HOW DOES IT WORK?
St Thomas’ Church is a large church—there are about 600 of us all together (all ages) and, fortunately, we don’t all turn up at the same thing at the same time!!
We try to keep things as simple as possible in regards to keeping the church healthy and growing.
Our Vicar, Revd Tim Montgomery, heads up our Leadership Team of :
Tim Montgomery, Bill Holliday, Steve Weatherill, Rachel Stavert, Sue Montgomery, Drew Newman, Eileen Smith, Ray deVial and John Fleetwood. Our Church Wardens both have far too much to do and not enough time to do it in! They have our thanks and admiration.
Jean Thorp (Warden—Administration & Finance)
David Baker (Warden—Property & Resources)
We have four Group Pastors overseeing the Cell Group network and the cell leaders. They are: Alistair Finlay & Rachel Stavert.
When you come into church during the week you will usually come across David Baker (our wonderful Administrator and jack of all trades - he really spends most of his time enabling things to happen!) You will probably encounter others on the staff team as well as quite a few church members helping out in one or more of the daily activities or events. This is a lively and vibrant church whose members will be encouraging you to muck-in and put your gifts and abilities to use alongside the rest of us!
The PAROCHIAL CHURCH COUNCIL (the PCC) is the elected church council which is responsible for overseeing the work of the church and especially the income and expenditure. The running costs of the church are c.£250,000 a year and growing rapidly as our mission strategy grows and costs more!
MEMBERSHIP
Being a member means playing your part! The church is like a body with each part doing its special bit to enable the whole body to function. This means that every member has a special part to play so that the whole body works as well as possible.
Jesus told his disciples that he had come not to be served but to serve … and he told them that if they wanted to follow him they must adopt the same attitude.
So—being a member of the church is about playing your part in the whole body and joining with everyone else in serving God, one another and those we live and work amongst each and every day. This affects our TIME, our TALENTS and our TREASURE. As Christians we put God first in everything—we aim to seek first the Kingdom of God—and trust Him for His provision and help.
We try to give TIME each day to be alone with God, to pray and read the Bible, to allow Him to speak and renew us by His Holy Spirit. We give time to serving others as necessary and time to meet together.
We offer our TALENTS to serve in whatever ways we can. We all help in the simple tasks of serving and we each have unique skills that we can put to special use. We also want to be available to God for Him to give us any of His special spiritual gifts for the strengthening of the church.
Our TREASURE (spelt ‘m-o-n-e-y’!) comes from Him. We bring Him the ‘first fruits’ of our income. The Bible calls this a tithe (or a tenth) and we each decide in our hearts what to give and do so generously and in obedience to Him. |
