OUR STORY
Rev started in September 2006, which seems like an age ago now! Back then we had 12 adults and 5 kids meeting as a house church. All but one of us were new to the area and we really had no idea what we were doing other than being sure that the Lord had led us to the area to love and serve Jesus, one another and the community.
Right from the start it seemed that the Lord wanted to lift our gaze beyond the locality and to the ends of the earth. Within a couple of years we were supporting a Rev family starting a church in Gdansk, Poland, then a couple of years later a guy went to Riga, Latvia from us to start a church, then a family moved to Frankfurt, Germany to start a church, then onto the Middle East and now to Seoul, South Korea, in the Far East! To help start and support these churches has been an amazing joy and privilege for us and we’ve found that through this, Jesus has expanded our heart as a church and we’re able to carry His mission to the four corners of the world happily and generously.
But we also care about our city, London! From the early years, the Lord made it clear prophetically that He wanted us to be right in the community and to be serving those considered the ‘lowest’ and that from there He would lift us up to the spiritual heights. We started a CAP debt centre in 2010 in order to work alongside those in crippling debt and to show them the mercy and kindness of our heavenly Father. To date we’ve seen over 80 people become debt-free, and it’s a joy to have members of Rev who we’ve met through CAP who through Jesus have found relief not just from financial debt but also from spiritual debt!
We also started a Food Bank in 2012 and have drawn in volunteers from other churches and from the community to serve those at the sharp end of poverty. We’ve fed thousands of local people and it continues to be a priority for us to support this ministry. It’s also been exciting to see many lives changed by the Gospel of Jesus in this area - to see ‘Oaks of Righteousness’ growing and flourishing under the tender mercy of the Lord Jesus, with much restoration and healing flowing into them and then out from them.
We do love the church of Jesus Christ and we believe that she’s been entrusted with this precious Gospel, and so we want to reach other communities in our city with the good news! In light of this we are now at the beginning of a church-starting adventure in London, starting with Tottenham where we have a small group meeting in homes - and so we seem to have come full circle!
In a city like London people are always coming and going and this is something we’ve had to get used to. But even within this strange dynamic, God is building a family; some have stayed here and will stay here for decades, others have gone from us but remain firm friends and co-workers in the same cause. What an honour it has been to see what the Lord has done at Rev and be a part of what is to come!