Changes

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!

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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Since the pandemic began we’ve made regular adjustments to how we run Sunday meetings, and this will continue in the months ahead. Remember, we only restarted 9am and 11am meetings with kids work eight weeks ago. As it stands we’re still on a journey towards a new normal, so this September we’ll be taking some more steps towards that with some small adjustments as follows:

From this Sunday (19th Sept) we’ll still meet at 9am and 11am, but we’ll now be aiming for meetings that are 1hr 15 mins in length (which is pretty much what they’ve actually been all along 😃)

We may begin to reduce the size of the socially distanced seating area since less people want to use it for this purpose. We will ensure there is enough space there for all those who feel the need for it

Children will continue to be in for the worship time and then go out to their groups, but their groups will now run until 10.30am for the first meeting and 12.30pm for the second meeting. This will give us 15 minutes that we can use for prayer ministry, for catching up with one another and for people to have tea/coffee together before collecting children

From Sunday 26th September we will reintroduce tea/coffee after each meeting

We will also reintroduce communion regularly on a Sunday, and begin to make space to pray for people in person too

Because we’re being warned that the pandemic is ‘far from over’ and that some restrictions might be reintroduced, we’ll continue to broadcast the 9am livestream for now (although we do encourage everyone who can attend in person to do so). We’ll also be ready to make further changes as needed, in line with official guidance for churches.

It goes without saying that we should all be careful and vigilant. If you have symptoms of Covid or have tested positive for Covid in the last ten days (with or without symptoms) you should not attend in person; this is not going to be a winter to ‘push through that cold and keep going’!

As we make changes let’s remember that we are a charismatic church; we should expect to encounter God’s presence and for people to use spiritual gifts; we want the genuine presence and power of God to be experienced by us all. With this in mind, although worship times are still a little shorter, let’s expect some God focused, encouraging contributions to help us in our worship. All we ask is that you come forward and use the microphone so everyone, including the livestream, can hear you.

I’m looking forward to an exciting autumn as we continue our new preaching series, I’m looking forward to meeting with my church family, I’m looking forward to encountering God’s presence and I’m even hopeful that we might get to celebrate Christmas together this year too.

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Welcome Church Staff Team Updates