During the past year our Church experienced a big turn around in its life, which has been difficult for many of us. Our average weekly attendance almost halved between start & end of 2006. The summer & autumn saw a bigger than usual removal of members, including some who had been with us for much longer than the 3 year stay which is average for half our membership. The withdrawal of Freescale has just been announced for this year, so we'll be losing more families this Easter. The presence of a student worker last academic year did not sadly increase our student work noticeably, and Sally has moved on to Paris, having helped a number of individual students here.

September saw the launch of a 2nd English language Church (led by American evangelical missionaries) on the other side of the city. A dozen of our families transferred to this Church, because it is geographically closer, or they find the timing of their services more convenient, or they prefer its style of worship and its "seeker-friendly" orientation. Key children's & youth workers were amongst those who transferred, so our work in this area has suffered. Whilst some of us think this is a necessary development, given that we decided two years ago not to try to launch a second informal service ourselves (for logistical reasons and because most of our then members opposed a splitting of our Church), it has been painful, and has "taken the wind out of our sails". I emphasise though that we have excellent relationships with the new Church, with some people attending both, and some of our children enjoying the weekly AWANA club there. We are grateful for those who have stayed with us and for those who have joined us. We thank God that our finances have held up well (and thank each person whohas contributed to that), but they will come under increasing pressure. I feel we turned a corner at the start of January 2007 in our response to all this, and are now moving forward again in a positive way, with our attendance beginning to climb, and a good spirit growing amongst us.

Positively we rejoice in the challenge of helping the Lewis family to prepare to go as missionaries to Burkina Faso, and are working with them on finance & prayer support with a summer departure in mind. They will work with Serving In Mission (SIM). We are also partners with Tilly Leuring, Tearfund's regional representative in SE Congo, who is from our Church.

We used the "Purpose Driven Life" course during Lent 2006, which was well received, and are working on our own material "Encounters of Jesus in Luke's gospel" this Lent 2007.

It's been a great encouragement to have Howard & Dona Diehl join us as missionary partners working with us and ICG under the auspices of International Teams, and we are appreciating what they are sharing with us.

We were glad to receive a visit from Bishop David to confirm 3 members, and continue to benefit from the support of the Intercontinental Church Society. A visit from British evangelist Rev Daniel Cozens for our Church Away Weekend in May was greatly appreciated. This has led to a quarterly service featuring prayer for healing being established, and to a team of people being available to pray with anyone after each Sunday service. We've decided to reschedule our annual Away Weekend to the end of October for the future.

Our monthly Church lunches continue to be appreciated, together with a programme of social events, which give opportunity for contact with people who do not attend our Church.

We continue to enjoy good relationships with the other Churches of the area, including the two with whom we share a building. Major renovation work on this has started, and I thank you for coping with the disruption this has entailed.

As always our Church life depends on the active participation of each member, and I especially want to thank David & Mark our Churchwardens for their advice and support, Alan & Val for their partnership in the gospel, our Church Council members for contributing their wisdom, including Richard, our Treasurer, & Elizabeth, our Secretary. Our gratitude goes to Tony, for taking on leading our children's work, and to David, Loreena & Montserrat (with the under 11s), and Jen, helped by Mark, for their work with the over 11s; also to Marie for organising the creche rota and each person who helps there. A big thank you too to our musicians, to Jane for organising & often providing flowers each week, to our hard working Social Committee, to John & Nell Stinton & the Events Committee, and to the members of the Evangelism committee, working on outreach ideas. Thank you to Dante who's taken over leading the 9h30 Adult Sunday School, and those who lead and host of different home groups. Angela has quietly worked hard to try to enlarge our contacts with students, but this is an area we need to rethink yet again. The prayer team and prayer chain are a blessing to us, and of course there's lots of other often unseen contributions being made by many of you, as well as the visible ones such as those who take on different roles on Sunday mornings.

Thank you all for your support of Marian & myself, through what's been a difficult last six months for us as a Church and for us personally with my father's death and family developments. It is a privilege to share this remarkable Church with you all. May we continue to trust God to build his Church, and each play our part in that. The major challenge continues to be finding ways to reach those who are not Christians and so grow through conversions, rather than relying on Christians transferring to us from other countries! We pray we may keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, as we try to refine our understanding of his vision for our Church.

Stephen.