Gift Day

God has been speaking to our Church recently about gearing up for growth.

We need to do something about facilities because we are pretty well full at our current site.

So in order for us to explore our options we are opening a Building Development Fund.

We have no plans yet.

We have no building we want to buy.

We have not decided to alter our current premises to fit more people in.

We just know we have to do something.

So we called a gift day.

You don't take gift days just before Christmas.

You don't ask people to give if you have not got a clear vision of what they are giving to.

Well we don't know what it will be for and we did it last week: so to hear our Church have generously given £47,916 (with more pledged) was really exciting.

It also means we can give 10% away as we always do, shared this time between our family of Churches, a national debt advice charity, our local Youth for Christ Centre and a recently launched Street Pastors initiative.

International & national mission, national social action, local mission, local social action.

And we now have a fighting fund to start exploring the next practical steps in our journey as a Church.

Not blogging as much

With a 4 month old daughter, an amazing Church and a few hobbies I have not been blogging much recently.

Which I guess the bishop of Shrewsbury would approve of?

I was at the launch of our Street Pastors initiative and the Bishop Mark Rylands made these remarks...

"More words have been used since the years 2000 than all history before. This is because of the vast overload of information, fuelled by the internet, and people churn out more and more and more.

We are too busy writing blogs and uploading things to websites that we don't have time to listen.

We have less time to actually do things.

And because of that our words have become devalued.

God sent His one and only Son to live with us. He did not send a memo!"

Cage Football in Shrewsbury

We have just launched our Cage Football project in Shrewsbury.

A couple of weeks back we had it in use at our half term fun day.

On Saturday we took it out to a local village where a couple from the Church run a youth club.

Next week the NOMAD team from YFC are coming to help us do a big launch; in 4 schools and 4 youth clubs (3 Church, one council) and then at Shrewsbury Town's stadium before the afternoon match.

All in all, it is a really exciting opportunity to go and be involved in our local community, by giving the local young people a fun, free activity, and dovetail in with the work already being done by a variety of community agencies.