Let’s Go has grown consistently since its inception in 2003. At that time Kings Church Horsham, Christian Life Centre and Life Community Baptist Church pioneered the project and worked through the challenges of how churches with different styles, locations and sizes could partner each other.
In that first year we made our first offer of help to local residents and carried out a variety of tasks including gardening, car washing and window cleaning. At a special exhibition in the Carfax, we showed just a few of the creative ways in which local churches were already freely serving the community. New Zealander Ian McCormack proved to be a very popular speaker. His remarkable testimony of being stung to death by box jellyfish and coming back to life really got people talking. He spoke on how he had ‘a glimpse of eternity’ and how this had transformed his life.
In 2004 in support of the growing interest and participation of churches from across the district Let’s Go was endorsed by Horsham Churches Together. Ten partner churches participated in the week long project. Our programme of events attracted a lot of interest most notably our youth event that featured ex-East London hard men ‘Tough Talk’ with their weightlifting displays and stories of radically changed lives.
Many local residents, schools and several charities befitted from our practical service. In one morning we managed to give away 450 litres of ICI vinyl matt paint including some colours that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a battleship!
‘Let’s Go 2005’ grew to twelve churches all carrying out our community projects together and contributing to our youth programme. A growing number of churches also began to run their own events as part of the week. The ‘Taming the Tiger’ dinner was so popular that we could have filled the local Thai restaurant twice over. Three times world Kung Fu title holder Tony Anthony enthralled everyone with his vivid life story and how he became a Christian. As one church leader remarked on that event and Let’s Go in general “it blows out of the water the idea that church is boring”
By ‘Let’s Go 2006’, fifteen churches representing ten different denominations were putting on a number of events that thousands of people were now attending. The complexity and scale of the projects led to our volunteers working over 3900 man hours just in helping others. Perhaps there efforts were best summed up by one local Headteacher who said: “I feel very humbled this week by the total dedication, enthusiasm and kindness shown to us by all of the volunteers from Let’s Go. I personally have never experienced first hand such a feeling of togetherness from a group of people, who though unknown to each other have the bond of Christianity”
