I really enjoyed preaching at all 3 venues of King’s Community Church, Norwich today. The first service was at the large City Centre venue (formerly a Boxing Club). Although I’ve spoken there many times before, it was great to re-connect with Marcus Tutt and Goff Hope and to see that despite launching two other venues, there was still a big crowd of people at King Street. Then I was driven by my host, Steve Hope, to the Mile Cross venue, which I first spoke at shortly after it was launched by Toby Skipper (who now leads the whole church and is currently on sabbatical). Just before I came up to the mic at Mile Cross, the notices were delivered by Debs Oldfield, a friend from Putney High School, who I knew back when I was 17 years old. I then had lunch with Steve & Natalie Hope, who later took me to the 3.30pm meeting of the City West venue they lead. There I met Nathan Jarvis, who I worked with on two large Carol Services in Norwich Cathedral. Anyway, the City West venue, although small in numbers launched an Alpha Course in a pub in October last year. They hoped that 20 people might turn up. Instead they had 78, and the highlight of my visit to Norwich was hearing Natalie Hope (who herself has not been a Christian for long) tell the story of how she galvanized the church and inspired the bar staff at the pub to pull off an Alpha where they took over the whole pub, and they currently have 16 of the guests attending a follow-on course. It was truly inspiring to listen to her and to see once again that there are people who would come on Alpha, if only someone invited them. They had guests who had turned up knowing no-one, who’d received a flyer through the door. So all in all it was an encouraging visit. My purpose was to help the church’s evangelistic efforts and that was what my preach was about.