A Soho church is issuing a heartfelt plea for a new pastor to join it in one of the UK’s toughest mission areas.
Andrew Murray, who has been pastor of Hope Church, West End – which serves Soho and Covent Garden – says that after four decades of struggle the congregation is now just nine.
He says a combination of circumstances, including ‘seedy hedonism’ and the New Age movement, make evangelism in this part of London particularly difficult. But for any would-be pastor prepared to take on the challenge for Christ there is the ‘God-given gift of two properties’ which some might say indicate the Lord has a future purpose for this fragile community of faith.
Andrew Murray writes: The dreaming began more than 40 years ago. While London had large city-centre churches, central London communities had very little in the way of genuinely local evangelical witness. A vision for local churches in each neighbourhood led to the London InReach Project, beginning the work in Soho through Michael Toogood. His story, told in Mission to Soho (published by Day One) is well worth a read.
It hasn’t all been ‘hurt’, but it has been hard. Slow, steady growth for a number of years included few local conversions. An advance into Covent Garden led by Mike Mellor followed a similar script. Then numbers began to shrink, with limited response from neighbours and Christians moving on for very natural reasons. Our small church now has just nine members.
Why so hard? Resistance to the gospel has come from various angles: entrenched Catholicism, liberal Anglicanism, and the seedy hedonism of 1980s Soho along with a New Age influence in Covent Garden, all played their part. Now, as commerce dominates community in each area, there is the new morality which tolerates everything but truth. Over 40 years, all sorts of evangelistic work by all sorts of people has relatively little to show for it, on the surface.
And yet, we still dare to dream. For one thing, God has enabled us to persevere in worship and witness, with the help of others. For another, the God-given gift of two properties, providing the otherwise ‘impossible’ opportunity for Christians to live in the West End, speaks to a long-term purpose. And then there is the potential. Two communities at the heart of London, needing to know Jesus.
We are looking for someone to take on leadership of this unique work. Could it be you? Do you know someone who could meet the need? More information online: bit.ly/475dT5O
