Kerith Farnborough family news
If you were at church with us on Sunday 5 February, you will have heard our Sites Director Catrina Benham along with Duncan Klitgaard, one of our Elders, share some news about our Kerith Farnborough leadership. As you know, Sonia Hopkin has been our Interim Site Pastor for the past few months, stepping in to lead our site during a really sad time for our church family as we supported Heather and Ben Pocock in prayer after the loss of their baby boy Theo.
On Sunday, Catrina and Duncan announced that Sonia’s role would no longer be ‘Interim’ – she will be our permanent Site Pastor in Kerith Farnborough, taking the baton from Heather, who has lead our site since it’s launch in 2013.
Heather and Ben were our founding Site Pastors, launching the Sandhurst site out of Kerith Bracknell – the first step in our journey as a multisite church! Ben then moved to other key responsibilities within Kerith, and for the majority of the last ten years, Heather has been our Site Pastor.
Heather is a strong visionary and has led us through many changes to become the established community that we are today – from the set up involved in making church happen in a school, building up serving teams from scratch, welcoming new people to our site and pastoring people through all kinds of situations over her years as our Site Pastor. She led our move to be ‘Kerith Blackwater Valley’ as we left Sandhurst and began meeting at the Village hotel - and of course also led us through our last move to our own building and putting down roots as ‘Kerith Farnborough’.
We have sensed that in this season God has been calling both Heather and Sonia to new things. Heather is now our Teaching and Development Lead – one of her key areas of responsibility is to oversee our Kerith preaching across all our sites, bringing her wisdom and creativity, and her deep knowledge and love of the Word of God to our preach planning. Heather is also leading on our building project in Kerith Farnborough, bringing vision, leadership and direction to it. She is soon to go on maternity leave from her role but we will still get to see her on Sundays as Heather and Ben will remain a key part of our Farnborough site family, and aren’t going anywhere!
Here’s some thoughts from Heather:
I’ve spent much of the last few years studying the wilderness passages and have really resonated with Simon’s verse for the year Deuteronomy 1:6: “You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Break camp and advance”. The passage that follows immediately concerns the necessary leadership in the next stage of the journey as we advance from the mountain that we’re on:
The Appointment of Leaders
At that time I said to you, “You are too heavy a burden for me to carry alone. The Lord your God has increased your numbers so that today you are as numerous as the stars in the sky. May the Lord, the God of your ancestors, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised! But how can I bear your problems and your burdens and your disputes all by myself? Choose some wise, understanding and respected men from each of your tribes, and I will set them over you.”
You answered me, “What you propose to do is good.”
I know on this next phase of our journey as a congregation, God will bless us. We’ve seen him bless us already with people, increasing our numbers, with expanding kids and youth work, with a building and new ministries and finance, and I know that he will likely entrust us with more. But, as Deuteronomy points out, in order to carry those blessings well, there’s a need for leadership multiplication. We’ve seen that in the expansion of our eldership with Duncan, Jacqui and Shari, and I sense that God is now doing that in the leadership of the site, with Sonia stepping into the role of site pastor. I’m excited to be working with Calum Field to push forward our building project to create this House of God and House of People that we’ve been dreaming of, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to shape our preaching and teaching at Kerith to further root our community in scripture. We have a good future ahead for our church! It’s a privilege to work with Sonia and all her gifting, as well the rest of our community in seeing that come to fruition. Let’s break camp and advance together.
On Sunday we thanked God for Heather and all she has done in leading us to this point in our site’s history.
We also prayed for Sonia as she takes up the role of Site Pastor. We are grateful to God for guiding us through this season, grateful to have had a healthy transition of leadership and that we don’t do this journey in isolation but in community with the Holy Spirit and with each other.
Vision Night
There are other changes happening within the Kerith leadership team on our other sites, and this Sunday our Senior Pastor Simon Benham will be sharing those as part of our One Church Vision Night.
It’ll take place on Zoom at 7.30pm, for one hour. If you’re already in our database you will receive an email with the details nearer the time – or do email info@kerith.church to find out more.
Thank you for your encouragement and prayers for Heather and Sonia, both in the past and for the future.