All hands on deck for church's massive conversion

What do you do when God gives you two giant retail stores for free? Create a pop-up church, of course! Jason Ham tells the story.

Rediscover Church in Exeter had a great problem.

Bursting at the seams, they were struggling to seat the crowds flocking to their 9.30 and 11.30 Sunday services.

So when an unusual solution came along they leapt at it and launched pop-up church.

The new venue came into being with a nudge from the Lord, explains Rediscover’s operations coordinator Jason Ham.

“We’d been looking for buildings over a number of years that we could convert into a church – new builds, older buildings, all sorts of different properties.

Then one of our church members, Shaun McCaughan, felt a prompt from God to check the property website we’d been using.

He looked and saw former Range and Matalan stores had just been listed.

“We were the first people to look around them and after a long journey with the relevant authorities, we finally got accepted to launch church into them! The owner offered us the use of the two buildings rent-free!”

So began the transformation of the two stores into a  church and youth centre.

It was all hands on- deck as Rediscover members pitched in to lay 16,000 carpet tiles, clean 1,000 chairs and paint everything from the kitchen, chill-out area and 1,000-seater auditorium to the youth and children’s facilities and toilets.

THIS ISN'T THE END OF THE STORY!

Read the whole article in context in the July 2024 issue of Direction Magazine.

Direction Magazine

Direction is the official monthly publication of the Elim Pentecostal Churches in the UK, and is packed with all Elim's latest news, inspiration, vision and teaching. Find the latest edition and many back issues of Direction here.