Community Christmas Brunch

  Our new church has made a very deliberate decision to put down deep roots into our local community.Over the past couple of years we have begun building strong relationships with local primary schools, we have done this  through taking assemblies and by people going into help with reading . My colleague Steve has become a governor at our nearest primary school and we have also reached out by  running  various events for senior citizens.We really want to bless the community in which God has placed us!

Over the past year or two we have also  run Italian evenings,curry evenings ,afternoon teas ,and a Christmas brunch.These have attracted decent numbers of people

The idea has been to get to know the people around our buildings and to bless them

 So today we  had over 150 people  at our Community Christmas Brunch . They came from all around the local area and from as far afield as Romania and South Korea! Ages ranged from a few months to those  well into their nineties.We  represented a very wide cross section of society and it was great fun! There was a sense to togetherness as we enjoyed good food and sang  traditional Christmas carols. We also   thought together about the real meaning of Christmas.The morning was rounded of with a rousing rendition of the 12 days of Christmas-with actions!

The comments as people left made it clear everyone had had an amazing time.

Reflecting on the morning I was delighted 

• We had attracted so many people who don't normally come into our building and got to know some of them much better
• People felt they had really enjoyed themselves
• We had shared a bit about the real meaning of Christmas
• As a church we had been willing to try something a bit different
• Our church people had been enthusiastic about getting to know our neighbours and inviting them along

I have no doubt we have a long, long way to go to become the church God wants us to be, but I also have no doubt that we have already travelled a considerable distance along that road .

These are exciting times and I believe even more exciting time lie ahead