YMCA Cheltenham
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Introducing Chaplaincy

Our Christian chaplaincy team comes alongside residents, service-users, staff and volunteers in the YMCA community, offering a listening ear with pastoral and spiritual support wherever possible.

Chaplaincy recognises that our spiritual and emotional health matters as we navigate challenges through a lifetime. So, our chaplaincy programme is designed to provide opportunities for hope-filled conversations, encountering God’s love with opportunities for Bible exploration, as well as responding to all requests for prayer. This is how the YMCA started back in 1844, and we are still about the business of nurturing spiritual health today.

Our previous Chair of Trustees (Mike Horne) rephrased Luke 4:18–19, beautifully encapsulating our work of chaplaincy, and the transformative hope Jesus offers us all:

‘Tell the desperate people that there is good news
Bind up the brokenhearted and fragmented and crushed
Proclaim freedom to the addicted
And help those who cannot see hope, see again
To help the trapped and addicted find freedom
And tell people they are accepted and have value
And that their life is not a crime’

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Working with Local Churches

The YMCA Chaplaincy Team is keen to partner with all churches across Cheltenham, Gloucester and Cinderford. Working together, we are able to show the love of Jesus in practical and pastoral ways to many in our communities. So, let’s arrange a coffee and discuss ways we can share wisdom and resources.

Some initial partnership ideas might include:

  • Helping collate a Welcome Pack (which we give to new residents)

  • Joining our Prayer Team of intercessors

  • Training as a Volunteer Chaplain (offering a minimum of 2 hours a week), to join a chaplaincy activity as part of the team

  • Inviting Tim Welch to speak at your church about God’s Mission and the local work of YMCA in Gloucestershire

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Introducing our Chaplain

Tim Welch is an accredited Baptist minister who has served four churches alongside working as a part-time chaplain at Shrewsbury Town Football Club and later as a hospital chaplain in Jersey. He has been a longtime supporter of YMCA Cheltenham, and Tim sees this opportunity to pioneer a chaplaincy team as drawing his life interests together, to enable many more people discover the transformative hope of Jesus.

In his spare time, Tim continues his lifelong pursuit of trying to get fit, enjoying walking, and a recent rediscovery of Lego.

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Helping People Belong, Contribute and Thrive

DRIVEN BY THE GOOD WE DO

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We believe every person should be able to develop their full potential in body, mind and spirit

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