Hello! Welcome to our third Annual Report
As your Pastors and as a team, we are so passionate about you being fully appraised of the health and growth of His church. If you’ve been around any length of time, you’ll know that we are committed to staying honest, open, and transparent about our church finances but we’re also taking this opportunity to celebrate all God has done this past year.
Over the next few pages, you’ll be able to relive some of the incredible moments from the last 12 months which all revolve around what God, and we, are most passionate about; people. More than that - it’s about the transformation in and through people to see a slice of heaven touch earth and we have been so encouraged by everything we have witnessed.
What has been so encouraging, is seeing many people who come into our building having a real ‘Jacob moment’ - when he realised the place, he found himself wasn’t just anywhere, but “This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:17)
2022-23 has been one of the strongest years we have had as a church in terms of many metrics for a significant amount of time; financially, in our Groups, those attending on a Sunday from kids to youth, baptisms to decisions. It’s also forced us to think about and implement a monthly second service to facilitate the expansion of what God is doing, and we have been so encouraged by so many jumping onto different teams to facilitate and take responsibility for the house to make it happen.
We’ve also seen the growth and development of our Hope Community Foundation, with more happening than ever and different projects meeting almost every day of the week. The ever-expanding Community Grocery has seen members join our midweek Alpha courses and consequently our Sunday gatherings, Little Ark Nursery has steadied in a historically tough time for the childcare sector and we have also become a hub for placement students from Sheffield Hallam University and also part of the corporate social responsibility for companies like Virgin Media. It’s been amazing to be able to partner with organisations and charities, showing them how we love people and modelling Jesus in all we do, with some of the placement students then in turn taking part in our Alpha courses and discovering more about Jesus - the reason we do what we do!
Last year we spoke about how we have committed to an 18–24-month process of developing our Discipleship and Pastoral pathways. Through the creation of our Next Steps course, and expansion of our Groups and Regional Groups Leadership team, alongside our Discipleship and Pastoral Care task forces fully established and working hard, we will see a real strength created behind the scenes which will in turn begin to instigate some real momentum in the days outside of our Sunday gatherings.
As God encouraged Jeremiah, we are fully invested into ‘seeking the welfare of the city where He has placed us’ (Jeremiah 29:7), and we are so passionate about spending the rest of our lives building something here for the glory of God and for the sake of our city.
Our prayer is that as we commit to building the house of God by seeking first His Kingdom and righteousness, that all things will be added to us, and we see all that we have believed for both now and in the days to come!
We love you, pray for you and are so thankful for your commitment!
Soli deo Gloria! (For the glory of God alone!)
Jo & Lois Willis
Lead Pastors, C3 Hope
