Our vision for St Peter's
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We seek to worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, teach the bible, grow people in faith, love and understanding, equip people to serve, and make Jesus known. We aim to do this at St Peter's by being a
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A community of Jesus Christ, submitted to His Word and serving His world.
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Our vision is to be a united community, of all ages, meeting together on the first day of the week, focussed on Jesus Christ. Our vision is to listen to Him, receive from Him and be equipped to live as His body in this place: an open, loving, welcoming, forgiving, growing, empowering, serving and witnessing community.
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We long to be a people who are open to God's word: gathering together expecting to meet with and hear from the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. We long for our worship to be real, relevant, exciting and life-giving. We long for our teaching (whether in age relevant groups, or preaching) to be biblical, stimulating, comforting and challenging, envisioning and equipping. We long that our communion, celebrated on Sunday, will be lived out in our relationships, service and witness during the week.
We long to be a people open to God's world: serving our neighbourhood and beyond by prayer, witness and practical service. Because St Peter's is off the beaten track and is not in the centre of a natural residential unit, we recognise that most of our new contacts will not come from passers by, but from friends bringing friends, and from building bridges with people who use the Hyndman Centre.
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Practical focus
- We will work at our Sunday service so that they are more accessible for people to bring friends.
- We will work at how we welcome people when they come to church, handing out noticesheets.
- We will encourage personal hospitality (churches grow when people eat together!).
- We will seek to put on more social events (as bridge events, enabling people to come into contact with the church community), and find someone who is called to head up this ministry.
- We will encourage families with young children, keeping the North transept as a crèche area (at least until the reordering)
- We will seek to grow and develop younger leadership
- We will seek to support Little Fishes, our toddler group, and lunch and chat, developing friendships with the people who use them.
- We will seek to encourage, equip and support people who are called by God to take new 'community' initiatives. We will encourage people to see themselves as servants of Christ in their 'secular' employment or interests.
- We will seek to develop the Hyndman Centre as a significant resource that church, parish and community can use. We will explore the possibility of building a hall that can seat a significant number of people, and also of providing office space, a counselling room, additional meeting space and storage space.
- It is our intention to set up Introducing Jesus courses specifically for people who come to St Peter's and also, in April 2007, run a Christianity Explored course. We hope that new homegroups could develop from this.