Lifetime congregation Penketh

First published on: 14th October 2022

Our 29 new congregations that were planted within the last five years under the Joshua Centre banner meet all over our diocese and come in many shapes and sizes. They include communities that focus on young people, families, asylum seekers, retired generations and students, to name just a few. It has been great to see how many people have taken up the challenge of church planting, and inspirational to see their commitment through all the challenges that Covid presented. 

We will share some of these communities' success stories over the coming weeks. First up is a café style church based in Penketh run by a group of volunteers from St Paul's. 

'We have constantly reassessed, developing different methods of praying and preaching'

The Lifetime congregation is drawn from the local community. It is led by a group of volunteers from St Paul’s Penketh. Lifetime happens every Thursday morning, during term time, in our beautiful, light-new building. It is for all ages. We have folk in their eighties mixing with grandparents, parents, childminders, and little ones under school age. Around 80-90 of us gather between 9.30-12,00pm, to talk, play, make, pray, build, bake, eat and share with each other. God is building strong relationships outside our Thursday time that are supportive and encouraging.

The café is open all the time apart from a 20-25 minute session in the middle where everyone gathers to share in PowerTime. (This is when we worship, tell a Bible story and pray.) It is all completely free and any donations go to nominated charities.

A member of our team had a God-inspired idea after watching ‘An old people’s Home for Four-Year-olds’. This was closely linked with our new building being erected, working in the new garden, and seeing how receptive local people were to what was going on.  A persistent challenge from God about how this new building was to be used for His glory and acknowledgment of an aging but totally faithful, generous, and loving existing congregation.

This was shared over time with a close friend, then the vicar, then the PCC, then the whole church. This process took about 9 months. Our core team was then drawn from the people who came forward.

What has kept our community going so well has been; our team’s commitment to pray and work together, using Joshua training sessions together, one of our early members being a childminder with great links to the local community, keeping in virtual touch with all our LifeTime congregation during Lockdown, the Ark project giving us a focus for a mission during Lockdown and after, the Ark Experience week, the development of a branch- called Sunday Lunch, which is focused on families, many having come through LifeTime, the starting of a small evening Bible group and a huge influx of people from Hong Kong.

Initially, the only real difficulty was with an existing church group that felt we should be doing things differently. It has been crucial to constantly revisit our vision statement and pray together as a team. As our team consists of mainly older volunteers, we have had members who due to health reasons have had to step down. Running this group is an act of service as it takes many hours of commitment. 

We have constantly reassessed, particularly in the delivery of PowerTime, tweaking different elements and developing different methods of presenting Bible stories and praying. From the very start, we have tried to follow where God was leading so although some details have changed we have been very aware of God’s leading.

Our plans for the future include; Nurture Sunday Lunch, continuing Bible study group, offering other forums for fellowship, growing the right places and positions for the community from Hong Kong within LifeTime and church, and investigating other ways of funding.

Powered by Church Edit