Wednesday 28 September 2016

Why are we multiplying to two meetings?

Why are we multiplying to two meetings?












On Sunday 18 September, at our Vision Sunday, we announced that we are going to be multiplying to two morning meetings from January 2017. If you were away that weekend and did not hear that message you can download it here.

Now..... we have been this route before. In our old venue in Haywards Heath we needed to multiply meetings to create room for growth. It was an adventure and, yes, it was hard work but we saw amazing fruit. The church grew by 20% in two-and-a-half years.

It was always our plan to multiple at some point in The King's Centre, but why now? Here are a number of reasons why we believe now is the right time.

1. Mission

The primary reason is mission. The King's Church Mid-Sussex exists to reach out to those who are not yet here. The simple reality is that by offering more choice more people can come. We live in a very flexible culture, people work flexible working patterns and therefore it makes sense to offer people different options regarding church attendance. Some of the churches that are seeing most gospel fruit are those that offer multiple options for when people can come. There are tens of thousands of people who don't know Jesus in our community, therefore we want to create more opportunities for them to find out more.

2. Momentum 

We have some growth momentum at present. Praise God! Our higher Sundays are higher and our average attendance is growing. If we are to keep growing we need to keep creating more space. Healthy things should grow and we are seeing that but we need to keep thinking through what the next 1, 2 and 5 years look like .

3. Multiplication

We feel God is calling us to begin thinking through what it means for us to be a church that multiplies. This won’t be the last move. We still have dreams of an evening meeting and think that will happen in the not too distant future. Beyond that we are beginning to explore what multiple congregations might look like for us as a church. In our future, The King's Church Mid-Sussex will not be defined by how many you can get in one room at one time.

4. Children's and Youth ministry

This is of huge importance. We want to offer the best children and youth ministry that we can and feel we have a responsibility to do this well. The reality is our children's and youth rooms on a Sunday have no room for growth. We want to be engaging in high value discipleship in our youth and children's programmes not crowd management. So we need to find solutions for growth in these groups and multiple meetings helps us with this.

5. Stretch of Faith 

There could be a danger that because we fill our venue once a week we fall into self-reliance (we know how to do this) or apathy (we don't need to do anything). The reality is, there are thousands of people in our community who know nothing of the amazing grace that Jesus offers. We have always been a church that reached in faith to things that would be impossible other than God's wonderful provision.  I want us to continue to be that kind of church.  If we are not being stretched, we can become safe and self-reliant. God calls us to an adventure to believe that he can do more than we can ask or imagine. Multiplication will keep stretching us to believe God for things that we can't do otherwise.

Yes there is a lot to arrange and work out. Yes we'll need more volunteers to make this happen. And yes our sundays will feel slightly different for a while. But remember....we have been this route before and the result was that many more people found their home in church. We are praying for that again! Please keep an ear out for news and information as it is shared in the coming weeks.


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