Hey church family,

As we look back on 2022 at St Thomas', we are filled with thanksgiving for the faithfulness of God and the love and support of the church family. We are especially thankful for the ways in which the church family has supported the mission and ministry of the church, as we seek to be people who follow Jesus, build community and love Newcastle. The church would not be the same without you - thank you.

In early 2022 we ran a six week teaching series called Made for Relationship as we looked at the Bible’s call on us when it comes to relationships, friendship, sexuality, marriage and singleness. It was fantastic to have Ed Shaw from Living Out come and spend some time with us as a church and we are grateful for all the work Living Out are doing around the nation as they help the church think through these big topics. We are also grateful for the input of Sandy Millar and Christy Wimber who have come to speak at leadership events and on Sundays at St Thomas’ over the past twelve months.

One of the highlights of the year was the completion of our building project, which had been delayed by a year. We are grateful to our Architect, Tristan Spicer, the team at DP Builders, and our Project Manager, Chris Elder, for their hard work and dedication in making this project a reality. We are also thankful for the people of St Hilda’s in Jesmond who let us use their church building for a year longer than we initially thought! The newly refurbished St Thomas’ building is a huge gift to the city and will enable us to reach more people with the gospel.

In October, we had our re-launch service with Bishop Mark, which was a wonderful celebration of all that God has done in and through our church family. We were thrilled to have around 350 people join us for the service and the festivities that followed.

As the year progressed, we saw significant growth in the numbers of people coming to St Thomas' and finding a home with us in the church family. By the end of the year, we were averaging 300 people on a Sunday in term time. While we are overjoyed to see so many people joining us, this growth also presents us with new challenges. We are aware that relationships within the church change as we grow and so we need to continue to emphasise the importance of Groups and invest in them over the coming months. The staff team has received helpful input from external leaders about how their roles change as we grow. We need to continue to work towards empowering the whole church family so that we all play our part and everybody belongs. We also are aware that we need to scale the governance and operational life of the church as we grow so that we are sustainable into the future.

Perhaps the greatest joy of the year was seeing people come to faith in Jesus Christ and having their lives transformed. It is truly a privilege to be a part of God's work in this way, and we give thanks for every person who has found new life in Him.

As we reflect on the year gone by, we want to express our gratitude to Margaret Proud, our churchwarden, without whom we simply could not function. We also want to thank John Pearson, who served on and off as churchwarden for decades. He stepped down mid-way through the year and is enjoying a well deserved break from churchwarden responsibilities!

The staff team has served so well in 2022 in the midst of big challenges and change. Some of them have written ministry reports, which you can read below, and we commend these to you.

Please continue to pray for us and the whole church family as we head into the next year and all that God has for us. We can’t wait to hear more stories of lives transformed and God at work among us.

“Praise the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” - Psalm 106

Ben Doolan
Church Leader

Lee Kirkby
Associate Minister

How can we play our part in seeing 65,000 students each having an opportunity to respond to the good news of the gospel? Is there any hope against such odds?

Hope is the student who invited her boyfriend and team mate to church earlier this year and now they’ve joined a club family way beyond their expectations of university. Hope is the students who stood for freedom in the heart of their campus - praying, interceding and advocating for an end to human trafficking in our world and in our time. Hope is the first year student bringing her mates to her baptism to see and hear about death to sin and life in Christ. It didn’t take until second year to realise she was all-in for Jesus. Hope is the commitment, hunger and fire in worship we have been seeing increasing since the February Student Weekend Away (often way past my bedtime on Sunday evening). I don’t think we’re yet seeing even 1% of students connecting meaningfully with our local churches. We are still a campus minority. But those who are in have counted the cost, and are following Him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. Hope is on the rise. Jesus is rescuing students from darkness, filling them with the Spirit to shine as a light on campus to the glory of God the Father. Hope is on the rise.

This generation of students have big dreams for changing the world and high expectations of themselves and they need our help. Let’s be praying for God to keep setting hearts on fire with love for Him. Let’s encourage them with love and generosity. Ask God to show you ways you can help. Let’s be praying for our recruitment of a new Student Minister in the coming months. That God would bring a red-hot-faithful disciple of Jesus to lead this work in its next season. Perhaps you know someone you could encourage to apply? Pray for courage to keep our eyes fixed on the God of all hope before looking to the statistics. That as we preach Christ, hearts would be open to the God of all hope.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” - Romans 15:13

James Brown
Ordinand

In the last year we have seen God do some remarkable things through our Youth Ministry. Being in the new building has brought a new lease of life to our Sunday Bible studies with a better physical space, as well as changing the age group to 9-14 year olds. The younger ones bring a sense of excitement and the older ones bring a level of maturity - they complement each other perfectly! Giving the over 14 year olds the permission to stay in the services on a Sunday has been great for them too. We’ve seen them engage so well, and they’ve even been modelling to the adults what it looks like to give their all in worship!

In September we were massively blessed by having three new DY Students serving in the Youth Ministry, which was divine provision for starting Youth Night! Without them, and our amazing volunteers, it wouldn’t have been possible to get it started. The team have been so blessed to hear remarks from the young people such as 'I know I can encounter God here' and 'this is where I can be myself'. We’ve also more than doubled in size since the group started!

At our residential in February we saw young people decide to follow Jesus, have powerful encounters with God and develop deeper friendships with one another, which has drastically improved their fellowship on Sundays and at Youth Night. One 11 year old said that before the residential he ‘wasn't the believing type’ but after an encounter with God he feels like all his sin has been washed away and he said 'it was like my brain was backwards but now it is forwards'.

At the end of March we also finished up our year long resourcing project in Newburn Parish. Every week we went to Newburn to run a group that explored the gospel using sport with young people who don't know Jesus. Over the whole year they engaged with over 30 unchurched young people! Since stepping back we have heard that one family has started attending the Messy Church in Newburn, which is very encouraging.

God has poured his spirit on all that we have put our hand to this year and we're blown away by what he has done. This year has affirmed our belief that our job is to create spaces for young people to encounter God. When we do this God honours it by doing life-transforming work in young people's lives that only he can do.

Joel Barwick
Youth Minister

We are so thankful for the way that God has continued to grow his work among children and families at St Thomas' in the last year. Due to the provision of space in the new building, along with a growing congregation, we are now able to offer two groups on a Sunday morning - one for pre-school, and another for junior school-aged children. Our prayer for these groups is not only that children would have lots of fun, but that they would grow in their relationship with Jesus, their knowledge of God's word, and their sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. A particular highlight of the past twelve months were the advent weeks in the lead up to Christmas, when our older children looked at "Journeys To Jesus" - tracking the story of people coming to know Christ in the Christmas narrative, culminating in the crib service on Christmas Eve. In the coming term all of our children's groups are exploring the theme of Obedient Faith - learning about how Moses, Daniel, Ruth, and others heard God's voice and trusted in his word.

Our Sunday groups are lead by a team of twenty volunteers, for whom we are so thankful! Please pray that God would continue to fill them with wisdom and creativity as they serve the discipleship of our children on a Sunday morning. We continue to pray also for this work to grow and develop, and in particular for the appointment of a Children and Families Worker which we have advertised for. Finally, giving thanks to God for all that he has done, please pray for our parents and godparents at St Thomas', along with us as a wider church family, as we continue to disciple a generation in the way of Jesus.

Brogan Hume
Curate

We have seen God move powerfully through the worship ministry in the last year: he has brought us home to our St Thomas’ building; he has ignited a fire within our worship life as a church; he has given exciting opportunities for our worship team to bless and serve others in our local diocese and in a national context; he has given us new songs to sing.

Returning to St Thomas’

Moving back into the building has provided a more permanent stage set up which has been an enormous help in allowing for smoother rehearsals and reducing set up time. It really feels like home! The move to two Sunday services has created space for the team to expand and has given opportunities for serving members to grow, develop and gather more experience. Also, since moving back into the building, we have seen a fresh wave of prophetic worship songs for our church - read more about that below! 

Encounter

It’s been a privilege to see God bless the whole church vision of Encounter this year - especially through worship. God has stirred a hunger in our hearts, particularly among our young people, to enjoy his presence, hear his voice and kneel before Jesus as King. We have seen increased freedom in worship in our morning services, with children having opportunities to directly engage in praising God with percussion instruments and ribbons. We have also seen worship go late into the night (and occasionally into the early hours of the morning) at the evening services and at student events. I believe God has been teaching us yet again that his presence is enough and that the only fitting response to a God who has given everything to us is to give everything back to him. 

Worship Workshop

Fortnightly on a Thursday, we have gathered worshippers to provide a space to learn more about leading worship. The heart behind this is to raise up more leaders to engage and equip others to encounter God’s presence. To see the development of musicians who have started out as novices now go onto to help resource worship at summer festivals, such as Luminosity, is a testament to the work God is doing through these sessions. 

Resourcing Opportunities 

It was a joy to have been invited to resource worship teams at New Wine’s summer festivals Sixty One and Luminosity and also help with worship once a month at Connect - a service in partnership with Junction 42. We also had the honour of playing at the Bishop’s Inauguration Service this April in the cathedral.

Music Releases 

God has blessed us with songwriters in our church and we have been busy writing this year! We have a collection of songs that we feel capture something of what God is saying and doing in the here and now at St Thomas’, and one of them in particular has a great backstory. Roots, written by Alicia Barwick, was conceived at one of the first gatherings in the newly renovated building. Alicia felt she had a picture from God of a shovel that we were to use collectively to dig for the treasures that God has in store for us as a church, and to pursue this through times of worship. She sang prophetically in the service about digging our roots firmly in Jesus as we establish ourselves back in our home building of St Thomas’. On the same night, up in remote Scotland, God gave me a similar prophetic song about giving us deep roots so that plants would spring up from the ground to bear fruit. So our team have been writing, honing and working in the studio to craft this song, anchoring it in John 15. Our hope is to release it this coming summer along with some other songs we’ve been working on, so watch this space! If you want to listen to previous songs we have released, you can find us on Spotify or YouTube.

Will Johnson
Worship Director

I’ve been so encouraged by all God has done and continues to do through communications, media and production here at St Thomas’. Moving back in to the renovated church building last summer brought some hard but exciting work in order to get our new audio, visual & lighting equipment set up and ready to use for services and events. In recent months our studio space at the end of the staff office has seen increasing levels of use as we have been recording and sharing more stories of God at work in the lives of our church family! Check out our Instagram to hear some of these stories.

Taylor’s story was a particular highlight. Taylor was one of the plumbers who worked on the St Thomas’ building project. He followed us on Instagram to keep up with what was going on here, then many months down the line decided to come on a Sunday to check out one of our services. He heard the gospel, made a commitment to Jesus and was baptised in our new baptistry just a couple of weeks later! The part social media played in keeping Taylor connected with us, and eventually prompting him to come on a Sunday and hear the good news of Jesus, is such an encouragement.

We continue to invest in recording and broadcasting our morning services, so that we can capture what God is doing in this place and declare his goodness beyond the four walls of the church building. Whilst the number of live viewers on a Sunday morning has expectedly dropped since Covid restrictions subsided and more people are joining us in-person, we are encouraged by the fact that our livestreams are regularly viewed by many hundreds of people during the week.

It was a privilege for St Thomas’ to be asked by New Wine to livestream their National Leadership Conference in Harrogate this year. It’s a joy to step in to our call to be a resource church by sharing our knowledge, experience and resources with others! Another way we are seeking to resource others is through our St Thomas’ Studio Instagram account, where we share the creative projects we’re working on, tips and tricks we find helpful in this ministry, and the things we feel God is saying to us about creativity in the church.

I’m immensely grateful for the dozens of volunteers who make the communications, media and production work possible here. I’m so proud to see them worship God through their different creative roles each week. Please pray that God would keep growing these teams, and that we would continue to communicate the never-changing gospel of Jesus in this ever-changing world of modern media.

Luke Porter
Creative Director

We are unbelievably thankful for our volunteer teams at St Thomas’. We believe that following Jesus faithfully includes modelling his life of service to others and to the church, and we love that so many of our church family are keen to get involved in serving, in a whole variety of ways! From our kids and youth teams to our hospitality and welcome teams, our Open Church team, our prayer ministry, student, worship, and production teams and our group leaders, there are so many ways in which people serve. We would not be able to serve one another, this city or this region without the servant-hearts of so many of our church family.

Alongside our heart for serving, we want to prioritise looking after people well by doing our best to ensure that volunteers still get the chance to engage with services and events outside of serving on a rota. With this in mind we’re always keen to see our teams continue to grow and to get others involved - giving people the chance to learn new skills, as well as serving in areas they already feel confident in. As we continue to grow as a church and love Newcastle well, we’d love for you to pray about where you could serve our church family on a team! That doesn’t have to look like joining a team that already exists - we’d love to hear your creative ideas. We’d also appreciate prayer for more volunteers, specifically in some of our more ‘behind the scenes’ roles.

We’d love for you to pray that those who are unable to serve on a specific team feel encouraged by God and others in the ways they do serve - through giving to the ongoing work of St Thomas’ and towards church planting in the Diocese, by hosting others in their homes, through engaging in worship, through the discipleship of their children, and in the conversations they have with people in their neighbourhoods and workplaces.

Alice Wilkinson
Admin & Operations

Our Discipleship Year scheme at St Thomas’ runs as part of the New Wine Discipleship Year (NWDY), welcoming in 18-24 year olds with a heart to grow as disciples, disciple others, and serve their local church. In September, we also welcomed a few students as part of the Ministry Experience Scheme - the Church of England’s provision for those who are exploring God’s call for their lives, particularly with regards to full-time church ministry, which has been a real gift. This is our third year running the NWDY, and we look back in gratitude, and forward with excitement.

In 2022, we saw the end of one years’ DY Student intake, and the beginning of another. The final term for our DY Students (DYers), with us from September 2021 to July 2022, was one filled with joy. We’re so thankful to the five DYers who were with us during that year for the way they gave their hearts and their time to growing as followers of Jesus and serving in the local church. Similarly, the seven DYers we met in September 2022 who are now beginning their third term with us have been an incredible bunch, dedicated to obediently listening to and responding to God, serving their ministries, and growing in depth of relationship with one another and with the church family. We are so thankful for them, and we’ll be sad to see them go (although we suspect a few of them may be sticking around...)

As we head into our final term with this group of DYers and look towards recruitment and the start of the next academic year after the summer, we’d love for you to be praying for Cal, Michael, Brandon, Ruth, Rachel, Jess and Jess as they discern what’s next for them, and for those who are considering applying for the next intake - for wisdom and faith as they prepare. And finally, we’d love for you to pray for us, as we make plans for the future, alongside the Diocese, regarding how to effectively grow and sustain a discipleship year which enables young adults to take a step forward into all that God is calling them to be, and to do.

Alice Wilkinson
Admin & Operations

Our midweek Groups at St Thomas’ are a key place for people to engage deeper. Numbers-wise, we started 2022 with 11 Groups, with memberships ranging from 8 to 15, though a few of made it up to 20 people! Altogether there were roughly 150 people in a midweek Group at the beginning of 2022. There were loads of great stories of how peoples’ Group setting became a safe, family space to experience the community of church and to get to know a smaller group of Christians in a deeper way. Many Group members described them as a lifeline during hard times in their lives and expressed great gratitude to their leaders for diligently and patiently walking through a weekly life of faith with their Groups.

We were aiming for our midweek Groups to be characterised by the following six things:

1. Worship – spending time in worship together, whether singing songs, declaring psalms or something else.

2. Bible – going deeper into the Bible together, seeking God’s will in his Word.

3. Prayer – maintaining an open, ongoing conversation with God as a Group, both for one another and looking outside.

4. Action – some sort of communal act of service, a way of living out the call to love Newcastle and follow Jesus’ servant example.

5. Breaking bread – hospitality is a key principle in the Bible, and a Kingdom principle in the Christian walk. The dinner table is a key place to build the family dynamic. We aim for our Groups to eat together in some way.

6. Growth – as with St Thomas’ as a whole, we’re expectant for God to add to our number. All our Groups should be growing and, in time, multiplying - again, like St Thomas’ as a whole.

In the main we hit all these aims, but there’s definite room for growth in how we worship in our groups, as well as in the breadth of our Group prayer-lives. If there was one area in particular that we ought to grow in, it’s action, working out how we might serve those outside of ourselves in some way.

In terms of content, we mostly used an informal pattern of worship, bible, prayer to structure our times together, using going deeper questions from the previous Sunday’s talk. We explored the Made for Relationship series in a little more detail in our Groups, with structured notes and resources being made available for each session. This was well received and became the basis for the hoped-for pattern for Groups in the future.

By September we had 18 Groups and therefore several new Group Leaders. We then took a long break from our regular pattern of Groups to join together for a centrally-hosted Alpha over the autumn term – this was a great time for lots of existing Christians to discover a new foundation for their faith through exploring the basics in a thorough and engaging way. Many people commented that they now had answers for questions that they’d wondered about for a long time. It was also, of course, a time for people to meet Jesus for the first time and discover what life in the light of the Gospel looks like.

By the end of 2022, there were just under 200 people across our midweek Groups, but many had missed the community and regular meeting pattern whilst we ran Alpha together. A year of great growth both in number and relationships, but still with plenty of learning to take into the future.

Adam Smith
Curate

This year has seen us grow in numbers and depth. It has been an exciting, challenging and blessed year. Waymakers - our prophetic community at St Thomas’ - has continued to meet and moved from being in our home to the wonder of the refurbished St Thomas’ building.

We hosted two Prophetic Workshops, one in St Hilda’s and one in St Thomas’. Both were well attend by people from across a number of churches. Feedback was extremely positive. Our thanks to Heather MacNicol, who facilitated both days along with others who are part of her network in this country. Both days were stretching yet fun.

Our hope and prayer has always been to see full church body ministry taking place across the St Thomas’ community. So it has been a real encouragement to see people praying with one another during and after the services, alongside a growth in the numbers of those available to offer prayer ministry and those coming for more specific prayer. It has been wonderful to see healing being prayed for and experienced. Thank you all.

As we look to the future, we are excited to be starting a weekly Dynamic Prayer meeting on Thursday mornings at 7:30am in church. If you’d like more information about this, please get in touch with either of us (Phil/Frances).

And as we prepare to take our sabbatical from August we want to give glory to God for all he has done and continues to do through us, but also across the whole St Thomas’ family.

Phil & Frances Harding
Team Pastors

We started 2022 as we ended 2021 – worshipping at St Hilda’s Church in Jesmond. We are so grateful to St Hilda’s for their generosity in enabling us to hold our services there many, many months after we had expected to be able to return to the St Thomas’ building. Across those months our various teams did an amazing job in welcoming, serving, leading and livestreaming our services. After several delays in the re-ordering project, we celebrated the return to St Thomas’ with an incredible launch service in October 2022. And what a celebration that was! As we read in Psalm 126 ‘The Lord has done great things and we are filled with joy!’ We are especially grateful for the help and dedication of many at the diocese for their help, hard work and support across the long months of the church re-ordering – not least of all to our Project Manager, Chris Elder and Architect, Tristan Spicer.

The launch service heralded the use of our wonderful lighter, more spacious building, a baptism pool which has been in much demand since our autumn return and put to good use as many have come to trust in Jesus, a great space where children and youth can meet, where Alpha has taken place and where Tiny T’s and the NHS weigh-in clinic can serve the local community during the week.

More recently our doors have been open during the week, Monday to Thursday lunchtimes. We have welcomed the curious, the searching, those who seek some peace and quiet to pray, some who have many challenges in life where we have been able to provide a drink and listening ear and frequently praying with visitors. Our midweek service each Wednesday draws folk who work in Newcastle, those who are passing by as well as those who are already part of our regular Sunday congregations – a beautiful way to serve Newcastle.

We give thanks and glory to God for all that 2022 held and look forward with expectation as to what He will do and has in store for us as 2023 progresses.

Margaret Proud
Churchwarden

Resource Church Giving Fund

The graph above shows our balance at the beginning of 2022, and our balance at the end of the year*. It also shows how much we received through giving, and how much we as a church contributed to the Resource Church Project.

*At the beginning of 2023 we paid approximately £150,000 as our contribution to this year’s costs.

Resource Church Project Fund

2022

The graph above shows our total expenditure for 2022, and a breakdown of where the funds for the expenditure came from.

SDF = Strategic Development Funding (from the national church)
RC = Resource Church (St Thomas’)
DBF = Diocesan Board of Finance
LPOW = Listed Place Of Worship VAT Reclaim

Resource Church Project Fund

The graph above shows the same information as the previous graph, but for the time period from when we launched in October 2019 to the end of 2022.

Expense 2022

Total: £644,000

The graph above shows our total expenditure in 2022 and how that money was spent. Money for interns comes from a separate fund that the Diocese holds.

Some staff are paid for by the grant we received from the national church (SDF). Others are paid for through giving to St Thomas’ (Non-SDF). By the beginning of 2025, the aim is for all costs to be covered by regular giving to St Thomas’.

Income 2022

Total: £135,000
70 regular givers

The graph above shows total income through giving to St Thomas’ in 2022, and the number of regular givers.

Chris Elder
Diocese of Newcastle

The information in the document linked below relates to the finances for St Thomas’ as it was set up before the launch of the Resource Church Project in October 2019. As you’ll see, there’s not much activity in these accounts any more.

Margaret Proud
Churchwarden

The parish safeguarding policies were reviewed and approved by the Master and Wardens in October 2022. The review gave due regard to the Bishops’ Guidance on Safeguarding and completed the safeguarding dashboard by the deadline set by the diocese.

Due to the nature of being in the city centre and having a large and growing church family there are a number of active safeguarding cases ongoing at any time, usually to do with historic incidents that have led to disclosures. We are grateful for the work of the Diocesean Safeguarding Team and wider statutory bodies who have always been a real help and support to us.

As the church grows, so does the size of our teams and the number of people that need training and DBS checking.

We are particularly thankful for Dan Erasmus, who served until the last part of 2022 as our Safeguarding Officer and did a fantastic job. Please pray someone steps forward to be our Safeguarding Officer in the near future.

Ben Doolan
Church Leader