Youth

Welcome Youth Weekend Away – an update

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

Last weekend, our amazing Youth team took 84 of our Welcome Youth to Runways End in Aldershot for a non-stop weekend of outdoor activities, teaching, craft, food, games, and worshipping God together.

Year 7–9 slept in dormitories in the main building (including the occasional vertigo-inducing triple bunk!) while Year 10–13 took the heated “camping pods” (more glamorous than they sound).

James, who heads up the youth team, says:

“Our memory verse for the weekend was,

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13)

“In the talks, we looked at the catastrophic results of The Fall, and how the whole of creation has come under a curse, facing guilt and shame, death, and separation from God; but then we saw the wonder of what Jesus did for us on the cross, reversing the curse by taking it on himself, taking our guilt and shame, taking our death sentence, and being separated from his Father, so that the curse could be lifted from us. Finally we looked ahead to the new creation still to come, where guilt and shame are gone, there will be no more death, and we will be in God’s presence for ever.

“That gave us plenty to thank God for, so we spent time together worshipping him for his goodness, and praising him for reversing the curse by sending Jesus!

“Also we got big spiky hats and threw sausages at them.“

Here are some pics to capture a few highlights from the time away

We love our Youth!

We love seeing them each Friday evening and Sunday morning, but the weekend away is a rare opportunity to spend an extended period of time together, forging deeper relationships, and going deeper in our walk with Jesus.

Highlights from the team

We asked the youth team to give us their individual highlights from the weekend. This is what came back:

  • Ruby: “Cassie squeezing into a tiny wooden box to explain the Temple”
  • David: “Youth who initially didn’t want to get their clothes muddy literally rolling around in the mud to steal a beanbag”
  • Ben: “Michael telling Euan to turn his alarm off”
  • Zac: “Going round bashing pots and pans to wake them all up”
  • Lucy: “Watching one of the Youth praying for another”
  • Chioma: “Arielle reciting the memory verse by heart, and then carrying on and reciting the bit we hadn’t even learnt”
  • Crispy: “Half of the youth not knowing how to put a new bin bag in a bin”

Thanks & Prayer

I want to say a big THANK YOU to our youth leaders for putting this event on, and for all the time and effort they put in to it. Parents, please do say your own thank you’s too

Let’s all be praying for good fruit to come from this time away together

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This Sunday: Preparing for our last Gift Day

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

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

‘All In’

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

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

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

1) Because this is a great discipleship opportunity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A last thought

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

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Some Important Things To Pray About – July 2023

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

Hello lovely Welcome Church people! We would value your prayers this month for the following key things:

1. Buildings

We’re keen to work out how to create more space for our growing kids and youth work. On Sunday mornings we’re currently relying on The Annex (THE CUBE!) for extra space. The Annex is great, but we don’t own it and it will be redeveloped at some point, so we need to either build or buy a more permanent solution.

Mike Deavin and I met with the architect of our current building recently, and he’s looking at what’s possible on our site. We want to find a solution that will serve the needs of our young people, and also serve the church and the wider community all week long.

We love and value our young people and want to serve them well, so please be praying for wisdom and a clear way forward. I’m excited to see what doors God will open for us.

2. Newday

At the end of July our youth will be heading off to the annual ‘Newday Youth Festival’ at the Norfolk Showground in Norwich 🎪. This year it runs from Monday 31st July to Friday 4th August. So far we have around 80 young people booked to attend. Each year Newday helps our youth to grow in their faith, building solid foundations for the future.

Please pray:

  • That our youth stay safe and have a great time
  • That they encounter God and grow in their faith
  • For the leaders and the many helpers who are taking them and serving them during the event (they need our prayers! 🙂)
  • For the practical arrangements (For example, just this week the coach company we booked announced that they’ve gone bankrupt … 🚌 … we’ve got time to solve that problem, but we’d love to avoid any more last minute headaches or unforeseen problems)

3. Commission Festival

Commission Festival is on the Bank Holiday weekend at the end of August ⛺️⛺️⛺️

We’ll be joining with Commission churches from around the UK for times of worship and teaching, and a whole lot of other fun and games too. This event helps build our togetherness as a church and as family of churches. It connects us to our Apostolic mission around the world, and it also serves our children and young people well.

We currently have around 370 people from Welcome Church booked in, which is more than we’ve ever taken to an event like this before. For us it’s a bit like we’re running a festival within the festival!

It’s still not too late to book in and join us (click here for details) and don’t forget you can get a 40% discount if you sign up to serve.

A LOT of people from Welcome Church are either serving at the Festival, or serving our church site at the Festival in a range of different ways. I can’t possibly name them all, but each one is greatly appreciated.

Please pray:

  • For the event to go really well and for God to move powerfully
  • For the weather – we’d like lots of sunshine please ☀️
  • For Darren, our Ops Director, who is leading the delivery of this brand new Festival for Commission, working with their staff team and an event management company. It’s been a massive undertaking and he’s gone above and beyond to get this done
  • For Richard who, along with an awesome team from our church, is leading the operational delivery of our Welcome Church site at the Festival
  • For Jo, who leads four worship team and is also leading the worship for the event (alongside Sean from City Gate Church, Bournemouth)
  • For Harriet who is co-leading ‘Unique’, a ministry for children at the Festival who have additional needs
  • For Dub, Meg, and Robin and Anna who are all responsible for various seminars
  • For myself – I’m responsible for anchoring the adult meetings and I’m also preaching on the Saturday evening

If you have any questions about the festival, please do ask. One more thing:

Do you want to go to the Festival for free?

If so, Compassion UK are looking for some outgoing, faith filled and friendly volunteers to help on the Compassion stand at the Festival. In return they will provide a free ticket for the event along with your food and any travel expenses. All you need to bring is yourself, your camping equipment, and faith in what God can do.

If you want to know more about this opportunity please let us know in the church office and we will put you in touch, but please don’t leave it too late!

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