The Church Weekend is a time of invitation – to come and ‘Be With Jesus’ and with each other. As one Christian writer puts it: ‘The first and most important goal of apprenticeship to Jesus is to be with him. To cultivate a with-ness to Jesus as the baseline for our entire lives.’ And while all of us will be trying our best to do this already, I’m sure, like any relationship that is important to us, we also need to carve out times when we set aside other things for a short while and intentionally give that specific relationship our undivided focus and energy – that’s true in our friendships, our marriages, our relationships with family, and it’s true in our relationship with Jesus.

So it is our prayer that, as we set aside other things for a short time, to come to the Church Weekend At Home, we will all grow in the joy and the intimacy of our with-ness to Jesus and our with-ness to each other.