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Back in February, we shared our Annual Report as a way of looking back with gratitude and looking ahead with hope. It told the story of who we are as a church, the direction we sensed God leading us, and the priorities shaping our life together. This update offers a snapshot of how that story is continuing. Not every area of church life has changed dramatically, and that's okay. Much of what God does among us happens steadily rather than suddenly. We hope these updates encourage you, celebrate what God is doing, and remind us that we're all part of the ongoing story He is writing through St John's.
In February, we shared some of the hopes and priorities shaping the next season of life at St John’s. Over the months since, these have continued to develop around four shared directions: becoming more deeply rooted in Jesus, growing as a recognised spiritual home, developing everyday mission, and building a healthy, shared leadership culture. The sections below give a snapshot of where we’ve seen movement in each of these areas, as well as some of what we’re continuing to work towards.
with gratitude, the Elders
*This page is designed to be read alongside our 2026 Annual Report, with links throughout if you'd like to revisit the fuller story behind each update.
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Our Shared Direction
Reminders
Churches often talk about vision. Our Roadmap is simply a way of showing what that vision looks like in practice. It helps us understand the direction we're travelling, the priorities we're focusing on today, and how each area of church life contributes to the bigger picture.
Direction
Deeply Rooted in Jesus
Reminders
One of our shared directions is to grow as a church increasingly rooted in Jesus, where following Him becomes more deeply woven into our worship, learning, prayer and everyday lives.
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Teaching & Learning Journey
Since February, Welcomed & Included has explored how following Jesus shapes the way we welcome and belong together,
while Shared by Design explored Jesus’ vision for His Church, looking at shared leadership, the gifts He gives His people, and the part we each play in building up the whole body. Over the summer, Simply Jesus creatively brought all ages together around Jesus' own words and the invitation to put them into practice. As this update is published, we're exploring Everyday Faithfulness; what it means to follow Jesus faithfully in the ordinary places of work, home, relationships and community.
Sunday Services & Prayer
We have continued creating more intentional space within Sunday gatherings to listen and respond to God. Flexible endings, Deep Roots services, creative prayer and reflection, and all-age learning are broadening the ways we worship, pray and participate together. Our new Creative Community not only releases people to worship God with their gifts, but also enables a space for greater connection with Him. We started with the Torn Curtain Easter installation, and have started building some kits we can use, like the Fruit of the Spirit series, and the JESUS art summer project.
Worship
Our Worship Team has entered a significant season of development.
New shared Vision & Values emphasise being worshippers before musicians, creating space to encounter God and growing together. Separate bands have become one worship community, supported by a new Worship Leadership Team, a six-week song pool, Jam Sessions and the evolving Roundhouse.
Growing Together Across Generations
Our U18 teaching has increasingly been planned and supported as part of the whole-church learning journey. Children and young people engage with the same biblical themes in age-appropriate ways, strengthening opportunities for shared conversations and discipleship across generations.
Looking Ahead
In early September, we joined with Christians around the world for a 24/7 Global Week of Prayer, creating opportunities to pray together throughout the week. As we look ahead, we want to keep developing prayer as a natural part of our shared life, widening participation and exploring different ways of praying, listening and responding to God both within our Sunday gatherings and beyond them.
Our teaching journey continues this autumn with a short focus on Abiding, followed by Another Kingdom; a new series exploring the book of Daniel and what it means to live faithfully in a culture shaped by competing kingdoms, before we move into Advent. Early in 2027, The Jesus Sermon series will take us slowly through Matthew 5–7, returning in depth to Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount. Alongside our Sunday teaching, some courses and learning opportunities are planned for 2027.
Direction
Recognised Spiritual Home
Reminders
We want St John’s to be a recognised spiritual home — a place where people experience genuine welcome, find belonging, and have space to grow and contribute.
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Welcome & Belonging
Since February, we’ve continued taking practical steps to make welcome and belonging easier to navigate, from someone’s first Sunday through to finding their place in the wider life of St John’s.
Welcome & Finding Your Place
Our Welcome Team has expanded, with two people now serving each Sunday and a more visible welcome point outside the auditorium as well as downstairs. Printed information has been updated and we’ve worked to make it easier for people to discover groups, events, serving opportunities and next steps.
The appointment of a Groups Coordinator has also created a clearer route for people wanting to join a group, with greater ownership of enquiries, matching and follow-up.
Communicating Our Welcome
An important part of belonging is being able to understand what kind of church St John’s is. Our new Welcome Explained webpages now bring together our Welcome Statement, theological thinking and pastoral approach in one place. Alongside clearer information about Sunday services and groups across the website, we hope this helps both newcomers and the wider church family understand more easily who we are and how to find their place.
Looking Ahead
Our focus now is on embedding welcome more deeply into our shared culture, so that it is not simply the work of a Welcome Team, but something we all participate in. We want to continue to notice people, and help them find their place, as a natural part of life at St John’s.
Groups & Pastoral Care
Groups continue to be an important part of how we do life and faith together at St John’s, offering spaces for friendship, discipleship, prayer, creativity, wellbeing and shared interests.
Developing & Supporting Groups
Since February, we’ve developed a more joined-up approach to our groups, clarifying what we mean by a St John’s Group and recognising the many different ways people gather for connection, discipleship and shared interests.
The appointment of our Groups Coordinator has brought clearer support for group leaders and a simpler route for people looking to join a group. We’ve also refreshed our printed and online information and strengthened communication across the website, Sundays and social media, making the breadth of group life at St John’s easier to discover and navigate.
Our Groups Fayre, coming up on September 27th, will bring all of this together, giving people an opportunity to discover what’s happening, meet those involved and explore where they might find connection and belonging.
Pastoral Care
Groups continue to provide an important first layer of everyday care, where people are known, prayed for and supported through relationships. Alongside this, our Pastoral Care Team provides more intentional support when needed. Following a change in leadership within the team this summer, we are reviewing how this ministry is supported and resourced for the next season.
Looking Ahead
Our next step is to keep strengthening groups as places of belonging, discipleship and care, while making it increasingly easy for people to find and join them. We also want to create space for new groups to emerge as people identify interests, needs and opportunities within our church and wider community.
Reminders
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Children, Youth & Families
Summer Together
Over the summer, our Simply Jesus services brought the whole church family together for six weeks of creative all-age worship and learning. The Shuffle - with a choice of bible study, prayer activities, art, journalling, worship and play were widely enjoyed. These Sundays have continued our commitment to making intergenerational worship a normal part of life at St John’s.
Youth
Our youth groups have continued to create space for young people to explore faith, ask questions and grow together. Earlier in the year we were particularly encouraged by deeper faith conversations among the older group, alongside young people exploring baptism and confirmation.
Our youth continued to explore their faith at this year's Magnitude festival, where young people from all over the UK come together to worship and enjoy all kinds of activities together. This is a great way to make new friends, explore various topics around life and faith, and connect with organisations that offer volunteering opportunities.
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Holiday Club
We had a great time being Superheroes at our Holiday Club this year, learning how to be more like Jesus. Using his teachings and parables to look at doing what is right; loving people, living humbly and trusting God. Micah 6:8 was our memory verse for the week! We had 18 children sign up and lots of great volunteers including our Youth Helpers. As numbers have been dwindling in recent years, we are looking into ideas that might shake up what we are doing in our summer program for next year.
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Growing our Teams
We continue to be grateful for the volunteers who invest in our children and young people each week. Our Crèche and Sunday Club remain an area where we particularly need to grow the team. Please consider if you can help.
Looking Ahead
Our focus is not simply on providing activities for children and young people, but on helping them increasingly belong, participate and contribute within the wider church family. This autumn we’ll continue strengthening our volunteer teams, creating opportunities for greater youth participation, and developing our welcome and provision for children and families with additional support needs.
Direction
Everyday Mission
Reminders
We want to grow as a church where mission is not simply something we support or organise, but increasingly part of how we live out our faith in the places God has put us.
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Mission & Community
Alongside our ongoing support for Mission Partners, several of our regular groups have a strong outward-facing focus, creating places of welcome, connection and practical support within our community. These established ministries are an important part of how everyday mission is already taking shape at St John’s.
Our life at the Low Port Centre is also continuing to create opportunities for relationships. Regular markets have been particularly valuable, with simple conversations over a cup of tea sometimes opening into deeper conversations about faith and opportunities to pray. Connections are also growing through community events and relationships with local organisations.
This summer, the Elders devoted a Listening Evening to prayer and discernment around this direction. A strong theme was the continuing shift from doing things “to” the community towards doing things “with” the community; partnering, listening and paying attention to where God may already be at work.
Our current Everyday Faithfulness teaching series is bringing this closer to home, exploring what following Jesus looks like in our ordinary relationships, workplaces, neighbourhoods and daily lives.
Looking Ahead
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Rather than simply creating more programmes, we want to grow in confidence in living and sharing our faith naturally. That means making spiritual conversations and stories of what God is doing more visible, listening well to our community, developing partnerships, and encouraging one another to recognise the everyday opportunities God puts in front of us.
Direction
Healthy Shared Leadership
Reminders
We want to develop a leadership culture where responsibility is increasingly shared, people are equipped and supported to use their gifts, and leadership remains healthy and sustainable.​
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Growing Healthy Teams
Since February, we’ve continued investing in the people who lead and serve across St John’s. Both our Teaching and Worship Teams have developed shared Vision & Values, created collaboratively by the teams themselves.
These are helping establish clearer expectations and healthier rhythms of preparation, prayer, feedback and development, while giving team members greater ownership of the ministries they help lead.
Across our Sunday teams, we’ve continued strengthening training, communication and shared responsibility. Volunteers within Sound and AV have been actively involved in reviewing systems and developing new ways of working, while investment in equipment and training is helping teams serve with greater confidence and consistency.
A significant development this summer is our new Sunday leadership structure, with Sunday mornings now overseen by a Service Lead and Operations Lead. This replaces three previous staff-led roles, gives greater responsibility to our volunteer teams and releases staff to focus more fully on their particular Sunday roles.
More broadly, we are continuing to move towards a culture where leadership is less about a few people carrying responsibility and more about equipping, trusting and releasing others to contribute.
Looking Ahead
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Our Roadmap points towards leadership becoming increasingly shared and sustainable. Over the coming months, we’ll continue investing in the training, support and care of volunteers, while helping leaders grow in confidence and creating opportunities for a broader range of people to contribute their gifts.
For staff, this also means continuing to focus on equipping others, paying attention to healthy workloads and wellbeing, and creating a culture where decisions are increasingly shaped by prayerful discernment rather than urgency.
The Story Continues
There is much here to be thankful for, but this update is only a snapshot. The life of St John’s is shaped every week through people praying, serving, welcoming, learning, caring for one another and living out their faith in everyday places.
As we move into the autumn and beyond, our Roadmap will continue to help us hold onto the direction we believe God is leading us, while remaining open to what He is doing along the way. Thank you for the many different ways you are part of that shared life. We look forward to continuing to listen, learn and follow Jesus together.
Supporting the Roadmap
Our Roadmap isn't only about what we hope to do; it also helps us think carefully about the people, finances, buildings and structures that enable our shared life and ministry. Alongside the areas above, our Trustees continue to oversee these resources and responsibilities, helping ensure that what we do is sustainable and supports the direction we believe God is leading us.
Trustee Update
The Trustees continue to oversee the governance, finances, staffing and property responsibilities of St John’s. Since our last update, there has been significant progress with Low Port Centre, alongside ongoing work around our finances, property and governance.
Our financial position improved during the first half of the year following the generous response to Spring Giving Month. There remain challenges around the sustainability and predictability of our income, which you can read more about in the finance update below.
The Community Asset Transfer of Low Port Centre has now been completed, marking a significant milestone after several years of work. Our next step is to finalise the long-term lease which will secure St John’s place within the Centre, together with a Memorandum of Understanding setting out more about the ongoing relationship between St John’s and LPC.
LPC SCIO is also exploring the possibility of taking on Winchburgh Community Centre. As a founding partner of LPC, St John’s Trustees have considered the potential implications for the organisation, including governance and financial risk, and were reassured by LPC’s response to the questions raised. We will continue to take an interest as the project develops.
Union Road continues to be leased to a local printing company, providing a valuable source of income for the church. We continue to oversee the upkeep and management of the building.
Alongside this, the Trustees continue their regular governance work. The 2025 Annual Accounts have been independently examined, approved and submitted to OSCR; a refreshed review of the skills and effectiveness of the Trustee team is underway; and Chris Price has agreed to become a formally appointed St John’s representative on the LPC Board.
There is more detail about these areas in the full Trustee Report. As always, please speak to one of the Trustees if you have any questions.
Resourcing our Roadmap
Everything you've read in this update is made possible through people giving their time, gifts and financial resources. As we look ahead, we want to steward those resources wisely and sustainably so that we can continue pursuing the direction we believe God is leading us.
There is much to be thankful for. At the end of March our General Fund was showing a deficit of around £14,100, but the generous response to Spring Giving Month, which raised £21,852 including Gift Aid, together with well-controlled expenditure, brought us broadly back to break-even by the end of June.
That was an important improvement and we are hugely grateful to everyone who contributed. However, the break-even position in June includes the one-off income received through Spring Giving Month and was still behind the position we had budgeted for. Our expenditure is tracking very closely to budget; the greater challenge is that we continue to rely on one-off donations and grants to supplement our regular income.
Regular giving provides the most stable foundation for our finances and gives us greater confidence to plan ahead. Earlier this year we invited regular givers to review their giving and those who don't currently give to consider starting. There has been relatively little change in regular giving since then, which means that the underlying challenge remains.
As we review our third-quarter position and begin planning for 2027, we want to think not simply about meeting any year-end shortfall, but about building a more sustainable financial base to support our people, ministries and the priorities within our Roadmap.
If St John’s is your church home, we’d encourage you to consider your own giving - reviewing your regular giving where you are able, or considering starting to give regularly if you don’t already. Whatever the amount, regular giving helps provide a more stable foundation for our shared life and ministry.
Thank you for the many ways you give, serve and contribute to the life of St John's.