Our church is home, hatchery, hospital

What happens when God calls a life-long church member to plant a new congregation in another community? Chris Rolfe has been finding out.

Lin Nicholls had happily attended Plymouth Christ ian Centre her whole life. At 60, she wasn’t expecting God to nudge her to leave it. Even less was she expecting him to call her to plant a church.

Yet this is how one of Elim’s newest churches, Rediscover Church Plympton, has come into being.

“I loved Plymouth but then post-Covid I just felt like God was shaking me, so I started attending Rediscover in Exeter instead,” she says.

“A year or so later I then realised the Lord was talking to me about the Church Planting Academy. I felt like something was stirring in my spirit and realised that’s why God had moved me out of the church I’d attended my whole life; he separated me so he could get my ear.”

Lin joined the Academy and was thoroughly enjoying it, yet she still felt unsure of her calling.

“I went to the Scriptures and started finding so many women in the New Testament who’d been used by God.

“So I said, ‘Lord, if you want to use me that’s fine. I live in Plympton and if you want me to plant there I will.’”

Whirlwind

The birth of Rediscover Plympton was something of a whirlwind, she laughs.

“You know when you’ve been mulling something over, then suddenly you decide ‘if I don’t do this now I’ll never do it’? That was me, so I started looking at properties to rent in the area.”

A community centre in the Chaddlewood area of Plympton (on the outskirts of Plymouth) responded, and if anything was a confirmation from God it was this visit, says Lin.

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