James Bunyan, curate at St Michael’s Fulwell, will be made the senior pastor (or vicar) of Christ Church Staines on Tuesday 8 July. A grafting team of around 10 adults and 6 kids, drawn from St Michael’s and other Co-Mission churches, as well as ministry trainees Rob and Alice, will join the existing congregation of 30–40 adults and 10 kids over the summer.

When I think about Christ Church Staines, I am struck by two observations.

1. Heritage

Christ Church was originally planted in the 1920s in a car garage, situated in the new housing development along Kingston Road. A few years later, the congregation got too big and had to move to the car showroom. A few years after that, they successfully badgered the Church of England into building them a church, and the current, modernist building was finished in 1962. For decades, people from the community have heard the gospel, worshipped Jesus, been baptised, got married and said goodbye at Christ Church. Though times have been tougher for the church since Covid, this is a church with an entrepreneurial, gospel heritage.

2. Potential

There is also great potential at Christ Church. The massive site – with a big, visible church building, hall, car park, garden and vicarage – lies smack in the middle of Staines’ main residential area. The town itself has 20,000 residents. Happily, there are other gospel churches in the area already, yet there is plenty of work to do. New blocks of flats, at least one fancier coffee shop, fast lines into Waterloo and nearby Royal Holloway University are all signs that Staines is expanding. And Staines is the main town for the 100,000 people of Spelthorne Borough, many of whom are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

You may ask, ‘But, James, is it really in London?’ Well, it’s within the M25 – and I once saw a red bus there. So you tell me!

As we prepare for the months and years ahead, please pray with us:

Give thanks for answered prayer!

• Give thanks that this door has opened
• Give thanks for the warmth of the existing congregation 
• Give thanks for a brilliant grafting team

Ask our Father for great things

• Ask for the new church family at Christ Church to quickly and smoothly come together
• Ask for wisdom, graciousness, courage and love for James and the leadership team
• Ask for many of the lost sheep of Staines and Spelthorne to be brought home