Last night leaders gathered at Calne Free Church from the three Cluster areas – Swindon, Chippenham, and Bath. The main purpose was to review how these new Cluster groups have been shaping up, and the general news is good.
John Edmonds from Freshbrook Evangelical Church spoke for the four Church Swindon Cluster and reported a very positive response among the leaders, and a practical outworking beginning to develop already. Joint evangelism plans are already afoot, as are skill sharing projects too. The plan is to work collaboratively on the 2014 Passion for Life outreach (which I am sure we will be involved with also), and more immediately to host John Stevens for an FIEC@90 gathering to further envision the Cluster Churches about the work we are jointly undertaking.
Johnathan West from Emmanuel, Chippenham represented their Cluster of six Churches. Clearly there was a number of communication initiatives in the pipeline which we expected to mature in the next few weeks, and like Swindon, a FIEC@90 event is to be hosted in their area this Autumn.
Guy Davies spoke for our seven Churches here in the Bath group. We are having John Stevens down in the autumn also, probably at Widcombe, and hope to do a joint Church gathering in the spring.
We also agreed to have a whole area gathering next July.
Apart from that we welcomed the appointment of Geoff Weekes, Elder at Widcombe, as our new area visitor alongside Stephen West of Emmanuel, Chippenham, and gave thanks for the work of outgoing visitor, Peter Culver, who will retire next July.
The meeting ended with prayer, and I was really touched by a sense of the Lord with us, what a blessing.
