By Scotty

This is our church report for October 2007 to October 2008.

As I look back over 2008 and think that this time last year we were pretty much a brand new church with no activities, events or presence in the community and see where we are now, I realise it has been a very busy year.

Here is a quick run down of our activities over the last year.

Family Social Events
We have run four family social events including an evening with magician John Bonner,  two highly competitive but great fun quiz nights as well as a summer ceilidh and BBQ.  We are currently looking at 2009 and hope to run five family socials next year with the first one towards the end of January.

Mens Evenings
In late 2007 we also started running our popular men’s evenings in a local pub.  Over the year a group of men (about 20) have had some great fun at skittles, darts, Scalelectrix and Wii games. We plan to continue and expand  these evenings in 2009 as well as introduce some great men’s activity days.

Ladies Craft Groups
This year we also began our ladies’ craft groups. These have also been very popular and in fact we now have three of them.  In July we held a ladies’ evening on the theme of “Whose style is it anyway?”  all about fashion styling and during 2009 we will be also adding some more ladies’ evenings to our offering, as well as some ladies’ activity days.

Young People
Before setting up our activities in the town in late 2007, we surveyed over 200 homes in Tetbury asking people what they felt the greatest need in Tetbury was. As we reported at the time, people overwhelmingly felt that provision for the young people of the town was very high (usually top) on the list.  We are only a small church and providing youth activities has been quite challenging, yet I am proud to say that almost every member of the church has got involved and we are now providing four new groups in Tetbury for young people.  We have a youth club called “Jumpstart” for children aged eight to eleven. We also have a club called “Converse” for young people in school years 7 through to 9 as well as running a  Quest course for this age group  where the young people can ask and be asked challenging life and faith questions (We currently have about 12 on this course).  We also have a group who call themselves “ONE” which is a place where Christian young people get together for fun and encouragement.  This  group is being used to mature are own younf people in the faith but we are also attracting young people not currently in a church.  During 2009 we hope to expand our programs for young people considerably, with the introduction of some groups for school years ten and eleven as well as some provision for young people aged sixteen to eighteen.

Money
Late in the year we introduced our Christians against poverty (CAP) money course. This is a simple course designed to help people take control of their finances and get themselves out of debt.  Take up has been slow but we think this will be a much needed course during 2009 and are planning a regular schedule for the course.

Fellowship
Within the church we have been meeting every two weeks on a Sunday as well as running nurture groups where people encourage and challenge one another in their walk with God

Salvation
Over this past 12 months we have begun to be involved in the lives of probably around 200 people. People are not yet being saved, and we are finding this incredibly frustrating but we do believe we are doing what God has asked us to do as church and we will reap a harvest in time.