In September, I’m going to be joining the team at King’s Church London as their teaching pastor. It’s a hugely exciting move for me—it will be challenging, interesting, stretching, stimulating, demanding, energising and a bit intimidating—and I’m hoping it will also be good news for both churches involved, and of course my family. For now we will continue to live in Eastbourne, and I will split my time three ways: two days a week doing preaching and wider leadership stuff in London, one day a week doing some preaching and other bits and pieces in Eastbourne, and two days a week continuing with the writing, training, research and teaching I do in Newfrontiers and beyond. I’m really looking forward to it.

King’s London is a remarkable church. Based in southeast London, with sites at Catford, Downham and Lee, they have been growing numerically for twenty years, have six meetings on a Sunday with 1400+ in attendance, run a huge ministry for the poor, own three church buildings and various supported houses, see people respond to the gospel on average every week, and comprise an astonishingly diverse congregation (which, I suspect, is one reason why they have some of the most celebratory worship meetings I have experienced anywhere). Urban, growing, socially engaged, diverse, evangelistic, charismatic: what’s not to like? As an added bonus, Steve Tibbert, who leads the team, is currently facilitating what we do together as Newfrontiers in the UK, so working more closely with him will help shape my wider teaching and writing ministry as well. And then there are a couple of interesting personal twists: I was born four miles away, and Rachel’s family used to own the land on which the Catford church is now built. Spooky.

At the same time, it is really sad to be stepping back from Eastbourne. It is an absolutely wonderful church—generous, creative, encouraging, large, welcoming—filled with people who have been extraordinarily good to us as a family over the last few years, and to whom we will always be grateful, and led by a team of elders who are all among my closest friends. I’ve been an elder there for seven years, and a member for thirteen; Rachel has been there since it was planted in 1988, when she was three! Although we are not moving now, we still feel a sense of loss, knowing that things won’t quite be the same (which is as it should be); at the same time, I am very upbeat about the future in Eastbourne, with some exciting changes in the pipeline, a superb team ready to expand, and most of all a God who has led the church through leadership transitions before and seen it grow every time.

So that’s my news. If you’re inclined to, I’d really appreciate your prayers—given that we’re expecting our third baby in May, it’s a lot of change happening at once. If you’d be interested to see the announcement we did for Kings Eastbourne yesterday, with some accidental moments of humour thrown in, it’s here:

An upate on Andrew from Kings Church on Vimeo.