Last Sunday morning (13/9/09) I announced that after 30 years in Wimbledon we will be moving to King's Church, Catford. In April next year I will join the leadership team at King's Church where I will be responsible for overseeing all the ministry areas e.g. pastoral care, small groups, youth, children, membership, baptisms, newcomers, deaf ministry, courses, work with the homeless etc. It is a big role and everything will be two or three times the scale that I am used to. The church currently has around 900-1000 people attending every Sunday and at the present rate of growth is expected to reach 2000 in the next 8-10 years. My new role will certainly be challenging.This was obviously big news for the Queens Road Church congregation and was received with a mixture of emotions. At a time like this you are not sure how you want people to react! On one hand you feel that everyone should be sobbing but on the other you want them to be positive about the future. The staff joked that we would need some strong coffee after last Sunday's meeting or even gin and tonics. One of the elders went further and mischievously suggested some might want to crack open a bottle of champagne! (Thanks!)
Cathy and I took over four months to make the final decision - we have had to process a lot of emotions - we have got a lot of good friends in Wimbledon, although we are not moving that far away. But in the end we felt that it was the right move at the right time and I'm looking forward to making a contribution to building the church in SE London.
Back in 1996, just before I started leading QRC, I was given an encouraging prophetic word. At the end there were two sentences which indicated that God would use my time in Wimbledon to prepare me for another future role. The move to Catford certainly seems to fit that word given to me 13 years ago. When we shared the news with some of our key leaders just over a week ago, one of them said she'd had a dream a few months ago in which God told her we were moving on. I wished she'd told us earlier, it would have saved us a lot of agonising over the decision!
I am confident that God also has great plans for Queens Road Church in the future. The church is in good heart and we have strength in depth with regard to the wider leadership. Join me in praying for a smooth transition from one leader to the next - greater things are yet to come...








