50 Days and Beyond
At our Family Meeting last Thursday, 19th May, we talked about the things we have been doing in this last season as a church and where we plan to go in the days ahead.
When new leaders or leadership teams begin to lead an organization or even a country, people often talk about what they have achieved in the first 90 or 100 days. Well at Grace Church the newly appointed Senior Leadership Team working alongside the Elders, David and Si, haven’t had a full 100 days yet, we have only just passed our 50 day milestone from when we said a thank you to Simon and Sam as Simon stepped down from Eldership and the SLT stepped up.
I am encouraged how we are gelling well as a team and working together to gather some momentum for Grace Church to take us in to the next phase of our development. What a great “band of brothers” they are. For those that missed it at the family meeting, here are some of our 50 days achievements.
Shown our appreciation to Simon and Sam - church lunch
Appreciated mums on Mothers‘ Day
Employed an Operations Manager- Sia is doing a great job
Appointed a Senior Leadership Team – James, Brian Boni and David H
Appointed an Extended Leadership Team
Reinstated monthly Sunday Prayer meetings At the St Francis Church Annex
Had two Holy Spirit encounter evenings
Had 3 visiting speakers
Had several new people hosting our meetings
Good Friday Breakfast
Held a women’s event – Breakfast
Held a men’s event – Curry night
Held a collection for the Ukraine refugees - £4,750 raised
Had a collection for Eustace and Theresa - £1,583.75 raised
Two preaching training sessions with Mick Taylor for current & future preachers
Had a leaders’ weekend away – topic Holy Spirit, with a great speaker Dave Campbell from Canada.
Appointed a new Trustee – Steve Mathews. Steve comes with a wealth of experience.
When we first came out of lockdown back in July 2021, we began gathering about 90 people in Salisbury. This was obviously a long way below how many we were gathering before Covid, and this is the same for most churches across the country. For most churches numbers are lower, there are less people serving and people have got used to being self sufficient.
I am pleased to say that our Sunday attendance has risen from that time, and we are now regularly gathering each Sunday about 130 adults and children each week. We still have a number of people watching on line, and a number of people not yet feeling confident about meeting with us yet, but still wanting to be part of us. I love seeing people coming back each week and reconnecting with their church family. If you are one of those who has not yet re-joined us, why don’t you come along in the next couple of weeks and receive a warm Grace Church family welcome? If you are still cautious about Covid, we are still operating with a masked area at the back separated from the rest of the congregation, and we have a good ventilation system operating throughout the meeting. We are also enjoying seeing new people every week, some of whom are making Grace Church their new church family.
So that was the last 50 Days, what are planning in the next 50 Days?
THE NEXT 50 DAYS
Here are some of the things we will be working on in the next season.
Tracking visitors through a joining journey. We want to be more intentional about helping our visitors go on a journey from their first visit to the point that they join us fully as a member of the church. We will use our Database Tools more efficiently and have more personal contact with individuals.
Evangelism Strategy. We are looking at how we can be a fishing community together, rather than leaving evangelism to a few people running Alpha, how can we develop an invitational culture that sees us all working together for the sake of the gospel? How can we provide you with events to invite your friends to that makes that invite easy?
Regular Social Events – Regular events where we can gather together socially are great at creating that sense of belonging and provide an easy invite for our friends from outside church.
Community Groups – It is good for us to meet in the bigger Sunday context, but it is also really good for us to meet in the smaller context of our Community Groups. Coming out of lockdown it feels like our Community Group Structure needs a bit of a re-fresh and so we will be looking at this in this next season with our Group Leaders. There are many things that are good about the groups, but having a bit more of an outward focus to the community around us is something we could develop.
Developing Preachers and leaders – We want to put a lot of effort in to developing leaders at all levels across Grace Church. We will continue to develop our preachers and in the weeks ahead you will see new faces preaching and hosting our meetings as people have the opportunity to grow.
New Web Site – Our website should be primarily for those looking in from the outside to see if they want to connect with us. Our current website is quite clunky to edit, and needs a general update. We have begun work on this and we have established a small working party who will be reviewing things at each stage of development. You too will have some opportunities to see what we are putting together as we move forward.
A Word on Finance
Firstly, a massive thank you to those who give regularly, no matter how large or small your gift is, we are very grateful for every pound given. As Megan reported at the Family Meeting, giving has dropped during lock down which is not surprising because of the extra pressures on family finances. This hasn’t been a problem to date because we have been operating without a full team, so our salary bill has been lower and our operating costs have fallen within our income stream. As things begin to pick up and we recruit to add to our team, and we need to spend money on developing things, there will be more of a strain on finances. It is good to have a look at your finances from time to time to see if your income has changed and to see whether you are able to prayerfully consider your giving to see if you could make any adjustments. Also if you are a UK tax payer and you have not completed a gift aid declaration form, please could you consider doing so? That would add another 20% to your gift, without it costing you any more.
As we continue on this journey together as God’s family in Salisbury and Amesbury, let’s be kind to each other, forgiving of each other’s weaknesses and mistakes and let’s enjoy the mission together as we share the gospel with the wider community around us.
David Maskell 24.05.22
