The Junction

Our new church extension, The Junction was completed in July 2011.

It was officially opened on 3 September 2011 by the Bishop of St Albans.

Until 2010 the only meeting room we had available was a church lounge built in the 1970s. We decided to take a step of faith and plan a new church centre on the same site. We were convinced that this was God’s will for us – we needed to be sure, as many thought it would be madness to embark on a building project during a time of recession and employment uncertainty.

At every stage of the project, we were aware of prayer being answered. We were, for example, told that our proposal for a two-storey building, set in a green belt area, would not receive planning consent. It did.

We invited donors to permit us to use 20% of their gifts to fund Christian building projects in developing countries: for example, a meeting hall and games area at an orphanage in Thailand, a medical centre on the India/Burma border, a house for street children in Kenya. Altogether £281,000 has been allocated for such projects.

As the new church centre neared completion and our funding target became £1.629 million, we found ourselves still short of a significant sum of money and were planning to sell a church staff property to provide for this.
Just at that point, completely unexpectedly, we received a legacy which covered all outstanding costs. The new building has been completely paid for.

The experience has been a formative one for the church family in enabling us to see at close quarters the impact of faithful prayer, of generous and often sacrificial giving and of our faithful God.

The Junction offers up to seven meeting areas and houses the church office. We are now at the early stages of planning for its use by both the church and the wider community – the potential is huge.
The name was chosen in the hope that it will indeed be a ‘junction’ for people on their spiritual journeys – a place to encounter the love of God, to meet others and to experience the care of the church family.