pray again.
Yesterday Mike Deavin and myself, along with Darren Forsdyke and Dub Everitt, met with the representative of the owner of a significant building near to us in Woking. We had a look around the building and discussed how we might be able to get use of it for us as a church, perhaps by buying it.
After viewing the building I explained all that we do to serve our community and to help those in need around us. I explained how the church exists to bring hope to people. I explained how we need more space for all that God is doing through us. I explained our calling to be good news to our town and to serve the poor. I explained that we wanted this building to enable us to continue what we do and to enable us to do even more.
If we were able to take ownership, it would be a significant game changer for us as a church, enabling so many things we want to do to serve the poor and carry out our social action programme, including space for some new initiatives we are thinking of such as a community grocery. It might also release space for our children’s and youth work, preparing us for the day that the Annex (The Cube) is redeveloped.
It would not be right at this stage to say what or where this building is (so please don’t even ask) but all four of us all came away feeling that this could be something God is leading us into. The representative we met with is now going away to speak to the owner to see if there is a way forward, and if so at what cost.
Please pray:
That God would give us favour with the owner and his representative
That God would open this door to us so that we can bring even more salt and light to this town, and serve our community well, especially at this time of growing need
That we can take ownership of this building for a fair price
That finance would be released to make this possible
I will tell you more when I’m able to, but as you pray please be open to what God might say to you and please share that with us.
At this time of need I believe God has a big calling on us as a church to bring the good news of the Kingdom of God in all we do. Why not stop what you’re doing and pray right now?
Here are some important items of Welcome Church news that we’d love you to know and to pray about – including a trip to Italy 🇮🇹.
Alpha
We currently have 30 guests attending Alpha on Wednesday evenings, and a further 6 guests attending a daytime Welcome Tots mums’ Alpha course. The topic this week is “How Can I Have Faith?”
The Holy Spirit Day, which we run as part of the Alpha course, will take place on Saturday 1st July. Please pray for every guest to encounter Jesus and start a journey of faith
Newcomers Lunch
Our Newcomers Lunch is on this Sunday, and currently more than 40 guests have signed up to attend. Big thanks go to Hazel and her team who will be cooking the meal. Please pray for Dub as he leads this event and for our guests to grow in their sense of connection to Welcome Church and to start to feel like ‘Welcome Church is their church’.
The Big Summer Picnic
Plans for the Welcome Church Big Summer Picnic on Sunday 9th July are coming together well (click here to sign up). Please pray for good weather on the day and that we have a lot of fun. Everyone is welcome to attend, but do please sign up on the link above so we know you’re coming.
Welcome Works
Welcome Works are the various ministries that we run as a church, to help people in need in all sorts of different ways. Three of these to particularly pray for this month are:
JOB CLUB: Our Job Club team is led by Neil Willis. Those in attendance are taught the key skills they need to handle job interviews and job applications so they can find and keep employment, often for the first time. The current course has 16 guests
FRESH START: Our Fresh Start team is led by Dawn Wallace. It helps people overcome low level addiction and make a fresh start. The current course has 4 guests
GET ONLINE: This is a brand new service for us, and starts this month. The team will be led by Steve Barter. Get Online helps people to learn basic computer skills, and learn how to access the internet safely, including such things as shopping and paying bills online – something many of us take for granted and rely on every day
Please pray for each of these courses, including all those who are in attendance and the teams who are running them. The goal of all of our Welcome Works is not only to help people in need – which is a great reflection of Jesus’ heart as revealed to us in Luke 4v16-21 – but also for them to encounter Jesus through us.
Office Team Wellbeing
We have had a couple of challenging incidents over recent weeks with members of the public acting in unhelpful ways towards our office team. I won’t go into details, and we do have sensible procedures in place, but please do pray for God’s loving protection over our office team day by day.
Italy: Insieme 2023
On Thursday this week (the day this blog comes out) I will be flying off to Ladispoli in Italy to speak at a conference called ‘Insieme’ (which is Italian for ‘Together’). The conference is for some Italian churches who are in the process of getting to know and perhaps join our Commission family of churches.
The theme of the conference is ‘Enjoying The Grace Of God’. I will also get to enjoy the company of Norman and Jane Bave, formerly of Welcome Church, who now live in Italy and will be in attendance at Insieme.
Please pray for me while I’m away, and also for Jo who is speaking at a Conference at Kings Church Epsom on Saturday. Please pray for Chris Kilby from Life Church Southampton who is leading the Insieme conference, and also pray that we would all be able to discern together what the future might look like in terms of these churches and their growing link to Commission.
I’ll be flying back on Monday, and remember, you can stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.
One of my favourite places to be on a Sunday morning at Welcome Church is at the Info Point in our Welcome Lounge, where it’s a privilege to meet some of the new people who are joining us week by week. Hanneke and her team run it really well, so huge thanks to all who are involved. 🙂
Recently lots of our new people have been South Africans, which is brilliant, and many others are from the UK and other nations, which is also brilliant! One observation we’ve made is that lots of new people in this season are already Christians; not all, but the majority. It’s great to have many well established Christians joining us who are a blessing to further strengthen us as a church; you are all a gift from God!
Life Transformed Through Jesus
As a church our vision is to see life transformed through Jesus, so of course we have a passion to reach out to those who are not-yet Christians in the town around us. Let’s remember, outreach is God’s plan; the Great Commission is really His mission.
So how can we play our part well?
When it comes to reaching out we have two guiding principles we want to follow:
Everything we do as Jesus’ followers is to be done in LOVE, and that includes every attempt to reach out to people who are not yet Christians. The best way to fulfil Jesus’ GREAT COMMISSION to go and make disciples is through Jesus’ GREAT COMMANDMENT to love people
God calls us to be INTENTIONAL in our relationships, to love people towards Jesus. The end goal for our relationship with our not-yet-Christian friend or colleague is not only friendship (though that’s a great thing!), but for them to come to know Jesus; introducing someone to Jesus is the most loving thing we can ever do for them.
Relational Momentum
We’ve found that one of the best ways to introduce someone to Jesus is to build what we call RELATIONAL MOMENTUM, which simply means them meeting, connecting with, and getting to know other Christians from your church. Since Jesus told us, “You are the light of the world” we should expect him to shine though us, and he shines even more brightly through a group of us together.
An invitation to church given to someone who doesn’t know ANYONE in your church is one thing; the answer may be a yes or a no. But an invite to church given to someone who knows you, has got to know several of your Christian friends from the church, and may even have had contact with your church at an event is far more likely to result in a yes, and that invitation creates a great moment for them to encounter Jesus.
Loving People Towards Jesus
Remember, you can’t save anyone; only God does that. Our role is simply to love people towards Jesus, and the very best way we can bring people to Jesus is by bringing them to church, where they will encounter the Holy Spirit, hear the wonderful truths about Jesus preached, and have an opportunity to respond to Jesus.
As a church, we want to facilitate you loving people towards Jesus, so with this in mind, this Autumn we are relaunching our ..
Hop, Skip and Jump
The last time we did this was in 2019 in the run up to our building launch. The Hop & the Skip was a series of easy invite social events to help us build relational momentum through invitations, leading up to a church invitation for our Building Launch Event:
We Hopped with a Fun Day in September 2019 – 1,000 people attended including 500 guests. 460 then signed up to get a free ticket to our Fireworks Night
We Skipped with our Firework Night – 2,000 people attended, including 1,700 guests
We Sang with our Carol Service For Woking in Dec 2019 – we know singing is usually part of a triple jump, but we slipped it in there because it was too good to miss
We Jumped with our ‘Welcome Stories’ Building Launch Sunday on 19th Jan 2020 – Over 1250 people attended, enjoying pastries, coffee and a great time together
Following our Hop, Skip & Jump, our average attendance grew by around 250 people each week, from roughly 500 to 750 people, and many connected to Jesus for the first time … and then 10 weeks later Lockdown hit and a whole load of momentum was lost 😮. But life is increasingly returning to normal, so …
It’s time to do it again: let’s Hop, Skip, (Sing) and Jump
Here’s our Autumn 2022 plan, to give us all the opportunity to bring people in our lives on that journey:
HOP: Welcome Church Fun Day, Sat 17th September. I would love all of us to bring friends along; there’s no limit to how many people you can bring. Details will follow soon, but please put the event in your diary now and think about who you might invite, including whole families. Think big!
SKIP: Welcome Church FireWorks Night, Sat 5th Nov. Everyone who comes to our Fun Day can receive a free ticket to the Fireworks Night, giving them a 2nd brilliant event with Welcome Church to look forward to, and it’s also a great chance to reach out and invite more new people.
SING: A Carol Service For Woking. A great opportunity to invite your friends to enjoy Christmas Carols in our building with mulled wine and mince pies, and who doesn’t love a good carol service?
JUMP: The first Sunday of our new Welcome Stories Series, Sun 8th Jan 2023.
A Triple Jump can take you so much further than trying to make one giant leap, so these Hop, Skip and Jump events will help our friends to connect and come closer to us, leading to that invite moment to the Welcome Stories Sunday in January.
Are you ready to go?
Welcome Stories
Alongside our Hop Skip and Jump we’ll also be launching some new Welcome Stories, one every 2-3 weeks, over this coming Autumn. As we launch them, it’s an opportunity for all of us to share them on Social Media, allowing all of our contacts to see these inspiring stories of God’s impact on the lives of people within Welcome Church.
During our last series of Welcome Stories, most stories had over 10,000 views on Facebook alongside other Social Media, mainly down to the fact that people across Welcome Church clicked “share” to enable their contacts to see them. If you haven’t seen our Welcome Stories then you can access them on this link.
But don’t wait for the Autumn to get started
In the weeks ahead there will be other opportunities we can take to start building Relational Momentum with people, for example the Jubilee Street Parties and other events talking place over the Queens Platinum Jubilee weekend, or a Life Group social event or perhaps just your own BBQ.
And if you want to know more, why not read, or re-read, Dub Everitt’s excellent book: Loving People Towards Jesus. It’s available from Origin Books in Woking (but if you ask in the Welcome Lounge we’ll probably give you one as a free gift 🙂)
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.
In 2021 we launched our Recovery Plan to help us recover from the pandemic. One thing the plan said we would do was “refresh our vision and mission as a church”.
In 2018, when we became Welcome Church, we introduced a new vision statement and mission statement. The vision statement was, “To see lives transformed and communities impacted for good through God’s Grace In Action”. The mission statement was, “To share God’s Grace In Action with all people in all of life.”These significantly shaped our church over the last few years.
Coming out of the pandemic we looked at these again to see how we might refresh them for an even better future. We observed four things:
The phrase ‘Grace In Action’ hasn’t really gained traction
Having two statements was perhaps a little ‘over-engineered’ for our context
In reality, Belong, Believe, Become has actually been our mission statement day to day
Whilst the vision statement is absolutely where our heart is, it’s quite long and most of us would struggle to quote it
With that in mind, at our Elders prayer week away in January, we prayed for the church and prayed into this issue and we made some decisions:
We are going to move away from having separate vision and mission statements and replace them with one simple statement of purpose for our church
We are going to keep Jesus at the centre of it
Following this we landed on a new statement of our purpose as a church, developed from what went before, which encapsulates the heart of what we’re called to as a church. It’s just four words long:
“Life Transformed Through Jesus“
We are all about Life Transformed Through Jesus.
This also has a nice twist to it: we can change the first word. This means that every church ministry can adapt it for themselves:
Children transformed through Jesus
Youth transformed through Jesus
Singleness transformed through Jesus
Marriage transformed through Jesus
Families transformed through Jesus
Work transformed through Jesus
Debt transformed through Jesus
Retirement transformed through Jesus
Those in need transformed through Jesus
Our community transformed through Jesus
It all adds up to one thing: LIFE transformed through Jesus
Everything we do, let’s do it all to see life transformed through Jesus. As we teach the Bible, as we care for one another, as we serve, as we give, as we run ministries and events, as we care for those in need … let’s do it all because we know that every person and every part of life can be transformed through Jesus. Someone should stick it on a t-shirt.
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