Supporting growth in Cheltenham
The summer is a wonderful time, isn’t it? In our garden, the strawberry plants we’ve ignored have suddenly started producing fruit, our lawn is verdant and growing vigorously and the bed is overrun with life.
Since we moved into Cheltenham, with five others we’ve been through a season of coming together followed by a period where any grow seemed imperceptible. However, His Kingdom is always growing, and God is always at work whether we see it or not!
Faith and Endurance
Earlier in 2023 we’d been provoked by a prophetic dream to start gathering publicly and had done a couple of dry runs without any advertising or inviting. Then in November we were joined by Colin Baron (link to content here) a prolific church planter in Manchester. His message (link to preach) was a particular encouragement to our team – endurance and faith! We were reminded together that if we want to see a church planted in Cheltenham, we need to both keep going even if it is hard and apparently unfruitful, and also move in faith!
This hardened our resolve to meet publicly, and we launched our first public Sunday on 19th November. There were 30 of us – including nine visitors, including several without a faith – yet!
Since November, we’ve continued to have regular gatherings and seen visitors move from visiting to joining our church family. Our core team now numbers over 20, which is double what it was at the turn of the year!
Continuing Growth
We continue to meet on Sunday mornings at our house, however the increase in numbers means that we are now spilling out from our lounge into the music/playroom. In June we moved to meeting twice a month in Bettridge School and from September we will be meeting three times a month in the school. Two of these Sunday’s will be an accessible church service, on will be a Community Sunday which will gather people from across our community for fun, food and family together. We are also growing leaders and increasing the number of small groups amongst us!
We are tremendously grateful that we are not planting this church alone, we have a talented team and have been able to draw on support from across our family. We had S&L family come into our small groups, to support us as leaders, to make refreshments, to get to know us, to preach and to lead worship. We are planting this church together!
Over the last 12 months or so, we’ve had a ‘support team’ working alongside us, acting as a sounding board, provoking us and encouraging us to endure and move in faith. This is an often-unseen side of our work together, an apostolic team providing help and acting as a catalyst for growth.
How can I get involved?
Pray with us – we want everything we do to be underpinned by prayer; we have a wonderful group of 70+ people who get regular updates and are praying for us. Why not join?
Visit us – even though we are growing we still need support and help! We would love to have more people join us on our public Sundays, it is really helpful for our team to spend time with visitors whilst others help out with tea and coffee. It is such an encouragement to see friendly faces. Just let me know if you’d like to come: 07795 230219.
Join us – we have been blessed over the last 12 months by Lyn & Emmanuel joining us from Stroud and Katie joining us as she married David. We would love to have more people move to join us in seeing a church established here.