K I N G F I S H E R FA M I LY And we’re back! It has been great to start meeting again in person as churches over the past few weeks. Wonderful to see old faces again and to welcome new faces as well. We thank God for the technology that has allowed us to carry on through the lockdown period with online church and Zoom meetings, worshipping Him physically separate but digitally together. So many have made a decision to believe in and follow Jesus Christ during this time and it has been so good to be able to pray for many people during the online services and through online Connect Group meetings and prayer meetings
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But there is nothing quite like actually meeting together in person, and so many of us have returned to church with a renewed sense of excitement, anticipation and gratitude to God for His Church. As we have been saying over the past few months, though, we are not just returning to everything we were doing before the lockdown. This is an opportunity to refocus on the central, core activities that re ect what the Lord is calling us to right now and to resharpen our focus on the Mission that He has given us. Consequently, we have started back with some changes. The Toddler group and Multiple births group have restarted at Tredworth, but with much more of a focus on starting with parents and toddlers of people already in the church and then reaching out to others with a strong group of volunteers
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ISSUE 31
SEPTEMBER 2021
and a clear vision for what we are trying to achieve. The Coffee Mornings that were running each Tuesday will not be starting at this point, giving us the opportunity to build up a volunteer team that is large enough to run this well
'Our unchanging mission: To reach lost people and see them transformed into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ’. The 10am service at Tredworth and 11am service at Westgate are the core services that we are currently focussing on launching and building up. The Interactive service at Tredworth will restart when the time is right - when homes feel safe to bring their residents and when a volunteer team is raised up. The 6pm service held at Tredworth has changed. Instead of this being a live service to which people come, the talks now go
directly onto our YouTube channel, which is easily accessible via our two websites www.king sher.org.uk and www.king sherfamily.org . This enables us to focus all of our energy and attention on the morning services, seeing them grow in numbers and spiritual depth. Interestingly, the viewing gures for the evening talks that now go straight to our YouTube channel have increased dramatically since taking this decision So, we’re back! We are already welcoming new people, already celebrating new life with baptisms, already seeing live changed, helped, healed, given encouragement and hope. It may well be that some of the changes described above are directly affecting you and of course change is never easy. But we still worship the same God, Jesus Christ, who still has the unchanging commitment to build His Church. The Church is a living organism, ever-changing (in terms of its activities) to meet the fresh challenges that rise up but NEVER-changing in terms of its commitment to ‘Reach lost people and see them transformed into full devoted follows of Jesus Christ’. As our seventh Core Value states, ‘We shall never arrive. We shall continue to expand and grow until the whole world is pursuing full devotion to Jesus Christ’. The mission eld is all around us, ripe for harvest. So here we are Lord send us!