Yesterday at our AGM, we looked back at some of the things the church has been involved with over the past 18 months. This included our Parent & Toddler group (which has seen an increase in babies and toddlers attending and which has had the benefit of new equipment, thanks to a gift from Thurnscoe Pentecostal Church) and our youth club (which meets on Monday evenings and regularly has about 25 people aged between 5 and 13 years attending.) We are grateful for these opportunities to reach out to our local community and for the church members who willingly give up their time to help. We are also grateful to the Family Centre staff who help with crafts at the Parent & Toddler group.
Sadly, the closure of the market has affected numbers attending our Coffee morning on Saturdays quite drastically and so reluctantly we have decided to close the coffee morning. We will continue to hold the coffee morning on 20th and 27th July, but there will be no coffee morning after this. Hopefully we can still host the Macmillan Coffee Morning on 28th September.
We continue to meet once a month at Cherry Tree Court (including this morning!) and are grateful for the opportunity to meet there and interact with residents.
We are also privileged to be able to support the Salvation Army food bank each month. Alison’s report highlighted the difficulties caused to local residents by the roll-out of Universal Credit, which takes 6 weeks to set up and leaves residents without any finances at all for this period. The Salvation Army food bank is also supported by local shops as well as local churches and the church supports working families once a month. 15 volunteers help regularly at the church and some have recently found jobs in the area, which is a real blessing.
In addition, the church holds meetings twice on Sundays and holds a midweek meeting on Thursday evenings, and has also been involved in many outreach events with ‘Churches Together’, men’s fellowship meetings and has hosted two children’s film nights this year. We seek to be with God in the community and with God for the community and are looking to grow and develop in different areas. It’s an exciting time to be part of God’s kingdom.
