‘Prayer changes things.’ And every now and then, we find ourselves wowed as we see God’s hand at work in answer to prayer.
Only months ago, en reported on the launch of the new evening service at Christ Church Southampton, ‘The Six O’Clock’ at the Highfield House Hotel.
But this July saw a twist in the plot. The owners of the hotel announced proposals to redevelop the hotel to build a student hostel on the site instead. This would certainly have stopped the The Six O’Clock meeting there.
And it gets worse. The hotel also hosts the main student meeting, the church prayer meetings and much more. There was no obvious alternative for most of these meetings.
Over the summer a timetable for the redevelopment was published, with the next stop being an application for planning permission this autumn. It looked like a done deal.
But the ministry of Christ Church has been undergirded in prayer from the very start. So on September 9, prayer supporters of the church around the country were asked to pray that God would provide. Astonishingly, the next morning, the hotel management phoned the church. They had just received a call from the hotel’s owners, Galliard Homes. Plans to redevelop the hotel had been shelved.
‘We were gobsmacked’, said Orlando Saer, senior pastor. ‘With the church continuing to grow at breakneck speed, losing our main base was the last thing we needed. But clearly God had things in hand!’
