Welcome Church

Things To Pray About – June 2023

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Here are some important items of Welcome Church news that we’d love you to know and to pray about – including a trip to Italy 🇮🇹.

Alpha

We currently have 30 guests attending Alpha on Wednesday evenings, and a further 6 guests attending a daytime Welcome Tots mums’ Alpha course. The topic this week is “How Can I Have Faith?”

The Holy Spirit Day, which we run as part of the Alpha course, will take place on Saturday 1st July. Please pray for every guest to encounter Jesus and start a journey of faith

Newcomers Lunch

Our Newcomers Lunch is on this Sunday, and currently more than 40 guests have signed up to attend. Big thanks go to Hazel and her team who will be cooking the meal. Please pray for Dub as he leads this event and for our guests to grow in their sense of connection to Welcome Church and to start to feel like ‘Welcome Church is their church’.

The Big Summer Picnic

Plans for the Welcome Church Big Summer Picnic on Sunday 9th July are coming together well (click here to sign up). Please pray for good weather on the day and that we have a lot of fun. Everyone is welcome to attend, but do please sign up on the link above so we know you’re coming.

Welcome Works

Welcome Works are the various ministries that we run as a church, to help people in need in all sorts of different ways. Three of these to particularly pray for this month are:

  1. JOB CLUB: Our Job Club team is led by Neil Willis. Those in attendance are taught the key skills they need to handle job interviews and job applications so they can find and keep employment, often for the first time. The current course has 16 guests
  2. FRESH START: Our Fresh Start team is led by Dawn Wallace. It helps people overcome low level addiction and make a fresh start. The current course has 4 guests
  3. GET ONLINE: This is a brand new service for us, and starts this month. The team will be led by Steve Barter. Get Online helps people to learn basic computer skills, and learn how to access the internet safely, including such things as shopping and paying bills online – something many of us take for granted and rely on every day

Please pray for each of these courses, including all those who are in attendance and the teams who are running them. The goal of all of our Welcome Works is not only to help people in need – which is a great reflection of Jesus’ heart as revealed to us in Luke 4v16-21 – but also for them to encounter Jesus through us.

Office Team Wellbeing

We have had a couple of challenging incidents over recent weeks with members of the public acting in unhelpful ways towards our office team. I won’t go into details, and we do have sensible procedures in place, but please do pray for God’s loving protection over our office team day by day.

Italy: Insieme 2023

On Thursday this week (the day this blog comes out) I will be flying off to Ladispoli in Italy to speak at a conference called ‘Insieme’ (which is Italian for ‘Together’). The conference is for some Italian churches who are in the process of getting to know and perhaps join our Commission family of churches.

The theme of the conference is ‘Enjoying The Grace Of God’. I will also get to enjoy the company of Norman and Jane Bave, formerly of Welcome Church, who now live in Italy and will be in attendance at Insieme.

Please pray for me while I’m away, and also for Jo who is speaking at a Conference at Kings Church Epsom on Saturday. Please pray for Chris Kilby from Life Church Southampton who is leading the Insieme conference, and also pray that we would all be able to discern together what the future might look like in terms of these churches and their growing link to Commission.

I’ll be flying back on Monday, and remember, you can stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

Some Great Opportunities To Grow

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We have some great opportunities, starting in September, for people who want to grow in their walk with God and explore their future calling:

Welcome Church Internship Program

This year we’re offering a one year internship program at Welcome Church, starting in September and running through to Commission Festival in 2024. This is a fantastic opportunity to LEARN about yourself and about God’s plan for your life, to SERVE the church and our local community, and to GROW in your character, faith, skills and gifting.

Our Internship year is aimed primarily at Christians who are in the 18-25 age bracket (though we’re happy to chat with anyone) and is linked with the Commission Internship Program. It includes a mix of practical experience and theological training.

We have up to three places available, based in our Welcome Church offices, focussing on one of the following three areas (although other areas of interest could be discussed):

  1. Children’s and/or Youth Work
  2. Comms and Social Media
  3. Outreach and Social Action

If this sounds like something for you or for someone you know (perhaps even someone in another church), please get in touch with Christopher Hawes by email to express an interest (click here)

Commission Theology Training

In addition to the Internship Program there are also some great opportunities, for everyone who wants to, to receive some theological training. Commission, the group of churches we belong to, offers 4 levels of Theological Training:

Level 1: Theology For Life – this runs once a month on 11 Saturdays across the Calendar year at Hope Church, Winchester. Whether you’re a brand new Christian wanting to learn as much as you can about Christianity, or a well established Christian wanting to deepen your theological understanding, this course is an excellent place to start.

Level 2: Training for Leadership & Ministry (TLM) – this runs once a month on Saturdays from September to July, over a two year period. The course aims to do more than simply ‘teach’ theology; it is also intended to train and equip you to lead others. TLM is Commission’s core programme for equipping and coaching new and emerging leaders in our church family and helping people grasp our shared vision.

Level 3: Graduate Diploma In Theology – Partnering with Union School of Theology, this course facilitates rigorous theological study at a graduate level, alongside a cohort of other leaders from Commission Churches. The Diploma is accredited by The Open University, and is designed for people stepping into formal ministry, as well as for leaders already in ministry who missed out on formal theological education.

Level 4: Masters Degree In Theology – Partnering with Union School of Theology, this course provides advanced theological study, at a Masters level, alongside a cohort of other leaders from Commission churches. This course is validated by The Open University, and is aimed at current leaders who want to grow through serious theological and applied study. 

For most people in Welcome Church levels 1 and 2 would be the best place to start, but we wanted you to know about all the options. If you want to know more about any of these, please check out the details via the various links above, and please also get in touch with Christopher Hawes by email to express your interest (click here)

Scholarships

We know that some of these courses can be expensive and, whilst this will not be an issue for many, please be aware that if funding is a challenge you can apply for a limited number of ‘scholarships’, funded by Welcome Church, for Levels 1 and 2, that will help towards the course fees. Please contact Christopher Hawes for more details about this.

Summoned To The House of Lords!

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Christopher and I spent yesterday evening at the House of Lords. To be fair we were invited rather than summoned, but what were we doing there???

Read on to find out:

Big Ben Suit Selfie

It was great to have Tim Robertson from Compassion UK speaking at Welcome Church a couple of Sundays ago. Between us, as a church, we sponsor 265 children through Compassion – mostly in Togo. You can read more about that amazing work by clicking this link. If you want to sponsor a child please let me know; we have a few child profiles from Togo available, so please just ask.

Invitation from an MP

Because of our church’s connection with Compassion in Togo, Christopher and I received an invitation from Tim Farron MP (no politics on here please 😉) to attend an event at the House of Lords in celebration of all that has been achieved through the ‘Different Path’ appeal. The event was to mark the three year point of this initiative, and reflect on all that’s been achieved. It was also a chance to visit the House of Lords, which is an impressive place.

Different Path

‘Different Path’ was a UK Government “matched funding” appeal to support child survival in Togo through Compassion UK. As a church we raised £40,000 pounds for this in 2019 as part of our building project. This money was matched by UK Government Aid to make it up to £80,000.

Overall the appeal raised more than £2.2m and has saved and improved many lives by providing vulnerable mums with medical support, health screenings, hygiene supplies, nutritional supplements and education. This all helps to protect women during pregnancy and ensure that their babies have a healthy start in life. The Different Path appeal has now exceeded all of its targets, which is an amazing result; I’m glad we were able to be part of it.

Some Highlights

Some highlights of our visit:

  • We met Koffi Ahonon, the National Director of Compassion Togo, who is both a really nice guy and an impressive leader
  • We saw The Speaker’s State Coach, which was made in the 1600s but appears to be in better condition than my car
  • We watched a live debate from the Strangers Gallery in the House of Lords (not as lively as one might hope … 😉)

We also took a selfie or two along the way 😀😀

Meeting Koffi Ahonon
My next car?
“No photos to be taken in here please Sir”

You can stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week.

What Really Happened At The Welcome Kids Weekend Away?

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Welcome Kids had a great time away at Walton Firs Activity Centre in Cobham last weekend … and I know some parents enjoyed the extra peace and quiet at home too 😃

60 kids from school years 3 to 6 attended the weekend. They were blessed by dry weather, which was a big answer to prayer at the end of a very wet April! The kids had a packed schedule from 8am to 9pm each day, staying in ‘sleeping pods’ in the forest overnight (see pic)

During the weekend they took part in a lot of fun activities including high ropes, crafts, buggy building, capture the flag, rounders, silent disco, a very popular tuck shop, a bonfire with toasted marshmallows & hot chocolate and lots more.

Some highlights included:

  • Caving: hunting for “fossils” and things that were hidden in an underground cave structure
  • Nightline: a blindfolded obstacle course completed as a team, learning to work together and help each other
  • Challenge the leaders: leaders completed various challenges that usually involved getting extremely messy

The weekend had some excellent spiritual content too

There were three main teaching times which looked at:

  • Getting to know God the Father (by looking at the story of the Prodigal Son)
  • Getting to know Jesus (by looking at Jesus as The Good Shepherd)
  • Getting to know the Holy Spirit (by looking at some Bible stories revealing what happens when people are empowered by the Holy Spirit)

Some of the Welcome Church Worship Team were at the weekend, leading times of praise and worship that engaged all the kids in singing, dancing, contributing and praying for one another. The year 6’s were able to spend time with some of the Welcome Youth leadership on Saturday evening, who came to join for the evening, in preparation for this age group moving up to Welcome Youth from September.

Some comments from the kids

  • “I feel like the worship was really good and we got to know people more”
  • “The activities were really fun and we got to spend some time getting to know each other”
  • “The talks were really good because they explained parts of the Bible really well and I feel like they helped me get closer to God”
  • ”The talks were really touching and helped me understand God’s love a bit better”

A Big Thank You

25 helpers were involved in putting the weekend on and I want to say a big “THANK YOU” to them all, most especially to the dream team of Harriet Code, Crispy and Darren Forsdyke who pulled it all together.

If you had a child at the weekend away, why not ask them about what they learnt and what they enjoyed? If you missed out this year, remember to put the dates for next year in your diary now (3rd to 5th May 2024), and make sure to book as soon as the event is advertised; it’s likely to sell out fast again.

You can stay up to date with what’s happening at Welcome Church by subscribing to this blog to get it straight to your inbox each week

Some Things To Pray About – April 2023

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There are some key things coming up at Welcome Church that we would love you to know about and to pray about:

The Welcome Kids Weekend Away

This weekend (28th – 30th April) is the Welcome Kids Weekend Away . This year they will be at Walton Firs Activity Centre in Cobham. This is the first time we’re using this new venue and we’re hoping for a fantastic weekend of fun, games, activities, worship and teaching. The theme of the weekend is “Get to know God”.

60 children from school years 3 to 6 will be attending, along with 25 leaders. Here are some things to please pray for:

  • Pray for good weather because lots of outside events are planned
  • Pray that the children stay safe and have a good time
  • Pray that they meet with God and that their faith in him grows
  • Pray for the leaders who are giving up their weekend to serve this event
  • Pray that everyone gets some sleep

Don’t forget: Welcome Kids will still be running on Sunday morning to serve all the children who are not at the weekend away

The Alpha Course

Our next Alpha Course starts on Wednesday 10th May. Each week Alpha creates a brilliant opportunity for people to explore the key questions of faith over a nice meal. Obviously we love it when people invite friends to Alpha, and you are welcome to attend yourself too – just let us know.

Please pray:

  • For people in your life who you would love a chance to invite to Alpha
  • For lots of people to accept invitations
  • For people to meet with God and grow in their faith
  • For the course leaders and table hosts
  • For all the practical details, including the meals

If you want more details about this Alpha Course or want to sign up please click here

Some other prayer requests

Our main prayer requests are around Alpha and the Welcome Kids Weekend Away, but if you have time to pray for more then the please consider the following:

  • Compassion UK are with us this Sunday (30th April). Please pray that lots of children are sponsored and set free from poverty
  • Our ‘Freedom In Christ’ course starts on Thursday 11th May. It’s not too late to sign up for this. Please pray for people to encounter Jesus and find new joy and freedom in their relationship with God
  • Mike Deavin and myself are meeting with the architect of our building later this week to talk about future possibilities that could give us more space. Please pray for wisdom as we meet

Welcome Church Updates – April 2023

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As always there’s a lot going on at Welcome Church, so here are a few things to help you stay up to date:

This term we ran both The Bible Course and The Prayer Course

The Bible Course took place on Wednesday evenings at our building. 42 people attended, and 39 of them claimed afterwards that they had “gained more confidence in reading and understanding the Bible”. (93%. Not a bad result 🙂)

Through a combination of videos, group discussions, personal reflection and reading, the course took people through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, showing how the key events, books, and characters all fit together. HUGE THANKS to Christopher Hawes and Luqman & Kimberley Mulam for organising this course, and also to all who were involved in making it happen; we couldn’t have done it without you.

Here’s some feedback from course attendees:

“This course has broken the Bible into sizeable chunks and explained how the book was created. It has given me a framework of how to read the Bible”

“It was so useful to be immersed in a broad overview of the Bible. I was surprised at how much scripture we covered”

“I had a deeper revelation of Salvation through this course”

“It has improved my confidence in a tremendous way”

We ran The Prayer Course in three different groups: one in the building, one in a home and a third as a whole Lifegroup doing the course together. It was an eight-week journey through ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, including practical lessons about how to pray and tackling the questions and challenges we face. A big THANK YOU goes to Hanneke Silvester for organising this course, and also to the different group leaders for playing their part – we appreciate you all.

Here’s some feedback from course attendees:

‘The course has helped me to gain a better understanding of why we pray, its purpose and why at times our prayers are not answered.’

‘It has been so precious to learn more about how prayer can deepen my relationship with God. Some of the practical advice, like being still and pausing to rest in his presence before speaking a prayer, have been a game changer for me.’

Don’t worry if you missed out this time, we’ll run both of these courses again at a future date.

Commission Festival Deadline

We’re going to Commission Festival as a church this year and over 300 from Welcome Church are booked in. Please make sure that YOU don’t get left behind in Woking for the weekend.

For more details about the Festival click here. Prices go up after Monday 10th April, so please book in ASAP. Here’s a link to the booking page. You’ll get a 40% discount if you sign up to serve in some way, and as a bonus we’ll feed you for the weekend for free. All you’ll need is your tent, pillow and sleeping bag! Bring on the sunshine ☀️

Our Easter Plans

On Friday (7th April) we’ll mark Good Friday with a one hour meeting at 7pm. It will include worship, reflections on the crucifixion and communion. There’s no children’s work, but if you have kids who would meaningfully engage with an hour of worship, teaching and communion you’re welcome to bring them. It will also be live streamed at WelcomeChurch.online if you can’t get there in person.

On Sunday (9th April) we’ll celebrate Easter, and both morning meetings will include baptisms. As it stands we have 10 people being baptised, so please pray for them ahead of the day. Easter Sunday is a good opportunity to invite guests to come to church with you: they’ll hear a great Easter message, see some baptisms and find out about lives being transformed through Jesus. There will also be chocolate for everyone (!), so make sure you don’t miss out. Our Sunday livestream will run as normal, but there won’t be free chocolate on the livestream 😀

After Easter I’m taking a few days off, so I won’t write a blog next week. If I don’t get to speak to you personally, I hope you have a great Easter.

Welcome Church Office Team Updates & Values

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A Welcome hug from Deano
Welcome Hug from Deano

On Monday this week we welcomed Mark Caldeira to our staff team as an Operations Manager. He already feels like part of the family to us, and is proving to be an asset.

Mark’s first challenge was to build his own desk, a task he handled superbly (ably assisted by Bruno). You can read more about Mark and Alverna and how they came to be with us by following this link.

On Sunday, Vinu Paul from Commission India will be preaching at Welcome Church in our morning meetings and also ministering at our Encounter meeting in the evening. Vinu was Mark and Alverna’s Pastor back in India, and also Mark’s ‘boss’, so we’re hoping Vinu’s visit will help them to feel right at home. Who knows, maybe Vinu will bring a list of jobs for Mark to do? 🙂

Our office team with Alice (but minus Darren, Mark and Anna)

On Tuesday (in honour of someone’s recent birthday) Alice Potter brought in her speciality “Mississippi Mud Pie” as a treat for the team.

This was a long delayed moment! It was originally planned for March 2020, but Covid lockdown prevented it. In March ’21 we were still working from home. In March ’22 most of the team were actually ill with Covid, including me. This year we succeeded. We’re hoping for a repeat in ’24, but who knows what might happen by then??

A big thank you from the whole Office Team, both staff and volunteers, to Alice for her persistence and for her awesome Mud Pie. If you’ve never had it, we’d recommend it.

8 Big Values

As a team we’ve spent some time recently talking about the sort of environment we want to work in and the team culture we want to create. After a lot of honest and passionate debate, and much collaborative and faith-filled discussion we settled on 8 BIG VALUES .

The highly talented and servant-hearted Juliet has turned this into a piece of art, using our Welcome Church branding. It’s been applied to the office wall next to where we have our team meetings, which is a great reminder and helps us hold one another accountable for living them out.

Here it is. Please feel free to pop in and have a look:

As a team we want to be:

  • HONEST
  • PASSIONATE
  • SERVANT-HEARTED
  • COLLABORATIVE
  • ACCOUNTABLE
  • HONOURING
  • FAITH FILLED and
  • CARING

This is about how we treat one another. It’s about how we work together. It’s about how we want the people we serve to experience us as a team. You can see some other words written around the 8 BIG VALUES, which add description to them.

We may not get it right all the time, but this is what we’re aspiring towards.

As we live out these values we’re aiming to do the best work of our lives, here at Welcome Church … and why wouldn’t we want to do that?

Let me encourage us all, as a church, towards two things:

  1. Please encourage us where you see us put these values into action. That would be a great way of honouring someone for their hard work.
  2. Why not also model these 8 BIG VALUES in the areas of church life where YOU serve? Creating a caring environment makes all the difference.

One more thing: these are Biblical values – they weren’t just chosen at random. We took time as a team to build a clear Biblical foundation for each value, though I won’t post that work here.

These values reflect something of the heart of God towards us, and His character as revealed to us in Jesus. As we live out our faith in Jesus day by day, these values should come out in how we treat one another in every area of life. Perhaps they’d make a great list of values for your life, your family and your work place too.

Growing To The Next Level

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Some from our Welcome Church team have been in Peterborough this week at an event called ‘Growing To The Next Level’, and it’s been a huge blessing.

The focus was on “Missional Expansion”.

Some highlights:

Dave Smith from Kingsgate Church in Peterborough kicked off the event talking about Isaiah 54v2-3 (from The Message translation), “Clear lots of ground for your tents! Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big! Use plenty of rope, drive the tent pegs deep. You’re going to need lots of elbow room for your growing family. You’re going to take over whole nations; you’re going to resettle abandoned cities”. This set the scene for the whole event, pointing us to God’s heart for His Kingdom to expand as we build Holy Spirit filled churches who are on fire with evangelism and bring transformation to our communities.

Darlene Zschech from Hillsong Australia spoke about God’s heart for mission from Isaiah 61/Luke 4: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor …”. She talked about how encountering Jesus in worship transforms us from the inside out so that we start to express Jesus’ heart in our lives, which includes caring for those in need. She explained how true worship flows over into doing good to others, and highlighted the importance of all we do as churches to serve the community, especially those in need. (Let me encourage you to get involved with that in some way, if you’re not already).

Josh Howard from India talked about the growth they’ve seen, with 16,000 churches planted since 2015. They are a ‘house church’ movement, so their approach is very different from ours and not one we feel called to adopt, but we can learn from their ‘principles’ whilst applying them contextually within our own calling as a church – and there was lots for us to learn from him! Josh talked about how God doesn’t NEED us (we are not the saviour) but that we need to know that God does WANT us, and will work through us (which is our privilege). Josh called us all to think beyond addition towards multiplication, and we all left his talk with a desire to look way beyond what we currently see and have vision for. It was a clear call to think much bigger and have faith for a whole lot more.

Rachel Gardner from Youthscape called us to face up to the reality of living in a ‘post-Christian’ nation, where we are surrounded by people who KNOW FOR SURE that “Christianity is irrelevant, implausible, oppressive and powerless” whilst they actually know almost nothing about real Christianity. She challenged us about the need to “recover our mission” and find fresh ways to proclaim the Kingdom of God that address the culture we actually live in today. Our “Belong, Believe, Become” approach is something we’ve already done towards this, but there is much more we can do.

Other highlights from our time away included some fantastic worship and ministry times, some great seminars, and a lot of fun had together as a team.

The event was a mix of talks, seminars, coaching and group work done together as a church team. We left with a structured ‘action plan’ for how to take our key learnings forward together. I won’t post that plan here – that’s our tool to use as a team – but we will now look to work it out over the next 24 months, so watch this space for what’s ahead.

Following this event the rest of the team headed home to Woking whilst I travelled on to Enfield for a gathering of the various Newfrontiers UK Apostolic Teams. (I’m writing this from a Travelodge in Enfield.) I’m here as part of the Commission UK Team, along with Chris and Jo Kilby from Life Church Southampton. It’s been a great event so far. See you at the weekend.

Some Helpful Resources For Our New Preaching Series

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Last Sunday we started our new Welcome Church preaching series on John’s gospel. We’ll be working through the first 12 chapters of John week by week from now until the summer, and I’m really looking forward to it. We’ve given the series the highly creative title of “The Gospel of John”, with the added strapline “A Matter Of Life And Death”.

Christopher kicked off the series on Sunday by taking us through the first 18 verses of chapter 1, usually called “The Prologue”, and this Sunday I’ll take us through the rest of the chapter. If you missed it or you want to listen again, you can access the first talk in the series by clicking here.

Resources

Christopher mentioned on Sunday that I would blog some resources this week to go with the series. These could be useful if you want to do further study and go a bit deeper, or if you want a resource to aid discussion in your Lifegroup meetings.

There are five resources I’m going to mention at three different levels, although there are literally hundreds of other great resources available too. I’ve added links to Amazon for each one, but these are actually available from all sorts of places, including from Origin Books in Jubilee Square, who we love to support if we can.

1. Entry Level

A really good entry level resource is:

John for Everyone by Tom Wright

This is written for people at every different stage of faith. It’s a great entry level book that will do you good and you can easily read it from cover to cover. This could work really well for Lifegroups to use together.

2. Intermediate level

If you want to go a bit deeper then I would recommend any of these three:

John 1-12 For You by Josh Moody

This book is deep but also concise, and includes questions for reflection. It covers the twelve chapters we’re looking at in our current series.

Holman NT Commentary Volume 4, John by Kenneth O Gangel

The Holman series of commentaries are well designed for people who are leading Bible studies or preaching. They are well laid out and go chapter by chapter through a book with good depth to them and some application questions. This could really help if you’re looking to lead Bible studies on John.

The Message of John: Here Is Your King by Bruce Milne

This is part of the ‘The Bible Speaks Today’ series, which is a consistently reliable set of Bible commentaries that won’t steer you wrong. It goes deeper than the Holman series and follows the text verse by verse more closely. You could actually use this book as a daily devotional.

3. Advanced Level

The Gospel of John: a commentary by Frederick Dale Bruner

Christopher and I both love this commentary on John’s gospel. It’s well written and full of fresh insights, but be warned: it’s an academic text, it’s not cheap and it may not be for everyone. We’re NOT suggesting you rush out to buy this unless you’re inspired to do some serious study. If you are, this would be an awesome resource to have … but only if you’re really going to use it … otherwise it may look impressive on your bookshelf but it won’t help you very much! 🙂

We really hope you enjoy this new preaching series and that it helps you to grow in your faith. Do let us know your thoughts as we go along.

Updates and Encouragements

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This week I want to share some updates and encouragements from life at Welcome Church:

1. Giving for Turkey: a fantastic result

Sadly the recent earthquake in Turkey & Syria killed more than 50,000 people. We talked on Sunday 12th February about how you can give, through Welcome Church, to help churches in our wider church family who have been affected by this. Despite being severely affected themselves, they are serving those in need through the provision of food, clean water, blankets, tents and more, and we can give to help fund this work.

As a church we’ve given over £21,000 so far!

This is a fantastic result and a huge encouragement. Thanks to everyone who has given so far. It’s not too late for you to add to this amount. You can access our online giving portal by clicking here. Do make it clear that it’s for Turkey.

2. Mark Caldeira: confirmed start date

It was great to introduce Mark, Alverna and Skye in person on Sunday morning. Mark joins our staff team this month (find out more about him here) as a full time Operations Manager, and we’re excited for him to start.

They move to Woking on March 20th, and we’ve confirmed Mark will start work with us on Monday 27th March. It’s a big adventure to move to a new country and I’m sure they will face many challenges. Let me encourage us all to be on the front foot to welcome this family as they arrive and to show them our love and support.

3. Preaching: an old series ends and a new one begins

Our Transformed Through Jesus preaching series sadly came to an end on Sunday. I loved watching a brand new Welcome Story each week; they were all excellent. You can watch them all again now by following this link. Let me encourage you to catch up on any stories you missed, and also to share them with people you know, especially via social media.

This Sunday we start our exciting new series on John’s gospel. It will run all the way through to the end of August and cover chapters 1 to 12 of this excellent book of the Bible. Next week I’ll post links to some resources to accompany the new series.

4. Rob Parsons: speaking at Welcome Church

Many of us will be familiar with the well known Christian author and speaker Rob Parsons, who is also the founder of Care For The Family. Following publication of his most recent book, The Heart Of Communication, Rob is doing a UK speaking tour and we’re honoured that one of these dates will be at Welcome Church on Tuesday 21st March.

Rob has written more than twenty books and sold over a million copies in multiple languages. His latest book is aimed at helping people who do public speaking to do it better 😃. I know that many of us do this in a church context and also in our various work places, so this will be useful to lots of us.

Although not strictly a ‘Welcome Church event’, we wanted to let you know about it. You can find out more and book tickets (£10 each) by following this link.

Thanks for reading this blog. Don’t forget you can subscribe to get it straight to your inbox. I hope you’re having a great week.