Christopher Hawes has written and produced a brilliant video for us this Christmas; it’s my privilege to share it here. Please can I encourage you to watch it and to share it as widely as possible with friends and family?
Why not post it on social media, or message, email and What’s App it to the people you know?
Merry Christmas.
Christmas is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our faith in Jesus and, because we can’t be together this year in the way we’d like to, we’ve created the Welcome Church Video Advent Calendar 🎅🏼🎁😃
Each day during advent, including on Christmas Day itself, we’ll be releasing a short video to help us focus on Jesus and connect with one another. In these videos we’ll be hearing the Christmas Story from the Bible, enjoying some Christmas themed encouragement and finding out from some Welcome Church people what Christmas means for them.
Why not take this opportunity to watch each day’s message as a family and share the run up to Christmas together?
You can receive it as a daily What’s App message direct to your mobile phone (instructions given below)
It will be available on our website by following this link
It will posted on our Facebook page and our Instagram account
You can subscribe to receive it as a daily e-mail by following this link here
You can view it on Vimeo by following this link
(*Please Note: This WhatsApp number will not receive incoming messages other than the request to register. If you delete the contact from your address book you will stop receiving the daily messages)
On Sunday we had our annual Welcome Church Carol Service for Woking at the HG Wells Conference Centre in the heart of Woking.
This year we partnered with the Cobham Brass Band who provided the music as we sang traditional carols and heard the Christmas story in several readings. We saw a powerful new Welcome Story from Sue, I talked about Jesus being God With Us (click here to listen), and we finished up with mince pies and mulled wine.
While this took place, at the 4pm service, the kids had an exciting Christmas Party of their own upstairs.
I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who was involved in serving, and to everyone who gave up their time to attend.
Some highlights for me included:
If you missed it then you really missed out, but A Carol Service For Woking will be back again next year, and this time we will be in our own new building.
Here are some pics to highlight the event:
Christmas is here at last and a lot of people will be finishing work today. I hope you have a Fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year, whatever you’re up to.
The Welcome Church offices will close from 3pm this afternoon, and although people will be in and out for various things in the next two weeks, “normal service” will be resumed on Tuesday 8th January. In emergency do use people’s mobiles, or else email info@allwelcome.uk which will be checked from time to time.
Building work ceases for the Christmas season from today as well. The builders will be back on January 2nd and full demolition of the houses will start shortly after that. For site safety reasons (what’s left of) the Car Park will stay closed over Christmas and New Year too.
We will be meeting on Sundays 23rd and 30th December at the H G Wells Conference Centre as normal. On these Sundays there will be one meeting at 10am. I’m preaching on the 23rd myself and I’m really looking forward to it. Don’t miss it!
On Monday 24th, from 4pm – 5pm, we have our Families Christmas Celebration, aimed at Primary School Aged children. This is also at the H G Wells Conference Centre and will be lots of fun. Bring your kids and grand kids for a fun time. There is space for a few more helpers to serve drinks too.
On Sunday 13th January we have our first Vision Focus evening of 2019. It will be at The Welcome Centre, 6.30 – 8.30pm. The main focus of the evening will be to talk about a new approach to the subject of church membership.
Lots of people have asked questions about this, and this is our chance to get some answers and to find out how our Belong, Believe, Become approach will be shaping our future together even more.
It’s going to be a great evening, and key to our future together, so book your baby sitters now.
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas time and that you know the Peace of God, the Presence of Jesus and the Joy of the Holy Spirit whatever may come. And remember: really it’s all about Jesus.
