A new chapter begins

I am so encouraged.


After all the months (and years) of praying, giving and planning we have now had our first Sunday meeting in our new venue - The King's Centre, Burgess Hill.


It was such an electric atmosphere and it was so good to see the place rammed full and to hear the voices of people worshipping God. Though we knew that lots of people would be interested in seeing the new building, we did not fully expect that over 430 people would be there on our first Sunday. As I said, I am so encouraged.

It was a great privilege for me to be able to preach the first message in The King's Centre - reminding us to be more excited about the presence of God than a new building.  The picture to the right shows the view from where I was standing. It was quite an amazing moment for me.


We are on a steep learning curve in terms of running our own building. We recognise that not everything was as good as we want it to be. Please bear with us over the next few weeks, especially in the following areas:

ACOUSTICS AND SOUND

Our technical team did an outstanding job to get us up and running for Sunday morning - they had very little time and worked incredibly hard. We were aware that the auditorium would present some challenges regarding echo and reverb. However, until we were able to get 400 chairs and people in the building we could not fully analyse the sound. Please be assured we are aware that the sound is not as we want it to be. We are working hard on finding the right solutions and will be liaising with acoustic specialists, however, this will not be completely resolved immediately. Please be patient as we try to find the best short and long term solutions.

COFFEE AND REFRESHMENTS

We are aware that some people had to queue for some time to get their refreshments last Sunday. We will try different solutions each week to try and reduce the time people have to wait. We are requesting that people do keep lids on hot drinks - this is both for safety (we do not want hot drinks spilling over children) and to prevent spillages in the building.

PARKING

We were able to get many cars on to the site which was great news.  Again, we will learn over the coming weeks the best way to park the maximum number of cars. If you are arriving from the north end of the building (i.e. coming in from Royal George Road, Burgess Hill) please park in the spaces we are able to use at Sussex Central College which is right next to The King's Centre. This will help prevent log jams at the south entrance of the building.


Thank you for your patience as we work these things through. The reason we are not publicly launching the building until September is so that we have these weeks over the summer to discover the best ways of running these areas.