Vision Night 2026 | Maturity & Multiplication

At our Vision Night we gathered as Hope Church to worship, reflect, pray, and look ahead together. It was an evening full of gratitude for what God has done among us, and faith for what He is calling us into next.

At the heart of the night was a simple conviction: God has a vision for His world and His church — and He invites us to walk in it together.

A Vision Rooted in Scripture

Stuart opened the evening by grounding us in Isaiah 2:2–5. This passage reminds us that the Bible is a visionary book. God’s purposes are not small or vague — they point to a glorious future, which we can enjoy in part now.

From this passage we were reminded of three key things that shape our life as a church:

• Sharing Jesus – “The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (v3). God’s word is meant to be proclaimed.

• Building Family – “Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (v5). Faith is lived out together.

• Helping Others – God’s people are called to be peacemakers, modelling unity and offering hope as the “light of the Lord”.

  
  

These aren’t new ideas for Hope Church. They flow directly from our vision:

Seeing lives transformed by Jesus.

These ideas are rooted in Jesus’ words — the Great Commandment (loving God and loving others) and the Great Commission (making disciples of all nations). Everything we do sits within that calling.

Prayers answered in 2025

After some sung worship, we took a moment to thank God for all that He did in 2025. You can see this reflection in our previous blog here and alongside these highlights, we also celebrated answered prayer:

• Increased financial provision

• Additional staff capacity and faithful volunteers

• A healthy restructuring of ministries

• New courses like Securely Single, Leadership Training and 1 to 1 Discipleship established.

• A growing leadership base, including Glenn joining our Trustees

• A 12% increase in attendance, building on the previous year’s growth

• 7 baptisms, 50 sponsored children and £12,000 raised for Commission's mission.

• Powerful testimonies of healing and God’s provision

• And yes — Chris taking a three-month sabbatical… and the church thriving!

  
  

So it was good at the start of our week of Prayer & Fasting, to pause together to thank God for His faithfulness.

Prophetic Direction for 2026

Looking ahead, Chris shared a clear sense that 2026 will be marked by Maturity & Multiplication.

Not just growth in numbers — though we do expect Sunday attendance to continue increasing — but growth in depth, ownership, and gifting. Chris brought to mind two prophetic pictures that are shaping us.

You can read here, in May 2025 Vinu had a prophetic word rooted in a growing maturity for our church. Our Isaiah preaching series, is part of helping us to do this. We want to be a people who go deeper, in order to go further. The people of God in the wilderness received manna from Heaven, but when they crossed into the Promised Land they had to dig, plant and sow for their food - this was part of their maturing. Similarly, Vinu felt that for us we are going into a season where some things we've been used to might stop, but it's part of us digging deeper into Him, so that we might go further - that's maturity.

Secondly, Guy had a picture that our church should be like a battleship and not a cruiseship. You can read that here. In this picture, everyone is involved. There are no passengers on a battleship and they have a training deck to get people ready. We can see that God is multiplying our numbers, so we need to respond by multiplying our leaders, gifting and responsibility through training. So this year we'll see new Life Group leaders released, new meeting leaders, new worship leaders and more. In order to prepare the way for what is next to come, every ministry and group needs to multiply.

This will mean:

• Expanding Sunday serving opportunities

• Growing and training leaders for Life Groups, Learn Groups* and ministries.

• Investing intentionally in discipleship on Sundays, in groups and in pairs.

Plans for 2026: Living the Vision

Building Family

In 2026 we’ll continue to strengthen the relational and spiritual life of the church:

• Life Groups expanding into new areas, celebrating Tim & Anna's service as they look to handover their group, and new groups launching in multiple areas across Guildford.

• Baptisms on 15th March — a powerful sign of lives transformed and opportunity for more.

• Hope Fest at Ardingly College, with growing numbers already signed up. Book yourself in here.

• A new church library accessed on Sunday or from the office with Veronica as our Librarian.

• A new weekly online prayer meeting, launching out of our week of prayer and fasting.

• Ongoing development of women’s ministry, including a new season for Cherished as we celebrated 8 years of faithful leading by Hannah Leavers.

• Teaching through Isaiah on Sunday mornings, with space for Easter, special Sundays, and a focused mini-series on regular giving.

• *Launching Learn Groups — short-term courses to help people grow in faith, understanding, and spiritual formation

Throughout the night, we paused repeatedly to pray — asking God to lead, to provide leaders, and to draw people deeper into community.

Sharing Jesus

Our heart to reach people with the gospel remains strong:

• International Sunday is a great opportunity to invite people to check out the church you attend as we celebrate unity. Please do invite others to see the beauty of God’s family.

• Easter Sunday, a clear invitation moment like our Carol services for our friends to hear the gospel.

• A special Fun Day celebrating 20 years of Hope Church taking place on 4th July - as we express to our community in a tangible way what grace is - an undeserved, unmerited, unearned free gift!

• The vast majority of people become a Christian under 18 years of age. Therefore our continued investment in children, youth, and students is vital and a great gospel opportunity.

  • So supporting our youth as numbers grow is key (currently 15 and expecting 25 in September)

  • Praying for new leaders to be raised up to serve across all our under 18 ministries

  • Standing with students involved in USCU and our midweek student gatherings

  • Click here to see what Sunday Serving Team you might like to explore.

    
    

We stood together and prayed boldly — for courage to invite, for people to encounter Jesus, and for our young people to flourish in faith.

Helping Others

Helping others remains a defining part of who we are and we reaffirmed our commitment to:

• Support Paul and Jo as missionaries through this next season of transition

• Continuing to partner with our eight Hope Works organisations, locally, nationally, and globally and investing prayer, time, and finances into the work God is doing through them

• It was amazing to see just how many people are actively engaged in our Hope Works and we want to continue to encourage wider involvement through volunteering, giving, praying, and participating

• We also shared the exciting news that we are exploring a work in the area of support for people who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy or in a pregnancy crisis.

• We shared that Chris has been invited to join Vinu's team and the Elders are supportive of this and can see the potential benefits to Chris, Commission and importantly to Hope Church.

  
  

The evening culminated in prayer stations around the room, as we interceded together for each Hope Work and reminded ourselves that mission flows from prayer.

Finances

Ed shared an encouraging financial update.

It was great to see that in 2025 our income had increased by £20,000 and that that had covered our increased expenditure which included increasing the staff team, meaning that we ended the year with just a small deficit, well within our means.

Incredibly, we gave almost £29,000 (14%) away to support our Hope Work organisations. Your giving to Hope Church, has a far greater reach than we can imagine.

As we head into 2026 with new initiatives like our 20 year birthday celebrations and Newday, as well as Hope Fest and our Sundays and groups, we expect to continue to see an increase in our income which will be matched by an increase in our expenditure.

Prayer & Fasting

The evening closed with a call to action:

• Engage with Prayer and Fasting on zoom and in person this week.

• Come expectant to our Encounter worship night, 8pm on Sunday 1st Feb

• Step into what God is doing — not as spectators, but as participants

• Consider in what areas is God leading you into Maturity and Mulitplication

Vision Night wasn’t about programmes or plans alone. It was about people — walking together in the light of the Lord, as Isaiah invites us to do.

We believe God has more for Hope Church in 2026.

And we’re excited to discover it — together.