Church getting ship shape in Bristol fashion!

A decade after being established in a north-east suburb of Bristol, Waterbrook Church was struggling to grow and invited Luke Goodway to help. For the past year plus, he’s poured his efforts into developing the newest member of the Elim Network.

Eighteen months ago, Elim minister Luke Goodway was seeking God for his next move and had church planting on his mind. At the same time, members at Waterbrook Church were mulling over how to move beyond running like a house church. So when they heard about Luke they were quick to get in touch.

“I wanted to plant something close to where we lived in Bristol and I was praying about how to get started when Waterbrook rang me,” says Luke.

“They were independent, over ten years old, and had a strong background in missions and community work.

“In many ways they’d punched above their weight, supporting missionaries all over the world, but they’d never really got out of house church mode.

“I was invited to take them from what looked and felt like a church plant to become more established.”

As an Elim minister, Luke had led churches in South Wales and Cheltenham, worked as associate minister at Bristol’s E5 church and supported a church plant, Restoration Church in Oxford, so he had all the right experience.

He has therefore spent the past 15 months building on Waterbrook’s and his own community links and establishing firm foundations from which the church can grow.

Community support

One of his first moves was to develop the church’s existing community support. As a bi-vocational minister he also works for community charity Bristol Noise, which helps build connections between churches and their areas. Through this, Waterbrook has teamed up with neighbouring churches to host outreach events such as community fun days.

“We ran one in March which hundreds of families came to. We served hundreds of free burgers!

“Now we’ve got a little coalition of churches that have banded together to run other events off the back of it.

“We’re running an Alpha course, for example, which we hope will bring new Christians into the church.”

Another aim is to root Waterbrook in a permanent location, from which more community activities can be launched.

“Up to now we’ve had the usual service, kids and youth work that you’d expect to find on Sundays but we haven’t had a permanent home where we could do things on other days.

“We want to root ourselves in the city so we can embed some of our community activities and build long-term connections with people who don’t know Jesus.”

Miracle provision

The recent miracle provision of a commercial property is helping work towards this, says Luke. The building has been gifted to the church indefinitely and free of charge and is already housing its office.

“We’re now also preparing for it to become a hub for mid-week activities which will connect us with local people.

“One thing we’ll do is set up a food pantry. The idea is then to tie these sorts of activities into discipleship. At the moment we only have our Sunday services to invite non-believers to but we want to find ways to go on a deeper journey with them.”

The church has also taken the bold step of employing a ministry assistant, Bex Stock. While some might consider it a big move for a church so early into a new development season, Luke says it’s an investment for the future and an ideal addition for Waterbrook right now.

“You’re never too small to train someone to be released into bigger things. I’m more the visionary type and Bex is more the people person, so she’ll be excellent at nurturing and making sure we have all the proper processes in place. We’re in a missional context in the UK at the moment too, so we have a great opportunity to train her up within that.”

Waterbrook has made speedy progress during Luke’s time there and he is excited to see the church developing.

“God has opened opportunities that align with the vision he’s given us. I’m sitting in an office that someone gave us for free, for example, and I’ve taken that as a wonderful sign as we’ve been setting our stall out.

“Some people in church are nervous because they’ve not been on this kind of journey before, but I’m a spiritual opportunist. If God is creating an opportunity for us to have a go at something, I’m happy to take it!”

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.