Building Strong Foundations

Gift Day Outcomes

On Sunday 16th October we had a gift day to raise the money for the redevelopment project of the main hall. As of Friday 21st October the total amount given was £81,100. This is an amazing amount. Over the last 14 years the most we have ever given on a gift day was £43,000 so to see that nearly doubled is fantastic. Thank you to everyone who prayed and gave. Only God could have done something like this and we say thank you to God for providing for us and journeying with us. We can now proceed with confidence on the project and we will also be giving 10% of the gifts to help build a church and school in Tombo, Sierra Leone.

If you haven't yet given it is not too late to miss out on all the excitement. Just send in your gift to the church office in an envelope marked 'Gift Day.' 

We can’t stay here!

All the way through the story of God’s people in the Bible is a sense of journey. From the Old Testament to the New Testament, God’s people are invariably on the move. There is a sense that whilst the current location may have been good, there comes a point when it is clear that they can’t stay where they are and God is calling them to move. God has new places for them to go to and new things for them to do.

What was true for God’s people in the Bible is also true for us, we are on the move, God has got new places for us to go to and new things for us to do. It is also true that we can’t stay where we are at the moment. On a Sunday at our services our main hall is well over seventy percent full and sometimes much more than that. (Research demonstrates that once a main worship centre is over seventy percent full it becomes a barrier to further growth). A number of our social events including Holiday at Home are running out of space in the hall. Add to all of that the fact that our sound system blew up a few weeks ago and we are using a system that has been cobbled together and that our video systems are similarly creaking, it is clear that we can’t stay here and we need to do something.

To that end we have been working on a project that involves redeveloping our main hall. The enclosed leaflet gives you full details and drawings of the plans, but the project will involve building a new storage cupboard, cutting back our current stage considerably, opening up the back of the stage so that we can use it again and putting in new sound, lighting and video systems. This will gain us a good amount of new space in the hall that can be used for social events, Sunday services and other activities. It will increase the capacity of the hall and enable us to continue to grow as God works in and through us.

As you may expect all of this is going to cost a considerable amount of money. The full cost of the project is going to be somewhere between £80,000 and £90,000. On Sunday 16th October we are going to have a gift day to raise the money for the project. I am asking everyone – member and regular attender at EBC - to be praying and thinking about how they might respond to this gift day. As we think about what God might be asking us to do we need to remember the two key principles of giving that God calls us to – generosity and sacrifice. The practicalities of how we do that are also included in the enclosed leaflet.

I am also very excited that we have decided to tithe (give away ten percent) of the income from this gift day to help build a church and school in Tombo, Sierra Leone. I had the chance to visit Tombo in June and to see the shack that the church and school currently meet in and the site of the proposed new building. (Click here for more details.)

The vision that God has given to us is not of buildings or equipment but of a growing church that reaches out and touches more and more lives including older people at Holiday at Home and Songs of Praise services, younger people attending Club Unity on a Friday evening, children at their Remix social events, people of all ages and places on their faith journeys at our Sunday services and some of the poorest people in the world in Sierra Leone having a place to come to know God and to receive their education. This project is a way that we can see that vision becoming a reality!

God bless

Chris Porter

(You can click here to download a pdf leaflet about our re-development plans or read it online.)