In 2011 Adam and Julia Laughton moved to Gravesend to start the Gateway Project, a house-based church-planting initiative of the Association of Grace Baptist Churches (South East).
They focused particularly on building friendships in their immediate neighbourhood, seeking to grow a church group in their own home. They were joined in 2016 by Nigel and Lucy Hoad, who moved into the new Ebbsfleet Valley development.
Ebbsfleet Garden City is a new town adjacent to the Bluewater Shopping Centre, east of the Dartford Crossing in Kent. The Ebbsfleet Development Corporation was set up by the Government to deliver up to 15,000 homes and create a 21st-century garden city in north Kent. Although the development of Ebbsfleet Valley was set back many years by the credit crunch, the wheels began to turn in 2014 and now nearly 500 homes have been built.
Grace Community Church, Ebbsfleet seeks to be a church that brings the gospel to life in this development. Six founder members covenanted together in February 2018 and they have since rejoiced in one baptism and a small number of Christians seeking membership.
Living stones
Last Easter they experimented with an ‘Easter Rock’ outreach. Julia Laughton loves painting rocks as a craft, so she made a collection of rocks painted as sheep, which were hidden around the neighbourhood. Cards put through the doors invited people to ‘help us find our lost sheep’. Families could bring the rock to Nigel and Lucy’s house for a reward (plus they keep the rock as a decoration!). We found it was a great alternative to just giving out literature on its own, and it brought a positive response from the community. At Christmas they repeated the process with a Christmas theme, and all those who came to collect their reward received a chocolate decoration and a copy of How to have a Happy Christmas from The Good Book Co. This generated a real buzz on the residents’ Facebook page. They will be ‘rocking up’ for Easter again this year, after which they will be doing systematic door-to-door outreach round all the new homes through the summer.
In addition, this year they are hoping to get involved in a coffee facility near the first shopping plaza and to begin a football ministry with the help of Ambassadors Football. ‘Our great burden is to see local residents converted and joining. Please note: the order of conversion and then joining is important – we’ve held a number of public events in the local community centre, to which no unsaved local residents have come!
This is the way of things in 21st-century UK, it seems. We believe that the most fruitful evangelistic approaches for us here will be personal relationships evangelism, leading to conversations, and one-to-one Bible studies. Please pray for us as we seek for more ways to create regular and meaningful contacts with our non-Christian friends and neighbours.’
