Chew Magna Baptist Church (CMBC) is one of our churches which currently receives a Home Mission Grant.  CMBC was also one of the first churches to engage with Re-imagine, WEBA’s missional learning community, and it has been interesting to see the church community transitioning and becoming more outward-facing during recent years.

This is currently expressed in a variety of ways: through Open the Book assemblies; the monthly Big Get Together (a Messy Church-type event); Who let the Dads out (a monthly breakfast for dads and their children); and a weekly Sparklers group for parents and carers with young children.  At one level these are simply events – the kind of things that many churches do, but what they show is that CMBC is becoming a more outward-facing church.  This is why we award Home Mission grants – and this is what your generous giving to Home Mission is enabling.

CMBC like many churches, recognise that most people who are unchurched (i.e. previously have not regularly attended church) won’t connect with what they currently offer on Sunday mornings.  For this reason they developed and began the monthly Big Get Together (a Messy Church-type event).  The families who now attend this are beginning to regard this as being ‘their church’, they have  sense of belonging and ownership, and freely share matters for prayer.  Please pray that these families will continue on their spiritual journey and grow ever-closer to Jesus.

Please pray too for John Miles, minister of CMBC, and for Chew Magna, Winford and Blagdon Baptist Churches as they explore a closer sense of partnership, which by God’s grace will help them to become more effective in mission in the Chew and Yeo valleys.  We in WEBA are increasingly learning that working in partnership is one of the privileges and benefits that God has granted to us and is so central to the interdependence that we Baptists speak of (but don’t always fully enter into in practice).

Thank you for your support for Home Mission – for giving and for praying.  Please continue to do so and in particular for John Miles and our friends at CMBC this month.

If you would like to know more about Re-imagine, WEBA’s missional learning community, please contact Alex Drew at the WEBA office or have a look at our dedicated Re-imagine page on the WEBA website.

Alisdair Longwill