The Salvation Army Chatham

This week, Monday Spot features the title at the head of this page, welcome. What makes you feel welcome when you come to church? Here are three things which may help.

Probably the first person you will meet when arriving for a meeting is John Allen. John regularly welcomes all worshippers to our Hall with a warm handshake and cheery smile. Giving them a copy of the day’s information leaflet always gives him great pleasure. John is a retired postman and is married to Sylvia who is always ready to help with those ‘backroom’ jobs. Here is John (on the right) pictured with two worshippers outside the Hall.

And what about feeling welcome inside the building. Ken takes such a pride in keeping our premises spotlessly clean and tidy. He works unrelentingly in this task and makes life so much easier for all who use our building. You just have to feel welcome when Ken has been at work. Here he is with his broom at the ready.

And finally, beautiful flower arrangements every Sunday of the year, donated by different members of the corps each week and arranged by our regular arranger. The House of God is always kept beautiful for you to worship in.

This week we have received some correspondence about whether The Salvation Army’s traditional methods of evangelism are still valid in this modern age and whether, for example, visiting music sections are likely to interfere with the Bible teaching programme set by the Officers. Well, we’re not going to enter into either discussion here especially as Croydon Songsters are due to visit us next week-end! We’re really looking forward to their visit and details can be found in Coming Events.

We would like to tell you, however, of a new initiative tried last Saturday (10 June) in our High Street, now a pedestrian shopping area. Fifteen salvationists went into the area with the particular purpose of inviting people in the street to tell us if they would like to be prayed for (and with). There was no Band or Songsters to attract them, just ‘one to one’ contact. Amazingly, in just over one hour, no less than 33 people accepted the invitation and allowed the Salvationists present to pray for them or for issues they were worried about. No uniforms were worn but a Salvation Army stand was erected as you can see in the photographs. We pray for those contacts and we hope you will too.

See you next week when we will tell you about our week-end with the Croydon Songsters.