Church Planting in Barry, South Wales
BA graduate Nathan Davies tells us about his heart for reaching the people of the Vale of Glamorgan and how studying with Union prepared him for church planting ministry.
On 29th October 2004, I first heard the Gospel at a meeting in Cardiff commemorating 100 years since the Welsh revival that was run by a local Christian youth charity called Ignite. My only Christian friend invited me to the event in Cardiff International Arena and basically told me it was a concert. I was 15 and had no previous experience of church.
That night changed my life completely. Growing up in a home where rugby was our weekend, I had never been to church (except when I was baptised as a child and once for a wedding where I was a page boy and had to wear purple silk knickerbockers!).
I hadn’t given God a second thought, but if you’d asked me I would have said I was a Christian and going to heaven ‘because I hadn’t killed anyone’. Hearing that my sin actually separated me from a Holy God terrified me. Hearing that Christ died for that sin and rose again to give me new life was so comforting and compelling.
I prayed that night for help to turn from my sin, to follow Jesus and live for him. I woke up the next day with a bible, some daily readings and a new feeling of being clean, forgiven and free. That same week I got involved in my local church Bethesda Chapel in Dinas Powys: Sunday morning & evening, two youth clubs, and a planning meeting for a local evangelistic mission. I loved it.
“Hearing that my sin actually separated me from a Holy God terrified me. Hearing that Christ died for that sin and rose again to give me new life was so comforting and compelling.”
In school I then helped set up a Christian Union, and planned to study law or history at Swansea or Cardiff University. As part of a gap year with the same charity, Ignite, I helped encourage hundreds of young people to get engaged in local evangelistic projects where they lived, just as I had got to do. We saw hundreds of people hear the gospel. Thankfully my whole immediate family also heard the gospel and I got to help baptise my mum and dad.
Someone suggested I should go to Bible college, instead of study history or law, so I picked the nearest one and ended up at Union (which was called WEST at the time). I decided I needed to catch up with what I had missed at Sunday School.
Union has given me a foundation in theology that is not easily shaken. I loved the three years of studying systematics, biblical theology, reading skills for exegesis, and working through difficult scenarios in the pastoral workshops, and talking late into the nights with fellow students.
A church in Cardiff had offered to support me during the three years of study as I helped them with youth work. I got to directly apply what I was studying to local church life and my work with the young people. Sue and I got married and started a family together.
As the three years came to an end, I moved to a new church plant in the Valleys, led by Dai Hankey and supported by Highfields in Cardiff. The idea was to move there, get a job and learn about planting, then to come back to somewhere along the M4 motorway where another church plant was needed and try to do it again. We prayed about moving to many different locations over the years, but nothing came of them until we started to pray about my home county the Vale of Glamorgan. 130,000 residents - 55,000 in Barry - and less than 0.5% attend a local bible-preaching church.
The Welsh revival completely missed the Vale of Glamorgan. Around 22 villages or hamlets in the county have no church at all.
A couple from Barry had actually started attending our Church in Pontypool (a 32-mile journey) because their church in Barry had collapsed. Sue and I drove to Barry to try and find their old church building but the address on the church website took us to a dead-end street. We went back to my parents who kindly offered us a gift to put a deposit down on a house.
“The Welsh revival completely missed the Vale of Glamorgan. Around 22 villages or hamlets in the county have no church at all.”
The house we ended up buying was in that dead-end street. The couple who’d been coming to our church also lived on that street. We moved full of faith and excitement, but also with another baby on the way. We decided not to do anything but pray for the first six months as baby came, and to get to know the other family and the lay of the land.
Our call to move was confirmed by Romans 10. It was part of my daily bible reading the same day we prayed for God to confirm if we should move. Then I opened a magazine I had been reading and a poster in the middle was from Romans 10, then I opened the OM magazine and they also had a poster from Romans 10. Then I met another pastor from Barry who gave me his contact card with Romans 10 on the back. Four times in 24 hours I heard the words:
Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
For the past five years we have lived on that estate praying and hoping, networking with church planters as part of the Advance network. Another child has come along (our third). Bouts of ill health and a couple of false starts have been hard; we have prayed to meet other like-minded couples. We have been members of a local church in Barry who knew of our call and have been a great encouragement. We have always felt the need for new churches in the town. Most recently we feel prayers have been answered. A couple from Cheltenham moved to Barry at the same time as us, with a call to plant and links to the Advance network; we spent 6 months praying and discussing theology, values and vision. After much prayer and discussion we stepped out in faith to launch Godfirst Church in Barry.
Our values are based on the teaching of Jesus. To be a community where each member feels valued and uses their gifts to the glory of God. To be his disciples together, who go on to make other disciples. To be a church plant that can eventually go on to plant in another part of the county, so that more and more people can hear the gospel.
Our values are based on the teaching of Jesus. To be a community where each member feels valued and uses their gifts to the glory of God.
Please pray for us as a new church family to be united, that the Lord adds to our number as we start to reach out with the gospel, and for more leaders to be raised up and sent out to start other new Churches. Please pray for the Vale of Glamorgan.