About us.

We moved to Poole in 2004, believing that God wanted us to form a group of people who would spend time seeking Him with all their heart, and praying for His Kingdom to come. Here is just a little of our story so far…

Nick: In 1990 I started to feel a very real dissatisfaction with the things that I had been aiming for, and realised that I wanted to know God much more than I did, and to focus much more on helping others to know Him. At this time, I started to have a real longing to be filled with the Spirit in the way that I had seen others! After praying and fasting for the experience for quite a while, I became convicted about seeking after the ‘experience’, rather than God Himself, and had to say sorry. Almost immediately I had a very conscious experience of being filled with the Spirit. Within a couple of days I decided that I needed to do something about where I was heading, and applied to London City Mission where I found a job as an evangelist, living in a hostel and getting paid £7 per week. My church decided that this just wasn’t enough and made it up to £15 so I was much better off than my colleagues! I was there for a year and although it was tough, I did see God at work and learned a lot from other Christians of quite different church backgrounds.

At the end, I took a job in Poole, and a while later the Vicar of a church in London came into where I was working, and soon, I started working for a Church of England in Peckham as an assistant pastor. I was there for three and a half years. The highlight of the whole experience was actually just before starting work, when I went to visit the church, and while doing so saw this rather attractive young girl giving her testimony at the front. After hearing it, I decided that I probably wanted to marry her, and some time later I was relieved to find that she seemed to be thinking the same way. What with one thing and another, I proposed to her in front of Buckingham Palace, on my knees, on the dot of midnight and thankfully she said yes!

Sam: I became a Christian in 1993 whilst attending an Alpha Course at a central London church. Although I had been to church regularly with my family for my whole life, I believed in God rather like a child believes in Father Christmas, without considering whether the claims of Christianity were true. During my life I had known much hurt and pain and found it difficult to open up to anyone, I wished I had never been born, and thought continually negative thoughts about myself. Looking back, I can see how God spoke to me and helped me during those times, particularly through my next door neighbour who was a Christian, but my heart remained closed, and Christianity did not impact me personally.

By the time I left home, I was in a desperate state, although those who knew me at the time probably did not know the fullness of this as I had not really fully opened up to anyone. I started going to a church in London and signed up for an Alpha course. The Alpha course enabled me to consider whether the Christian claims were really true for the first time, and during the weekend away I could see that many others were really impacted by the love of God. Although I believed in God, I could not believe that He loved me, and I certainly did not love myself. I seemed unable to allow Him fully into my life because of hurt and pain.

Following the weekend away I went to church with others from the course, and the vicar talked about God’s love. He said that if anyone did not believe God loved them, they should take communion. I had avoided taking communion at churches because I felt ‘threatened’ that my barriers might come down, and I would have to open up to someone or start crying or something. I knew that if God was true, and it was true that He loved me, I had to trust Him and give Him chance to show me. I reasoned that if it wasn’t true, then I had nothing to lose and so decided to take communion. When I did, I had this overwhelming sense that I should kneel down. I did so, reasoning again that I had nothing to lose. Then there was the most amazing, overwhelming sense of the presence of God and His love. It was so beautiful I hardly dared breathe in case it went away. But it didn’t and I stayed for the remainder of the service on my knees. When I eventually had to go home, the sense of God’s presence and love did not leave and I spent hours in my room praying and talking to God about things that had happened. The next day I was a new person, my friend even commenting ‘What has happened to you? Your face is shining.’ (She was not a Christian at the time). All of the desperation, and symptoms of desperation, disappeared. I felt I had a purpose, knew why I was created and knew where I was going. Although, as with all of us, God’s work of healing in my life is an ongoing process, things were never the same again.

After helping on many Alpha courses at this church, I eventually moved to a church in Peckham, where I met Nick, story as above!

From early on in my Christian life, I had a longing for the fullness of the Kingdom of God to be known in the church and in the country, and was absorbed by books and accounts of God’s work in renewals and revivals both in this country and abroad. This has remained my passion. If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14

Nick & Sam: About three years later, we went to join a brand new Vineyard church, and enjoyed being on the lead team, seeing a new church take off and learning some of what might be involved in planting a new church. This was really helpful experience, during which time our sense of call greatly increased, and after many years of anticipation, we came to the point of believing very clearly that God was calling us to embark on this journey of creating a community of God’s people. After much thought and prayer, we settled on Poole in Dorset.

Our desire has always been to be able to spend time with a group of people whose first desire was to seek God, because we believe that it is by being in His presence that we are changed in passionate worshippers, that we have our hearts softened and renewed and that we are able to pray, intercede and minister to each other.

We know that Jesus’ constantly taught about the Kingdom, during his earthly ministry, and during the 40 days after His resurrection, and so believing that this is the main mission of the church, we want to see the Kingdom come in our own individual lives, in the church, and the country as a whole. We believe that we have to start with ourselves (please see the ‘Vision’ section of the site for more about this).

We spent lots of time meeting and praying with different people, and thenook the plunge. We put our house on the market, and saw God do some amazing things with helping us sell our house (In 24 hrs!), and helping us get jobs (Sam is a Reception teacher in Poole and Nick is an IT manager for Bournemouth Social Services).

Before leaving London, we had a strong sense from God that there were two people who would join us in Poole when we started, so we prayed for them to hear God speaking, even though we didn’t know how to get hold of one of them. The first evening that we met, the first person turned up without being invited, and then during the second week, they met the second person on the bus in Poole, and invited them along, not knowing that this was what we had been praying for. It was all very encouraging. In a similar way, just over a year before moving to Poole, a friend who was a Vineyard pastor shared a specific picture about another person who would come and be involved with us. The picture was very specif with the person's height, hair colour, occupation etc etc. About 18 months after starting out in Poole, and they are just moving house to come and joing the church! God has continuously helped us, and it has been exciting, as well as hard!

As a small church, we started meeting on Wednesday nights for a long time of worship and prayer. On the 18 th of September 05 we also started meeting on Sunday afternoons in our house, for food, teaching, worship and prayer, and then as people have started to join us, we have started meeting in a hall in Poole

We have also wanted to be able to involve a wider group of people who may not regularly fellowship with us, and we now have weekends away, as times of worship, refreshment, fun and an opportunity to get to know other Christians with different passions and foci. The most recent weekends away have been in the New Forest (Hampshire), as well as near Crediton in Devon, and people have come from a variety of churches both locally and nationally.

We really encourage anyone who wants to know more about who we are or what we are doing to give us a call, or send us an email (See the ‘Contact’ section).