The Simple Pastor

Today we are baptising three young people and three adults into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are celebrating sins forgiven, conscience cleansed. We are rejoicing in new life (Gal 6:15). We are standing with and praying for those that are being united with Christ in his death and resurrection. We [...]

So the process of merger two churches legally has been completed but the work of creating one church is still ongoing. Here are some of the questions we asked ourselves as we worked through some of the issues. What other questions would you have asked? Vision – what’s our calling from God? Where are we [...]

The church merger continues to progress. Legal documents have been signed and in the coming few days all assets, liabilities and so on will be transferred from two charities into one new one Hope Church Shrewsbury. For the past seven years or so North Shrewsbury Community Church has been nomadic, of no permanent abode. We’ve [...]

Back in June I talked about the church merger and the process we used to choose a new name for the church. I deliberately didn’t mention the name. But it’s about time I did. Hope Church. So there you go. It’s not original but that wasn’t one of the criteria so I’m not bothered about [...]

I haven’t written anything in a while about the church merger we’re working on so I thought it was about time I said something about that. Sooner or later the issue of names crops up, ‘what are we going to be called?’ We decided early on that a new name was important, that way we [...]

I’ve spent the last few days in the hills of mid-Wales at Cefn Lea. The sun shone and it was beautiful. More inspiring than the surroundings was the opportunity to bask in the grace of God to His people. Just great. We gathered with hundreds of our brothers and sisters from churches in Whitchurch, Wrexham, [...]

The first question we asked as we look into merging relates to vision. We wanted to find out what the call of God on each church was and were they the same? In order to walk together going forward we need to be walking in the same direction, it’s a basic point but quite an [...]

So where are we up to in this church merger business? Well the good news is that recently the members of The Grange Free Church voted unanimously to merge with North Shrewsbury Community Church. That’s the easy bit done and now the hard work really begins! The reality is that deciding to walk down a [...]

Recently I announced that our church might be involved in a merger. In one of the comments Peter Kirk asked a series of good questions. His question was essentially ‘why?’ with the following queries. Is it because one of the churches is nearly dying and has become unviable? Is it because the two churches are [...]

It’s a question I’m going to have find out the answer to because it’s a question I’m now facing. The Grange Free Church have approached North Shrewsbury Community Church about the possibility of combining forces. This is both exciting and daunting. Here are just some of the questions I’m considering, feel free to chip in [...]

Fellow Newfrontiers blogger Mark Heath has reflected on the influences shaping Newfrontiers at the moment in this post Newfrontiers Future Directions. Mark lists, as he sees it, four key currents that are shaping our movement – church growth, reformissional, neo-pentecostal and emerging – with the strongest current being reformissional. I get an honourable mention under [...]

Our church has been having a debate with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about talking about healing (Round 1, Round 2). Here’s the latest: We sent the following letter to them, explaining again our position “Thank you for your letter asking us again to comply with the proforma. Our response, however is the same as [...]