Suzanne and I have invested what feels like some of the prime years of our life together – the decade in which our children were growing from birth – at Kings Church. Those years have, for the most part, been some of our best. Developments in the recent past, however, have resulted in the most painful and bewildering experience we have ever known in Church life.

A previous post still holds true, albeit the hope of remaining part of the family at Kings diminishes day-by-day, we’re not yet ready to completely relinquish that hope. As that post made mention, we are no longer parked up in neutral with the handbrake on.

In recent months, we have regularly joined with a congregation in Brighton on Sundays, not with a view to settling, but with a view to recharging and going again. Brighton was never going to be a long-term stop for us, but we were so in need of a safe place to rest and heal without any pressure.

During our short time in Brighton, we experienced nurturing care, and witnessed genuinely humble and gracious leadership. There was no coercive language, no compulsion, no hard sell, and no obvious sign of any hidden agendas bubbling out of Sunday morning sermons. It felt healthy and wholesome. The teaching was not lengthy or laboured; with straight forward messages – uncomplicated, and accessible for all to grasp. We never left a Sunday morning feeling worse than when we arrived; we were never befuddled by the jargon or vocabulary. We never felt like we were part of anyone’s personal project, and what we experienced always felt like the stuff of genuine, healthy, authentic kingdom of God. Week after week, we heard and saw how this congregation connected people, from all sorts of backgrounds, with good news. We so quickly thrived being amongst a genuinely diverse body of people. It just felt honest, and that sat well with us.

The more we experienced in Brighton, the more we came to recognise that the church life we had known for so many years had become, amongst other things, just too complicated.

Within a short period of time, we were both feeling strengthened and built back up – we were being restored. We found that Sunday mornings had once again become times of great gladness and celebration for us. We worked through some issues of forgiveness, which has been key for us in working towards health and wholeness. We learned to hope again, to dream again, to get excited again – our souls were being restored.

We knew some months ago of the proposal to invest in Crawley with a new congregation. Whilst we didn’t go to Brighton solely with that purpose in mind, it was always within the realms of possibility for us, God willing. And surely, as we begun to push the door open, God has shown us some of the opportunities to love and to serve people in ways that we have never had opportunity before. There is so much opportunity to meet need in Crawley – to love and to serve and, most of all, to connect people to good news.

The more we talked together about being a part of the team establishing a new work in Crawley, the more we began to feel refreshed, energised, invigorated and envisioned. And so, we began to walk quite deliberately towards Crawley, building connections and beginning to develop relationships with others on a journey towards the same destination.

Here we are, some months on from having first begun that walk, and we feel the peace and grace of God on us to go again, to hope again, to get excited again, and to dream again.

We don’t have a clear picture yet of what life looks like for us long term, but we have decided that, in this next season, we are going to give our best to invest in this new work of God in Crawley.

We are thrilled to be amongst a small number of people who will be coming together this week, for the first time on a Sunday morning, to celebrate the Lord Jesus Christ, and all that he will do through this new congregation in Crawley.

This blog post is a marker on our journey, it’s part of our story – our ‘God Story’. It is not written about anyone else, or to cause offense to anyone, but intended simply as an honest and authentic sharing of this season of our lives.

Liam and Suzanne