Welcome back Nigel and Nicky

Dear Church Family,

I'm so happy that Nigel and Nicky will be back at church this Sunday. So please come along and make sure you're there to welcome them back. 

I've really enjoyed leading the church in Nigel's absence, but I've got to say I am very glad to have him back. I already had a sense of how much is involved in what Nigel does, but there's nothing quite like experiencing it firsthand—being the one with whom the buck stops and where all the hard stuff gets sent. It is a heavy load. It's also a joyful load. And I appreciate all the more having Nigel as our senior minister. I hope you will continue to uphold him in your prayers and to show him love and support as we continue to move forward in our mission to build 3,000 wholehearted disciples of Jesus at our church.

It's been a really wonderful term two. We've gone through Ezra and Esther together, which is a big couple of books. I've really loved seeing God sovereignly at work in history to preserve and save his people. There have been a whole bunch of other things that happened. Shortly after Nigel left, we had Freedom Sunday at Night Church. Almost 500 people came along, and new people are becoming Christians through events like that, which is just wonderful. We had the Wholehearted Women Conference, running on-site for the first time, and that was just a great time of encouragement for the women of our church as they got deep into the book of Ephesians. We also had the SRE appeal and we smashed it out of the park. Thank you for your generosity, we reached the target much earlier than expected. We had the marriage course, with 14 couples coming along to strengthen their marriages. We had a classroom on the canon after Nights Church, exploring how we know which books we have in the Bible.

And that's not to mention all the regular things that are going on around our church. We've had Monday dinners week-by-week, Growth Groups, youth and kids ministries, Scripture. I know there are other things I'm missing. It's a real blessing to lead a church like this. Nigel does a whole lot, but it's actually us working together as a body, and it's beautiful to see.

I also want to say thank you. Thank you to everyone for your prayers especially, and for your words of support. I have felt very much loved and supported over the last three months. Thank you for all that you have done using the gifts that God's given you to continue the kingdom-building work that we're doing here. I'm so thankful to God for you.

Thank you to our amazing team. What a privilege it is to work alongside the staff, both the ministry and the admin teams. They do such a great job. They're really gifted in what they do, but they're also a lot of fun to work alongside, so that's been a real blessing.

I want to thank the wardens and the parish council. You've been so helpful and supportive of me through this time and managed to keep pushing things forward in so many different areas. Thank you for your help with that.

I want to thank Nigel. He spent months beforehand setting things up well, putting people in place and preparing me for what I would do. Thank you, Nigel. You're a leader who I really do appreciate.

I want to thank my wife, Briar. I couldn't have got through these last three months without her pulling much more of the load and just helping me in wonderful ways.

And of course, I want to thank God. He is the one who upholds and sustains us all. He is the one who saves. I'm so thankful to have Jesus as my savior and to have the wonderful privilege of proclaiming that message of salvation in Christ to our world and to us as a church as we seek to build each other up.

There are so many things I'm thankful for, and I'm really glad to be welcoming Nigel and Nicy back this Sunday. Make sure you're there to welcome them!

In Christ,

Gerard