Planting Grace Church Didcot
Daniel Gandolfo is a member of Grace Church Didcot, a recent church plant. He’s involved in the church’s street outreach and is currently studying on the GDip in our Oxford Learning Community. He shares how the church plant came about and the encouragements they have experienced so far.
Grace Church Didcot (gracedidcot.org.uk) was born from an idea of the elders at Hanney Baptist Chapel (hanney-chapel.org.uk) in 2017. They saw a need for a new church in Didcot due to a massive expansion of new homes being built in the area. One such estate was Great Western Park (GWP) to the west of Didcot, a development that will eventually include over 7000 homes.
The elders at Hanney partnered with Abbey Baptist Church to form a core planting group of 11 individuals, led by Jim Sayers. In 2018 we met fortnightly in a home to pray and study the word of God. We studied key doctrines that define a church, then worked through the book Pure Church edited by David Skull, Andrew King and Jim Sayers. Our first outreach was an evangelistic talk with questions and answers held in a coffee shop in September 2018. At the time we were carrying out regular street outreach to meet people on the estate, get to know them and introduce them to the church. We met with some interest as well as disdain towards Christianity. We also held evangelistic quiz nights at a coffee shop and organised a carol service which attracted a number of people.
Our first Sunday Service was on 10th February 2019 where we met in GEMS Primary School on the estate. At first we just met monthly, then in June 2019 we started meeting fortnightly, and from November 2019 we’ve been meeting weekly.
We’ve got to know lots of new people through the street outreach. I’ve regularly started meeting with a young man to study the gospel and support him and his girlfriend in their problems. Jim met up with someone else to do The Word One to One, and has led a Life Explored course for 3 people. He has also started a young adults discipleship group studying Jim Packer’s Knowing God.
In our Sunday services we have had various new people visit, and some have continued to attend on a regular basis. We’ve also had Christians join us from other churches and the core group continues to grow.
Like everyone else, the Covid lockdown has been challenging, although Zoom and YouTube have been instruments which have helped hold the church together. We have held weekly live streams on YouTube and social prayer meetings on Zoom. Surprisingly, we’ve picked up a few new people who have joined regularly and came along when we resumed services on 6 September.
The next stage will be a move to initiating a membership and a leadership structure for the church, and to find a permanent venue when the pandemic has died down. Our Father has been so kind to us in starting and sustaining this new church. Please pray for us as we continue to reach out to the community in Didcot with the good news of Christ.