The leadership have been meeting regularly over the last year, praying and listening to what God’s vision is for Stroat Church, or more accurately the building which Stroat Church occupies. Lockdown has bought about a time to stop and ponder, to pray and to listen to what God wants us to do with the resources he has given us.
One of the major things we have heard over the past months is that we need to repair and improve our buildings, this started over the previous few years, with the redecoration of The Manse, creation of an en-suite to one of the upstairs bedrooms, the refurbishment of the downstairs shower room, and the rebuilding of the kitchen from the foundations up and the creation of a new family bathroom. This has also bought about repairs to the rear roof, heating improvements, sewers and drain repairs, not to mention the painting of the exterior of The Manse. There is still so much more that needs doing around the site, just have a look at our Maintenance To Do list. We now need to look at replacing the kitchen in the church hall.
The kitchen like any home is central to a lot of our plans, and without a full functioning kitchen that meets current Health and Safety regulations, we are unable to offer any catering to groups that use the Hall which then limits what we can do.
We have often heard people say that Stroat is like an Oasis a place of rest, and as we are set in such a beautiful location, with God’s creation all around us, we can’t disagree with this. So long term we would like to be able to offer The Manse as a retreat to Christian Workers, to come and stay for a short time, to recharge, spend time with God, and enjoy the local countryside, and for small groups like Alpha Courses, or Home Groups etc to come and spend a time at Stroat, to have time together, with use of the Hall as a meeting and worship venue. With the changes to The Manse we have been able to make it versatile so that we could have a couple staying in the back rooms using the kitchen and new bathroom, and the other bedrooms for small groups which could then use the church kitchen and facilities.
It may have only felt like a few years back that we had a name change, but we believe now is the time again to rethink our name, and so we have been considering ‘Stroat Mission’ Centre or Hub as our new name, partly looking back to why the site was purchased as a soup kitchen started but also looking forward to what we want to happen in the building – Christ focused Missions. We are of course in Stroat, we want to be a mission who has a centre/hub, where events can take place, e.g. Stroat Toddlers at Stroat Mission Centre/Hub.
Our vision has not yet revealed what our Sunday gatherings will look like if any, for the short term they will remain as they are meeting at 11am for a Bible Study. There are no plans or thoughts at this time to stop meeting in person on a Sunday. As time goes by as people come and go this will evolve, and we are waiting on God to show us what this will look like, but for the foreseeable future it will not return to a sermon orientated service.
We have recently talked about re-starting some regular events. They will look different to how they did before, partly as the one thing we are well aware of is that our workers are few and have limitations. So part of the vision is to look outside of our Church family for other local Christians who have a passion to come and help at these events (not necessarily join our Church family). There could be people who love arts and crafts and would be willing to come and help with Create events, or those that want to serve in a café or lunch club or toddler group and Stroat could be a place for them to come and do this, linking people from several churches to one mission.
God has put us in the perfect place, located on the busy A48 between Chepstow and Lydney, we have so much to offer, and we have to open our doors and share God’s love in as many different ways as we can. Some of the idea for the use of the buildings that we have had include:
- Toddlers
- Baby Group
- Worship evening
- Create
- Lunch Club
- Coffee Mornings
- Afternoon Teas
- Café
- Book club
- Bookshop
- Swap Shop
- Bible Study
- Lady’s Meeting
We know that this might seem rather vague, and that we don’t know many details, but we believe this is what God is calling us to do with our resources, we know that we will make mistakes along the way, but hopefully we will learn and grow from them, and as the years progress and we move forward even if it’s in tiny steps we know that we are walking in faith by doing what God is asking of us.
God has been so good to Stroat since it was started nearly 140 years ago, he has provided financially and as our slogan says given us Grace and provided us with Hope for the future. The one thing we are confident in is that he has not told us to close the doors and walk away, but to trust in him and to take small faithful bold steps.
We know that the past few years have not been easy, and as we seek to do God’s will, whilst he is fighting for us, we can expect more trials to come our way, but we must continue to trust him in all things, and know that we are built on solid foundations with our eyes firmly focused on him.