We had a wonderful Staff Planning Retreat, joined by the wardens and a few others. Just to be able to retreat itself was a very encouraging experience, especially after a two year hiatus!
Here are a few points to note for 2022:
- Church "Staycation" Retreat from 5th to 8th of June. Note that school holidays start on 28th May.
- A refreshed Baptism and Confirmation Course in line with a more classical form of nurturing new believers. Some additional courses that can help ground our members in their Anglican faith.
- Increase focus on families. Parents can play a major role in their children's faith (i.e beliefs, lifestyle, values). We want to help parents in this direction. Some weeks will be dedicated to family and faith issues. Singles need not worry about being left out as everyone has a family and in underlining family values, we are at the same time strengthening our sense of family as a parish.
- Related to the above, we will be running Marriage Preparation and Marriage Enrichment Courses regularly.
- We will be running the Alpha Course twice a year: starting in February and in August. This can be held in homes or in church as we await changes to safety restrictions. Either way, Cell groups can take advantage of Alpha for outreach and evangelistic purposes.
- We look forward to full restoration of our weekend worship life together, including full congregation participation in worship and fellowshipping after Services.
- We also discussed at length on the importance of encouraging youths and young adults to serve and lead. We are uncertain as yet how this may happen.
- On giving, we noted that online giving is here to stay. We will discontinue the past practise of issuing tithing/pledging envelopes. In January, we will recommit together our tithing/pledging faith projection for the year. How much each person commits to Tithing will be private. No one know, except the Lord of course! Not letting the right hand know what the left is doing (see Matthew 6:2-4) is an important discipleship virtue.
- We will have a Vision Morning for leaders on 22nd January (Sat).
Please pray with us. As always, your feedback is welcomed.
This week, the whole world breathed a sigh of relief to hear that the Omicron variant, while infectious like common flu, is also relatively less harmful than Alpha and Delta variant. Are we on the way to learn to live with Covid19 and establish a new normal? It appears to be so and we pray for positive trends in the new year.