Carol Service

Welcome Church Carol Services — A Truly Historic Sunday

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

What a Sunday! What a celebration! What a moment in the life of our church!

I hope you loved the Carol Services as much as I did. It was an unforgettable day, filled with joy, worship, generosity, and the unmistakable sense that God was at work among us.

Our best estimate is that 2,762 people joined us across both the adult Carol Services and the children’s Christmas parties that ran alongside them. That makes this the largest single Sunday in Welcome Church’s 146-year history — something truly worth celebrating and thanking God for.

The 11am, 4:30pm, and 7pm services were completely full, with only the 2pm service having any remaining space. We’re already praying, dreaming, and planning about how we can increase our capacity for next year 🙂

Thank You

Moments like this don’t happen by accident — they happen because of people.

A huge and heartfelt thank you to everyone who served so generously to make the day possible: the band and singers, meeting hosts, readers, production team, brew crew, welcome team, busking band, caterers, kids teams, tots teams, decorations teams, set-up and clear-up teams, car park team, and everyone involved in planning and preparing.

There are so many moving parts to an event like this, and while listing roles always risks missing someone, please know this: if you served in any way, your contribution mattered, and we are deeply grateful. Thank you for giving your time, energy, and hearts so freely.

Well done, church!

We are especially proud of how our church family stepped out boldly to invite others. So many friends, neighbours, colleagues, and family members joined us — and we were also honoured to welcome special guests including the Mayor of Woking, several local councillors, and representatives from organisations we are privileged to partner with.

This is what church looks like: open doors, open hearts, and a shared desire to help people encounter the hope of Jesus. I’m especially proud of the way our church stepped out en masse to invite so many people to join us this year. In addition to the many friends, neighbours, colleagues and family members who attended, our special guests also included the Mayor of Woking and several local councillors, along with other guests from some of the various organisations who we partner with.

IIf you missed the Carol Services, you can catch up by clicking this link here, and don’t forget to join us on Christmas Day at 10am for Welcome Church Online too.

Below are a few photos capturing some of the joy and fun from the weekend — a small glimpse of a very big day:

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December 2025 – Updates & Prayer Requests

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

Here are a few Welcome Church updates and Prayer Requests for December 2025 – enjoy!

Belong Believe Become

In November and December we ran our latest Belong Believe Become course, known as BBB. BBB is a three-week course, and we love everyone who is new to us as a church to do it if they can. It’s a great way for people to get to know who we are as a church, and for us to get to know them.

At the end of the latest course, 67 people made the decision to say that Welcome Church is their church, which is a wonderful sign of the growth God is continuing to give us.

Prayer: Let’s give thanks to God for the last course, and let’s pray for everyone who’s new to really find their place. Let’s also pray for God to continue growing us as a church so that more lives can be transformed through Jesus.

The next BBB course starts on Thursday 5th March, for three consecutive Thursdays. You’ll get a great meal each week and a chance to connect well to the church. If you’re connecting to Welcome Church and you’ve not yet done this course, it’s for you! You can sign up already using this link.

Open Doors

We loved having Howard S from Open Doors with us back in November. You can hear the talk he gave on this link here. Following Howard’s visit we made a gift of £5000 to Open Doors as a church and they sent us this reply:

“Thank you so much for your kind gift of £5,000 to strengthen your persecuted church family around the world who are risking it all to follow Jesus. Thanks to your prayers and support, our brothers and sisters know they are not alone and can stand strong in their faith.“

9.5 million persecuted believers were helped through Open Doors last year, and millions more were prayed for. Here’s a link to a 3-minute video for more information on the impact that’s being achieved – please do give it a watch.

Howard also asked for as many of us as were willing, to sign the Arise Africa Petition, through which The African Church is calling upon the global community to ensure that Christians and other vulnerable individuals in sub-Saharan Africa are treated with dignity in the face of huge persecution. It asks for:

  • Provision of robust protection from violent militant attacks
  • Justice through fair prosecutions of the attackers
  • Healing and restoration to be brought to all affected communities

The petition is intended to be presented to the African Union, United Nations, EU and local governments around the world in 2026. If you want to sign the petition or read more about it, please follow this link.

Prayer: Please be praying for the persecuted church around the world, and if you need resources to do that more effectively, here’s a link to Open Doors website – it’s full of inspiration for your prayers.

Hardship Fund

Our Hardship Fund has been a blessing to a number of people in our church who needed a little help at this time of year. Gifts totalling £12,750 were given to people this December, and I want to thank our Life Group leaders, Pastoral Team and various ministry leads for helping us identify where the biggest needs were.

Don’t forget, you can always give to the hardship fund. Just make a gift to Welcome Church as normal but let us know that it’s intended for this fund.

Prayer: Let’s give thanks to God for the generous giving of so many people in our church, and let’s be praying for Him to continue to meet all of our needs as a church.

Compassion UK

We love our partnership with Compassion UK, sponsoring children in Togo in Africa. If you want to know a bit more this link will help

Compassion have now created a dedicated webpage for our church! It shows the very real impact that we’re having as a church through our combined child sponsorships: do check it out here – it’s very encouraging!

Prayer: if you sponsor a child, please pray for them, and write to them too. (BTW – if you’re not sure what to write then ChatGPT can really help…)

And if you don’t yet sponsor a child and you’d like to, please just ask us how.

Christmas

Last Sunday afternoon I had the joy of speaking at Hope Church Guildford’s Carol Service. It was a lovely occasion, and I’m told that 14 people completed a form to say that they prayed with me to commit their life to Jesus. It was also the largest event they’ve ever held as a church, with hundreds in attendance, so a real privilege for me to be there.

Prayer: Please be praying for this lovely and fast-growing church

Our own Carol Service For Woking events are being held this Sunday – 14th December. As it stands today roughly 2,600 people have booked to attend, and we expect this to grow again in the coming week (please click here to book your free place)

Details for our full Christmas programme at Welcome Church can be found in a previous blog post: Christmas At Welcome Church – I’m especially looking forward to our all-age services on Sunday 21st, which Stephen D and Cassie S will be running. Get ready for a treat!

Prayer: Please be praying for God to meet with people at our Carol Services this weekend

Job Vacancies

Please don’t forget that Welcome Church is recruiting at the moment. For information on the jobs that are available and how to apply please click here

Prayer: Please be praying for the right person to fill each role

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Christmas At Welcome Church

/ Steve Petch / 1 Comment

Christmas is just over a month away now, and bookings for our “Carol Service For Woking” opened last Sunday morning. The tickets (which are free!) are going very fast— even faster than last year—so please don’t leave it too long to book, or you may miss out on your first choice of when to attend.

Here’s a summary of our plans as a church over Christmas and New Year 2025/26:

Sundays 23rd & 30th November and 7th December: Our Christmas Preaching Series

Our Christmas Preaching Series starts this Sunday at our 9am and 11am meetings. I’ll be kicking the series off myself. I won’t be giving any spoilers here, but we’re going to have some fun together, so make sure you don’t miss what will be this year’s number-one series!

Sunday 14th December: A Carol Service For Woking

We’re holding four services across the day at 11am, 2pm, 4.30pm, and 7pm. Come and enjoy singing your favourite carols, followed by free mulled wine and mince pies.

Children up to school year 4 are invited to join our free Kids’ Christmas Parties, which will run alongside the 11am, 2pm, and 4.30pm services.

Booking is essential for all adults’ and children’s tickets, and be warned that we are likely to be sold out again this year. Don’t delay— – Click here to book

Remember: this is a great opportunity to invite your friends, family, neighbours, and colleagues—there is no easier invitation to church than to our Carol Services.

Sunday 21st December: An All Age Christmas Celebration

We’ll be meeting at 9am and 11am for an all-age celebration of Christmas. Instead of our usual Welcome Kids and Welcome Youth groups, we’ll all be meeting together for a whole lot of noisy fun and games as we celebrate Christmas as a church family and worship Jesus together.

Each meeting will be roughly one hour long, and we’ll start and finish with refreshments as usual.

Thursday 25th December: Christmas Day Online

This year, to make sure there’s room for everyone who wants to attend, we’ll be taking Christmas Day online. (Don’t forget, the 21st December is our in person all age celebration)

Join us on Christmas Day at 10am, at WelcomeChurch.Online, for a short time together with Christmas carols and an accessible Christmas message. It will be a great way to mark Jesus’ birthday together as a church, and we’ll all be able to join in and connect via the online chat feature.

Sunday 28th December: No Meeting!

There is no meeting planned for Sunday 28th December, but instead…

Wednesday 31st December: Crossover ’26

After an amazing Crossover Night from 2024 into 2025, we are coming together again on 31st December to celebrate all that God has done and all He’s going to do in 2026.

Join us as we celebrate God’s faithfulness over the last year and ask for God’s favour as we Crossover into 2026! Together we will praise, pray, and party! It’s a lot of fun—so don’t miss it.

We’ll be joined by a brilliant guest speaker this year, Pastor Chris Kimbangi from Hope Church, Guildford. (I knew him back when he was just a student in Chichester…)

This event is likely to fill up fast, so please book your FREE ticket to reserve your place, and let’s welcome in the New Year in faith and in style! Click here to book

Anything Else?

A few other things you may want to be aware of:

  • The church offices will be closed from Wednesday 24th December through to Thursday 1st January
  • Welcome Youth have their final meeting before Christmas on Friday 12th December, returning on Friday 16th January
  • Our Welcome Tots groups finish on Wednesday 10th and Friday 12th December, returning on 7th and 9th January respectively
  • Welcome Café will open for the last time this year on Monday 15th December, returning on Monday 5th January
  • Our Sunday meetings will return to their usual pattern from Sunday 4th January, and we have a great new series lined up for the New Year too
  • 21 Days of Prayer kicks off on Monday 5th January—more details will follow in a separate blog nearer the time

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

‘Carol Service For Woking’: An Update and Some Requests

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

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.

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95 Days ‘Til Christmas

/ Steve Petch / Leave a comment

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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