An American man and his Dutch wife say planting a church in Wolverhampton during the pandemic is ‘really tough’ – but declare that prayer is keeping them going.
Tim Berry moved from the USA to the UK with wife Renske and their family at the end of 2019, and launched City Church Wolverhampton in the spring of 2020. He had never heard of the city until a little while before.
Currently the church has just ten members – but also has more than 250 followers on Facebook, and is praying and trusting that the Lord will send others who can help establish the new congregation.
Berry said: ‘God was calling us to church-plant in Europe and we came on a fact-finding visit from New Jersey to England … Wolverhampton was last on our schedule. I’d never heard of it before, but the Lord so laid it on our hearts and clearly led us through circumstances to move by New Year 2020.
‘In the spring of 2020 we launched on YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. In June we started posting our own pre-recorded services on every platform, but now we meet on Facebook Live for Sunday services.
‘This latest lockdown has interrupted our plans to find a local venue for physical meetings – and likewise meeting staff and shoppers in the central malls which we’d just begun to do. But we can still prayer-walk in pairs!
‘Very seriously, this situation drives us to our knees in prayer. The Lord uses our prayer life to sustain us daily, keeps us in the right place as husband, wife and children. And as a church, we’re compelled to be the praying church we say we want to be. It’s foundational to trusting the Lord.’
Renske and Tim met and were married in Toulouse, France. They have three children – Thijs, Anouk, and Jaana. Before planting City Church Wolverhampton with Operation Mobilisation, they served with the Christian & Missionary Alliance for six years at Mendham Hills Community Church in New Jersey, USA.
