September 2026 Newsletter

We hope you are being blessed! Here is the ninth monthly Newsletter for 2026: our September edition. I managed to miss sending this out last week, but I believe the messages are still just as true even a week late.

Please let the editor know if you want to share something in the next edition.

Are we ready to Double? - Dave Food

The weekend of Dr Clem Ferris’s visit has left a question hanging in the air at RCF: are we ready to double?

God can do it. “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47, NKJV). Growth is His business. Readiness is ours.

Isaiah heard the same summons: “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). Notice the order. Before the people arrive, the tent stretches. Before the harvest, the barns are built. Doubling is not first a numbers problem. It is a capacity problem, and capacity starts in the heart.

So here is a thought, and I am challenged by it too. If God sent us twice as many people next month, who would welcome them? Who would disciple them? Who would pray for them by name? If the honest answer is “the same faithful few”, we are not yet ready. Something is being stirred right now. When God was ready to rebuild His house, “the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel… and they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts” (Haggai 1:14). Stirring always leads to working. Paul urged Timothy to “stir up the gift of God which is in you” (2 Timothy 1:6). Gifts can lie dormant. They can also be fanned into flame.

So let me ask you directly. What is God stirring in you? Perhaps it is hospitality, the gift of making a stranger feel like family. Perhaps it is teaching, intercession, administration, music, or the courage to share your story over coffee. Peter reminds us: “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10). Not some. Each one.

This week, don’t just pray for growth. Prepare for it. Ask the Lord what He has placed in your hands. Then offer it.

“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few” (Matthew 9:37). Let’s be the answer to our own prayer.

Mentoring the next generation - Dave Food

Something is stirring. At RCF, I sense the Lord turning hearts across the generations. Malachi saw it coming: “And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6). Notice that the turning goes both ways.

In many of the cultures represented in our congregation, every older adult is “Auntie” or “Uncle”. It is not a title of blood but of belonging. Paul captured the same family instinct when he told Timothy to treat older men “as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger as sisters” (1 Timothy 5:1–2). The Church was never meant to be a collection of age groups. It is a household.

So here is a thought, Judges 2:10 records a chilling moment: “another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel.” That generation did not fail because God was absent. They failed because their elders stopped telling the story. If you have walked with Jesus a while, who are you pouring into? Paul’s strategy was simple: “commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). Being an auntie or uncle in the faith rarely needs a platform. It simply needs coffee after the service, a lift home, a prayer over a student facing exams, a text that says, “I’m cheering you on.”

Here is the provocation many of us avoid. Who is mentoring you? Some of us became leaders and quietly stopped being learners. Elisha received a double portion because he refused to leave Elijah’s side. Even Timothy, a pastor by then, still needed Paul’s letters. Pride says I have arrived; humility says I am still a nephew, still a niece, still at the table. “One generation shall praise Your works to another” (Psalm 145:4). That is the Kingdom rhythm: being fathered and fathering.

This week, ask the Lord for two names. One person you will invest in. One person you will learn from. Then pick up the phone. The next generation is not waiting for perfect mentors. They are waiting for present ones.

Humble Ambition: Building What Lasts - FDE conference - Dave Food

On 18 September, entrepreneurs gathered in offices, churches and living rooms across more than 75 nations for the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Conference, including us at Runnymede Christian Fellowship. Two lines have stayed with me ever since: 1 - applause builds empires, but humble ambition builds the Kingdom; 2 - Pick your number.

Notice how old that tension is. At Babel, the builders said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). They had vision, unity and skill. What they lacked was surrender. The tower was begun in ambition and abandoned in confusion.

Contrast that with the Psalmist: “Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127:1). Ambition is not the problem. God gave us the drive to create, to trade and to multiply. Moses reminded Israel, “it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant” (Deuteronomy 8:18). Wealth with a covenant purpose is a very different thing from wealth with a personal brand.

Now for the challenge, and I make no apology for it. Many of us pray over our Sunday and plan our Monday without Him. We ask God to bless the business plan we have already written, rather than asking Him to write it. Here is the uncomfortable truth. The marketplace will happily applaud a Christian who succeeds, but it is watching to see whether we stay humble when we do. Babel’s builders wanted to be remembered. Faithful builders want Him to be.

So let me press a little further. Whose name is on your building? If your company disappeared tomorrow, would anyone see Christ in what remained? Are you building for the applause of the market or the “well done” of the Master?

Is humility your strategy, or merely your style? “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Grace is the greatest competitive advantage any entrepreneur can carry.

The conference was one day. The real test is the other 364. “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” (Colossians 3:23).

“Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established” (Proverbs 16:3). Build humbly. Build boldly. Build what lasts.

Come and join us as we learn to do kingdom Business together the evening of the first Sunday of every month. FDE Runnymede.

Moving the Needle: Reflections from Agora 2.0 - Dave Food.

I have just returned from Nigeria, and I am still processing what God did. I went to speak at Agora 2.0, but I came home carrying more than I took.

The word agora means marketplace, the open square where ideas were traded and lives were shaped. It is no accident that Paul “reasoned in the synagogue… and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there” (Acts 17:17, NKJV). Notice that word: daily. The marketplace was not his occasional mission field. It was his normal place of ministry.

That is exactly what I saw in Nigeria. Leaders, entrepreneurs and pastors gathered with a hunger I rarely see. They did not want inspiration for a weekend. They wanted alignment for a lifetime. Alongside my dear friends Akin Akinpelu and Olusola Osinoiki, we watched the needle move. Vision was clarified. Callings were confirmed. Some who arrived uncertain left commissioned.

The conference carried something precious: a refusal to separate Sunday faith from Monday business. As iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17), our time together sharpened me, and I believe it sharpened many in the room.

Now for the challenge, God said through Isaiah, “Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it?” (Isaiah 43:19). The question is not whether God is doing something new. He is. The question is whether we will know it, recognise it, and respond.

Too many of us treat the prophetic as a spectator sport. We applaud what God is doing in Lagos or Abuja, then return to business as usual in Egham. But James is clear: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).

So let me ask you. Where is your agora? Your office, your classroom, your WhatsApp group, your street? Is the Kingdom being reasoned there daily, or only discussed here weekly? Habakkuk was told to “write the vision and make it plain… that he may run who reads it” (Habakkuk 2:2). What has God written over your life that you have not yet started running with? Nigeria reminded me that revival is not an event. It is a people who refuse to compartmentalise their faith.

The needle is moving. Will you move with it? Praise God for His faithfulness.

Here I am - send me - Mission 2027 - Dave Food

Before Isaiah ever said yes, he heard a question: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” (Isaiah 6:8, NKJV). Notice this: God did not hand him a job description. He asked for a willing heart. The details came later.

As we look towards 2027, that same question is being asked at RCF. For some, the answer will be a short-term mission here in the UK, perhaps with Fusion on a University campus or alongside CAP and the foodbank on our own doorstep. For others, it may be a longer season with Abba Father’s House in Jinja, Uganda, or Child Action Lanka in Sri Lanka. After all, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble” (James 1:27).

Jesus never separated Egham from the ends of the earth: “you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Our Jerusalem comes first, but it is never the last stop, so it could be Runnymede, United Kingdom and beyond!

Now for the challenge. Mission is not a holiday with a prayer meeting attached. Jesus told us to “sit down first and count the cost” (Luke 14:28). So let me ask some uncomfortable questions.

Is your passport in date, and is your heart? Have you been faithful in Egham, or are you hoping Uganda will do what your Monday mornings have not? Are your finances, family and diary truly yielded to God, or merely politely available? Could you take instructions as gladly as you give them? And if you cannot go, will you be the one who prays, gives and sends?

“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few” (Matthew 9:37). Readiness is not found in the departure lounge. It is forged now, in prayer, in obedience and in the ordinary.

So which will it be for you in 2027: here, there, or standing firmly behind those who go?

Fasting for Breakthrough: Employment, Justice and Health - Dave Food.

Daniel did not wait for clarity before he fasted. He fasted, and clarity came. The angel told him, “from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard” (Daniel 10:12, NKJV). Notice that: the first day.

At RCF we sense God stirring us to set our hearts on three places where many in our Church community feel stuck: employment, justice and health. Paul calls such places strongholds, and he is clear that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4). Fasting is one of those weapons. It is not a hunger strike to twist God’s arm. It is a way of making room.

Employment. Some of you have sent applications into silence. Others are working but quietly wondering whether your work matters to God. It does. “It is He who gives you power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). So here is the provocation: are you fasting for a job, or for a calling? God may be more interested in forming you for the marketplace than simply placing you in it.

Justice. Isaiah tells us the fast God chooses is “to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free” (Isaiah 58:6). A fast that never moves us towards the asylum seeker, the tribunal or the family in temporary housing is just skipping lunch. Who is God asking you to stand beside?

Health. The same chapter promises, “Your healing shall spring forth speedily” (Isaiah 58:8). We are believing for healing in bodies and minds. Wisdom matters too: if you have a medical condition, fast in a way your doctor would support. A Daniel fast, a media fast or a single meal laid down can be just as costly in the Spirit.

Here is the challenge, and I won’t soften it. Many of us want breakthrough without the breaking. God is not stirring us to try harder; He is stirring us to hunger more. “Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting” (Joel 2:12).

So we laid down an extra day for fasting for breakthrough on the 8th of October. Which stronghold will you name before Him? Set your heart. Heaven hears from the first day.

Some key links

Link to subscribe to the blog so it comes to you, rather than you having to find it (now available in 13 languages). This is available to both visitors and members.

You can access all our past sermons here.

The conferences we have hosted or participated in here.

We would love contributions to the newsletter from all those involved at RCF.

If you have something you would like to share in the next newsletter, or want to help us improve it, please email theeditor@e-runnymede.co.uk

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Planning your Visit

Why not plan a visit to try us out?

Whether this is your first time visiting a church or you’ve attended another church for years, we understand that visiting a new church can be a bit overwhelming. To help make it a bit easier, we’ve done our best to answer some questions you may have, so your first experience is a little less overwhelming.

Runnymede Christian Fellowship is a church based in Egham but serving a much larger geographical area. Those who call us home come from Egham, Virginia Water, Staines, Englefield Green, Egham Hythe, Pooley Green, Maidenhead, Ascot, Camberley, Sunbury, Heathrow, Slough, Ashford, Sunninghill, Sunningdale, Thorpe, Windsor, Woking and beyond.

Our church is a community of believers who gather regularly to share life and demonstrate God's love. We do this by encouraging and serving each other and the community. We believe in the power of prayer and are always happy to pray for you.

Church - What to expect

Our Sunday service is available to stream online at 11 am. You can join us on Livestream or via Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or X.

The Sunday Venue is Coopers Hall, Strodes College, Strodes College Lane in Egham, open to all, so if you would like to join us, please feel free to do so. If you have any questions, please call us on 01784 637010.

We run a physical Sunday School most weeks. If you would like your children to receive a weekly Sunday School teaching pack that you can do from home, please email us at admin@e-runnymede.co.uk so that we can send you the materials.

Sunday Venue at Coopers Hall, Strodes College, Strodes College Lane, Egham

Our Sunday service starts at 11.00 and typically lasts about 90 minutes.

We begin each service with lively worship, featuring songs from around the world, followed by inspiring, Bible-based teaching. All our sermons are recorded and are available as a podcast after the service.

We have a monthly cycle of Sunday services, with our Communion Service on the first Sunday of each month and an All-Age All-Nation Service on the second. Our other Sunday services include a Lingering (spirit-filled) and Teaching service.

We have consciously adopted being a blended church, that is, both online and face-to-face. You are welcome to join us on Livestream or via Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or X, or catch up with the recordings later.

Joining us in person

Visiting a new and unfamiliar church for the first time can be intimidating, but we want to ensure you feel welcome and enjoy your time with us. A friendly face will be waiting to meet you at the entrance and welcome you.

Doors open at 10:30 for coffee and prayer.
Our Sunday Service starts at 11:00 and typically runs for about 90 minutes, normally followed by tea and coffee.

Driving and Car Parking

Our Sunday Venue is Coopers Hall, Strodes College, Strodes College Lane, Egham, TW20 9DR, which has ample parking.
Click on the link for directions to RCF.

We have plenty of parking spaces right outside the building. Spaces are reserved near the entrance for anyone with mobility issues (those with a blue badge). We also have step free access to the hall. Please let us know if you need to use one of these spaces, have any special needs, or require any assistance.

The car parking area is a public area, so please ensure that your children are under your control and that, for their safety, they do not run around in the car park.

Public Transport

Our Sunday Meetings are in Coopers Hall, Strodes College, Strodes College Lane, Egham, TW20 9DR.
It's just off Egham High Street, so if you have found Esquires, then you are nearly there.

We are very close to bus stops in Church Street with buses to Slough, Windsor, Staines, Heathrow, Sunbury and beyond.
Our Sunday venue is less than a 5-minute walk from Egham Railway Station.

Visiting with children?

Everyone is welcome at RCF. We encourage everyone, regardless of age, to join the service. We offer Sunday School, which begins after worship and runs concurrently with the sermon for 30 to 40 minutes, serving children aged 4 to 12. On the second Sunday of each month, we have a shorter All-Aged All Nations Service, where the children stay for the worship and the sermon.

After Church

We chat over coffee and biscuits after church on the first, third, fourth and fifth Sundays. If you want to get to know us better, why not join us for Sunday lunch with some of our members? The first meal for students is on us (Voucher provided). Please contact us and let us know. We would love to share a meal and get to know you better!

Fellowship Feast

Want to connect?
If you're interested in connecting with us, whether to join our online community or attend our Sunday gatherings, please use our connect card.

Any Questions?

If you have any questions, please review our FAQ page. Here, you’ll find answers to many common questions. If you still have questions or concerns, please contact us; we’d love to hear from you.

We look forward to welcoming you to RCF

To contact us or see a map, click here.

Our admin address and Mid-week venue is Virginia Lodge, Heritage Court, Egham