Rob Coleman

Early in 1994, Sue Hardy began travelling to the church in Parrs Wood, Manchester, from Bolton. Soon people began meeting at her house midweek. At the same time, the Lord spoke to me when I was an Elder at the Newfrontiers church in Crawley, Sussex, while listening to Colin Baron speaking about Manchester at an Newfrontiers Prayer & Fast. There were additional confirming prophecies from elders in Sussex so, after selling our house and getting work in Bolton, Helen and I moved in November. We received gifts of £6,000 from various people which was vital to offset a drop in salary; when I finally started full-time for the church early in '96, just £5 of the gift was left!

In February '96, the church plants in Bolton, Oldham and Salford began Sunday morning celebrations at Whitefield (mid-point between the three) instead of travelling down to Parrs Wood. In September 1997 these groups had grown sufficiently to enable them to split into two and meet separately in Oldham and Bolton.

By 2001 various other groups began to meet in their own localities, such as the Salford group (who had been with us) who helped to start the North Manchester church. As a result of these changes, we began meeting at Devonshire Road School in November.

In March 2002 I went to a conference in Manchester led by John & Carol Arnott from Toronto. What struck me was their testimony of how God had really wanted to bless them in practical ways, but at first they'd not had the simple faith to receive his gift to them.

The very next week I received a phone call from the local United Reformed Church leader to say that they were closing down. She had seen our church sign outside the school where we were met, which happened to be next door to their building. She asked if we'd be interested in purchasing the building from them. Perhaps God was wanting to place a gift in our lap too! We hadn't even been asking him for a building, so it was time to exercise our faith and start to pray.

The building, dating from 1910, has a main hall which seats 200+. It has a sports hall, a lounge, a large, well-equipped kitchen, plus a vestry. A grass area on the side will do nicely for barbecues, and the whole lot is in the middle of a residential area. Any takers for £85,000? After a great deal of prayer, the URC have agreed to sell it to us rather than to other interested parties.

It will cost a lot more to put right the dampness and dry rot revealed by the survey, but we're convinced that the Lord is giving us this building, so we have faith to see the job through to the end. One Sunday last October we had an offering for the building fund and collected an amazing £24,000 - and we are only 60 in number, many of whom are children! This March at our next offering we were thrilled with another £19,000!

The building will not only be a convenient meeting place for Sunday mornings, but it's going to be a great tool for outreach into the community. But as a church, we are discovering that building projects are not just about raising cash for bricks and mortar, they're about what the Lord is doing in us, his children, and he has certainly been teaching us how to receive by faith.

Since this article was written CPM has been told that the church have had their public launch of the building on June 8th.