God has been so good to us! We launched Christ Church Fareham in September 2018 with an afternoon meeting at the Ashcroft Arts Centre with a team of 9 adults and 5 children. In January 2019, we had faith to move to a morning meeting, gathering about 20 people every Sunday. In March 2020, we’d grown to about 30 people each week when covid hit and we were forced to meet online. In September 2021, we appointed our eldership team and gathered 35 people on an average Sunday. In January 2022, we moved venues and started to meet at Orchard Lea Junior School. The capacity of 100 people sounded big with plenty of room to grow.
Two and a half years later, we are nearing that capacity. It’s rare for us to have a Sunday with less than 80 people present, the classrooms we use for children’s work are bursting at the seams.
Our growth has come from lots of different places. We’ve baptised 8 people, some have moved into the area, others have drifted away from church, but found faith once again in our midst. We’re gathering people from Fareham, Gosport, Hedge End, West End, Portchester and everywhere in between from all sorts of ages, races and backgrounds. Our Church is more diverse than the town we meet in! At Elders Meetings, our leaders always speak about building deep rather than wide. We don’t measure success by the number of people coming on a Sunday, but aim to pastor, lead and teach all the people God gives us, so we can see them enjoying and glorifying God more and more in their lives. We’re therefore grateful to God for people growing in love for God and faith in Jesus Christ, the passion for God’s Word in the Bible we have at CCF and seeing people grow in the knowledge of and trust in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It’s definitely not all about numbers, but we also don’t want to hinder what God is doing amongst us because our meeting place is too small. Orchard Lea has been a wonderful place to gather every Sunday and we’ve known God’s favour in that place. We’re grateful to the teachers and staff there who have been so accommodating to us. But it’s time for a new adventure.
From Sunday 29th September 2024, Christ Church Fareham will meet every Sunday at 10.30am at Cams Hill School (Shearwater Ave, Portchester, Fareham PO16 8AH). We’ve got their main school hall, which has room to grow to 250 people, 2 classrooms and 2 drama studios for our Under 18s work and availability of all their outdoor place (we had a picnic there at our test event!). There will be other people on site on Sundays using the sports facilities etc., but we will have a permanent banner outside the school, so all the parents will know about the church that meets there and our welcome team and banners mean no one will get lost.
I cannot wait to move there and see what God does in the life of the church. We really believe that God is in this move, that we will meet new people in a new area of town and see more lives transformed for the glory of Jesus Christ. Let’s pray. Let’s go in faith.
If you’re looking for a Church in Fareham or the surrounding regions, if you want to find out more about Christianity and the good news of offer to anyone and everyone, then why not visit us at CCF. We’ll be at Orchard Lea for a few weeks yet or you could come along to Cams Hill School on 29th September. You’d be very welcome!!
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