Blessings

Thankful For Another Year Of God’s Blessings

/ Steve Petch / 2 Comments

Most of the local schools finish on Thursday or Friday this week and the Summer Holidays begin. For those who are going away over the summer, I hope you have a great time and get to enjoy some sunshine and relaxation.

Church life seems to follow the school calendar, so in many ways July marks the end of the church year for us, although we do have both Newday and Commission Festival to come in August 🙂

We have so much to be grateful to God for as a church over the last year; so many reasons to be thankful. We also have a lot to look forward to in September and the year to come.

A Date For Your Diary

On Sunday 17th September at 7pm, we will have a ‘Prayer and Vision’ evening to kick off the new church year. This should help to bring everyone up to speed with what’s ahead as we share the plans, dreams and aspirations we have for the coming year, including any building news there is to share by then. Please put the date in your diary now, so you can be there.

Some thanks and some changes

You may have been with us recently when we marked changes in the leadership of some of our ministries. In case you missed it:

  • Nigel and Bren have finished leading our Sunday Welcome Teams, and Tony L has taken on the role going forwards
  • Marcus and Sharon have finished leading Brew Crew, which will now be led by Tarn and Cindy
  • Tanya E has finished leading Welcome Kids Juniors, with Jo M now taking on the mantle
  • Darren has now handed the leadership of Welcome Kids over to Harriet
  • Ben and Becca C have finished a very faithful season leading Welcome Youth into incredible growth and fruitfulness over several years. A new team has emerged for the future of Welcome Youth, with James H, Noah and Lucy, Ben and Lila, Lauren and Crispy all taking it forward together.

There are some changes in our Church Office team too:

  • Bruno (originally from Brazil) is about to finish his internship year and is off to university (in Oxford)
  • Juliet B (who used to live in Oxford) has finished her role as Comms Manager and is off to join Luke at Casa Cruzeira (in Brazil)

To all of these people we want to say a huge THANK YOU. All of them are greatly appreciated.

Life moves in seasons so it really is okay to change the areas we serve or lead in when the right time comes along, and don’t forget we’re looking to recruit for the vacant ‘comms’ position, so please feel free to get in touch about that.

Summer Socials

I enjoyed our Welcome Church summer social recently, with over 600 of us gathering for the summer picnic at West End. The sun shine and the ice cream van was certainly kept busy. Personally I enjoyed chatting with a number of people I haven’t had a chance to chat with before.

Additionally, on Tuesday evening this week, we gathered with our Eldership Team, Office Team (staff and volunteers), Strategic Leadership Team and Trustee Team for a Summer Social to say thanks for all they’ve done over the last year. James and Helen Heather hosted us really well, and it was great to be in a room of such faithful people (and for those who couldn’t make it, we missed you)

I hope you would want to join me in saying a big thank you to them all as well.

Summer Blogging

Thanks to all who take the time to read my blog week by week; I hope you find it helpful and informative about life in Welcome Church. Please do keep on praying for all we do as a church and for those who lead.

I’ll take a break from blogging over the summer now until Commission Festival at the end of August. Hope to see you there.

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.