Aylesham Baptist Free Church

 
Our vision is to be a Christ-centred community that seeks to know Jesus and make him known in Aylesham.

As a church we value;
Intimacy with God - we recognise that through Jesus we have access to the Father and our desire is to seek intimacy with him and to allow the Holy Spirit to do a work in us transforming us more and more into the likeness of Christ.
The Word – we are a bible based church and believe that the bible is the inspired word of God useful for showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes and training us to live God’s way. 
Community – we believe that community is the heart of God and should be based on love and forgiveness.  We seek to value, love and support each other, acknowledging and appreciating each other’s gifts.
Hospitality and generosity – we seek to be a church that makes everyone feel welcome.  We seek to be generous with our time, money and gifts.
 

How are things at the church?

It has been a great year at the church, in which we have seen God’s complete faithfulness.  We have had a baptism, new members joining and some new families coming to the church.  We are continuing to seek to serve our community; one of the ways we are doing this is by running two youth clubs and a family event every six weeks.  It has been great to meet and engage with young people and families.  We have also really grown as a church through the preaching series of ‘The emotionally healthy church’ and a series on ‘generous living’.  We feel that a lot of ground work has been done and that seeds have been sown and we are praying that we may see some of the fruit of this whilst not neglecting to sow more seeds!

Our verse for the year is; ‘be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.’
 
Things to praise and thank God for:

• The fact we now have a children’s group running on a Sunday morning
• The success of our Christmas fayre in which 120 children saw father Christmas
• The new central heating system in the hall
• A successful youth camp last summer

Things to ask God for:

• Wisdom in knowing how to share the gospel with the unchurched young people we connect with
• That we will have a successful youth camp again this year
• That we will get people wanting to come on our Christianity Explored course in May

Practical needs of the church:

• New windows for the church
• Worship leader
• More volunteers for our youth groups

Things coming up
On Maundy Thursday we are giving Easter eggs to people in our community who we think need thanking and we will also be asking them if there is anything we can pray for them. Then after Easter we are running a prayer room for four days and are hoping to have continual prayer from 10:00 - 20:00.  In May we are running a Christianity Explored course, in June we are putting on a summer fete and In July we are taking 12-15 young people camping.  We are hoping to see more growth and new life this coming year and we are excited about partnering with ‘The Rooftop’ to see how we can reach unchurched people with the gospel.

A massive thank you
We need to say a massive thank you to SEBA churches and the National Baptist Home Mission as it is through your support that the church is able to fund Laura’s part-time post as minister of Aylesham Baptist Free Church.
 

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