An introduction - September

Last month I started an internship at Greyfriars and New Hope Church in Reading. I am inviting you to kindly consider partnering with me on this journey through prayer, financially or both.

What am I doing?

I am serving in a variety of the church ministries and the role is still developing. This is what I’ve been doing so far:

Student ministry: A lot of my time has been spent serving the students of Reading. Student ministry looks a lot different from last year and the student pastor and I have been thinking of new, creative and COVID safe ways to reach out to students, particularly first years moving to Reading. Together we planned and led the Welcome event earlier this month on Zoom. We created ‘Church at home’ packs for students which we give out at our evening Sunday service. I designed and produced digital prayer and recipe cards for the packs.

I co-lead a student small group which meets on Zoom every Tuesday at 7:30pm. As we are unable to meet collectively, one-to-one time with students is more important than ever. I have conducted about eight one-to-ones so far, to check in, pray with them and explore how the church can be supporting our students in this time. I continue to run our social media platforms (check out greyfriarsstudents on Instagram). I use Canva to create the digital content.

Greyfriars missionary trust: Many of you will know I have a passion for international development and a heart for creating overseas international relations. Greyfriars has a separate trust which coordinates its work with many overseas partners. Recently, I created specific role descriptions for all their volunteers. I also met with the Chair and we discussed plans to organise a Missions Weekend next year. This would involve celebrating the many mission partners the church has, communicating with the congregation the work that is being done and explaining how they can support the trust, through prayer and resources. I am really excited to be heavily involved in the event planning for this weekend.

Church admin: I swiftly learnt that if you walk into a church and declare your love of admin you swiftly become everyone’s best pal and I could very quickly become an admin intern. Thankfully, my line manager, John the curate, filters the admin jobs I’m responsible for. At present, I create the Sunday rotas/plans, edit these throughout the week, communicate them to all involved, take the minutes for a few staff meetings and dip my toe in the wider church communications weekly email.

Sundays: On Sunday morning, I’m up early either to help with the technology for our morning online service or co-lead the service. I have learnt to do the visuals (AV) both in the 10:30am online service and 7pm in person service. I go home in the afternoon for a few hours before heading back for 5:30/6pm. In the evening, I am often on the welcoming team, checking people in at the doors, handing out ‘church at home’ bags to students, doing the AV or co-leading the service.

Theology course: I am taking part in a theological course organised by the leadership team. I study one topic each half term, starting with Women in Leadership and soon to be moving onto Predestination. Each topic is chosen by me. The curate sends me a long list of resources related to the topic; I read books, listen to podcast, watch online lectures and videos. Then I meet with members of the congregation who are experts in that field and willing to sit and talk with me about it. Regarding Woman in leadership, I will be having discussions with individuals representing both sides of the debate with the hope I will reach my own informed, biblically supported conclusion.

Other: I have been in discussion with the head of the 20/30’s ministry about how to support young adults who have just graduated and are no longer part of the student ministry. I have asked many of my graduate friends how they found graduating, the support they received from churches and how the church may have been able to help them navigate the change to the working world. I am in the process of creating a plan for next summer, to give final year students a day or two of training on what it looks like to finish university well and what is next. I hope to ensure they are plugged into a young adults’ small group and don’t suddenly find themselves going from having a lot of support as a student to suddenly having nothing.

The youth pastor spoke to me about the possibility of preaching to the youth and helping me learn to structure and deliver a talk well. Watch this space!

I’ve been asked to co-plan and run the Greyfriars Tearfund quiz later this year. Stay tuned for more info!

Why am I asking for support now?

The internship was originally set out to be part time (my volunteer agreement states 3.5-4 days a week) and I was planning to work part time to support myself. I made a lot of applications in my first week for part time café/shop assistant roles but then had a conversation with my host family. They were keen to limit the number of people we all came into contact with to reduce our household risk of COVID. To ease the need for me to get a job, they very generously made it clear they will happily provide all my meals. I began serving full time at church in the meantime with the idea I would find some work I could do remotely to generate some income for expenses. Turns out, that is much harder than I thought.

If I am able to support myself financially this year without a part time job, I will be able to serve at church full-time for the duration of my internship. Please pray about this as I am unsure how to proceed.

Will you prayerfully consider partnering with me? If you would like to discuss this further, please do get in touch! I have a Stewardship account should you feel led to give: www.give.net/20343664

Thank you so much for reading my newsletter; I will produce a monthly update (which should be shorter now I have set the scene!).

God bless, Abby

P.s - you can read my introductory article on page 9 in the One Family magazine: https://greyfriars.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OneFamily-Issue06-v3.pdf