Watch Events and an update from Ben

Dear friends,

Somehow, it being a bank holiday escaped me, so we'll postpone the prayer meeting originally planned for today and come up with a plan - if you have any ideas, we'd love to hear them! Your small group leaders will also ask you about it this week (it's not too late to join a group...).

What is a watch party? 

Yesterday Dan and I started preparing for meeting in person on Sundays, it was really special being back in the hall and we can't wait to welcome you to join us from 23rd May. So, what is a watch party?

The aim of meeting physically on a Sunday is to encounter God together. That won't change, but some of the details will. There are two main things that will be different from when we used to meet in person:

Restrictions - You'll need to wear a mask, use hand gel etc. If you can, using a home test kit before joining us would be ideal, just to create as safe an environment as possible.

Content - During the meeting we'll make use of some of the online content, so it won't all be live. For a while, we'll have a pattern of trying to include more live elements on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of each month, so for example on 6th June I'll be preaching live, whereas we'll watch the online preach on screen on 23rd and 30th May. (This is why we’re calling them watch events/parties - some of it will be watching!)

Being together will be significant, and we will have a live host to lead us in praying and responding to the message, but we want you to know it will be different!

The long-term plan is to have live worship and preaching every week, as well as Kerith Kids, but we will build back up to that.

Next week we'll send out videos to explain this a bit more and details of how to sign up! Any questions, let us know.

Update from me

This week I read this blog that supposedly details '11 secrets most church leaders won't tell you'. After initially being sceptical, I found I agreed with lots of them, including:

'I'm less secure than I appear'

'Getting close to God isn't easy'

'I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing'

Some of this is similar to my own blog post last week about being a 'human sized pastor'. 

I'm not trying to say that what Dan and I do is the hardest job in the world, I just want to get to a place where we are all trying to understand each other. Hopefully reading either of those blog posts will give you a bit of an insight into the challenges of being a pastor, and it will help us work together as we seek to build God's kingdom. 

Have a great week, hope to see you soon.

Blessings, Ben

West Wight Site Pastor