As we have bid farewell to 2024 and as we welcome the dawn of 2025, we are reminded of this timeless reality: ‘God is good, and His love endures forever.’ This truth remains constant, no matter the year or season. Yet, at the threshold of a New Year, it carries a special resonance. As we step into 2025 with hope and expectation, we can make this our confident declaration: ‘God is good, and His love endures forever!’
One year ago, we crossed a significant threshold as a church community. After more than two centuries worshipping in the Cowl Street church, we began a new chapter in the Church Community Centre on Offenham Road. And what a year it has been!
At our opening service, Lynn Green, General Secretary of Baptists Together, encouraged us to step confidently and humbly into all that lay ahead. Over the past twelve months, we have sought to do just that.
This year has brought blessings. We’ve welcomed more people into the Church Community Centre – on Sundays for worship and throughout the week for various activities – than we ever thought possible. Our regular congregation has grown, new friendships have blossomed, creative opportunities have been explored, new initiatives begun, and the wider community warmly embraced.
As we step into this New Year, we do so with the same humble confidence in God that carried us through the past year, anchored in the truth that “God is good, and His love endures forever.” This declaration has become deeply personal for me. My faith and confidence in God have grown as I’ve come to see that His goodness is more vast, His love more inclusive, dynamic, and extraordinary, than I could have ever imagined.
This is the foundation of our hope and optimism for 2025. Whatever happens—whether in times of inspiration or challenge, through the people we meet, the choices we make, or the opportunities that arise—God’s goodness and love will meet us and flow through us into the year ahead.
We don’t need a grand vision to guide us, although if God provides one, we will humbly embrace it. Instead, we can simply fix our eyes on our Heavenly Father. As we live out our Church Values—Jesus, Welcome, Community, Inclusion, Involvement, and Journey—we can step forward as pilgrims, ready to explore the landscape of all that lies before us.
Edward Pillar