relocation plans
1st March 2011
At the heart of the vision we share at Hanbury Hill Baptist Church is the desire to express our faith as living and active, and not just in church but more importantly perhaps, within our community. Over the last perhaps 55 years we have connected with the wider community mainly through the Girls’ Brigade and Boys’ Brigade work but over the last 10 – 15 years we have widened this and now through our Churches Together involvement participate in initiatives like Street Pastors both through patrolling the streets late on Saturday and Friday nights and through supporting the associated prayer base – and also in supporting the Food Bank and other local projects.
Whilst this has been happening it has become increasingly obvious that our 170 year old church building, the lack of parking around the church and the need to ‘face the future’ make it paramount that we seek to relocate and replace the building to ensure a Baptist presence in Stourbridge for generations to come. The present church building does not offer the type or quality of accommodation which can be easily improved or utilized fully, and even if it were, in fact parking would become an even worse headache.
The church that was constructed in 1836 was clearly not designed with 21st century in mind – we hope to set in place a new building on an appropriate site perhaps offering a multi-purpose worship area which will provide greater flexibility and a more comfortable environment for people.
The church has been considering a number of options and locations and we continue to seek God’s guidance and to hold that requirement at the very heart of all our plans. Our current fringe town centre site is NOT a location where many of our existing membership or regular attenders live and the location is NOT necessary to see through our vision to be much more community focused. So we intend to move – where exactly remains to be seen.
We at HHBC are at a significant point in our long history. We are already six months into the launch of our relocation plan and building fund – fund raising has begun with a not insubstantial initial fundraising effort and our existing fellowship is facing up to the future and the decision to move – we are excited about what God may have in store for us and what our eventual site and building will be like – although this may be a long road before our efforts bear fruit.
We do believe that God is preparing us as a people for this next stage of our journey together. All we have experienced has reminded us that God can be trusted and that this time of preparation and transition must be formative and lead us into areas which will expand our vision and the work we need to do through our Baptist witness. There is a verse in Psalm 84 which seems to be a God sent message for us - "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage" - Psalm 84:5 (NIV).
relocation news
