...it seemed pretty significant that someone with no religious belief would tell me to go for an outreach job with the church! ...
Hi my name is Matt Coomes and I've just started working full time as the Outreach Worker for Welton Baptist Church and for me and my family it's a time of real change. The post of Outreach Worker is a new one so it's very much a case of working out as you go along but I have great help from the church leadership and my wife Jo particularly, is a huge support to me. I met Jo 18 years ago at a Youth leaders training day and she was quickly drawn away from Cheltenham to the bright lights of Midsomer Norton!! We have three childen Holly, Hattie and Will.
I've been involved with all kinds of events and groups with the church - Football, Pantomimes, Youthwork, Housegroups, Skate Park, Weekends away, The Cafe Bus and Raft Races are just some of the things I've had the real privilege to be part of.
When I left school, I trained with Cadburys at Somerdale in Keynsham as an Electrical Maintenance Engineer and had no thought then that it would lead to almost 22 years of service and strange shift patterns. It was a great place to work and fulfilled much of what I thought God wanted me to do, i.e. live as a Christian with 'normal' people in the 'real world'. I made many good friends there and will miss the banter. I think I gave as good as I got though! When the factory closure was announced it was a question of what next......?
The church began advertising the post early last year but I found enough reasons to ignore it and quietly expected someone else to fill the role fairly quickly. I could just go and get another 'normal' job. It was the end of summer when a friend at Cadbury's eventually asked if I'd thought about a job working for a church. I showed him the job description fully expecting to be laughed at for the rest of the day. Instead , as he read through it, he said, “That's you....that's you....that's you!” (with a couple of expletives thrown in). Although I knew God telling me to go for it in a number of other ways, it seemed pretty significant that someone with no religious belief would tell me to go for an outreach job with the church!
I love our church! It's full of incredibly different people from all kinds of walks of life. There is a genuine unity in our trust in Jesus and the realisation that none of us have 'made it' or have got all of the answers. I'm really keen for church to be more accessible to people, so that it's not seen as something that is done by 'them' on a Sunday, but is lived by 'us' every day. There are so many good things already happening (have a look around the website) and I'm really looking forward to working with everyone as God leads us in to what He has got for us next.
God Bless
Matt
February 2011
...it seemed pretty significant that someone with no religious belief would tell me to go for an outreach job with the church! ...
Hi my name is Matt Coomes and I've just started working full time as the Outreach Worker for Welton Baptist Church and for me and my family it's a time of real change. The post of Outreach Worker is a new one so it's very much a case of working out as you go along but I have great help from the church leadership and my wife Jo particularly, is a huge support to me. I met Jo 18 years ago at a Youth leaders training day and she was quickly drawn away from Cheltenham to the bright lights of Midsomer Norton!! We have three childen Holly, Hattie and Will.
I've been involved with all kinds of events and groups with the church - Football, Pantomimes, Youthwork, Housegroups, Skate Park, Weekends away, The Cafe Bus and Raft Races are just some of the things I've had the real privilege to be part of.
When I left school, I trained with Cadburys at Somerdale in Keynsham as an Electrical Maintenance Engineer and had no thought then that it would lead to almost 22 years of service and strange shift patterns. It was a great place to work and fulfilled much of what I thought God wanted me to do, i.e. live as a Christian with 'normal' people in the 'real world'. I made many good friends there and will miss the banter. I think I gave as good as I got though! When the factory closure was announced it was a question of what next......?
The church began advertising the post early last year but I found enough reasons to ignore it and quietly expected someone else to fill the role fairly quickly. I could just go and get another 'normal' job. It was the end of summer when a friend at Cadbury's eventually asked if I'd thought about a job working for a church. I showed him the job description fully expecting to be laughed at for the rest of the day. Instead , as he read through it, he said, “That's you....that's you....that's you!” (with a couple of expletives thrown in). Although I knew God telling me to go for it in a number of other ways, it seemed pretty significant that someone with no religious belief would tell me to go for an outreach job with the church!
I love our church! It's full of incredibly different people from all kinds of walks of life. There is a genuine unity in our trust in Jesus and the realisation that none of us have 'made it' or have got all of the answers. I'm really keen for church to be more accessible to people, so that it's not seen as something that is done by 'them' on a Sunday, but is lived by 'us' every day. There are so many good things already happening (have a look around the website) and I'm really looking forward to working with everyone as God leads us in to what He has got for us next.
God Bless
Matt
February 2011