At times, this world can feel very dark. We can wonder if we’ll ever see anyone come to Christ. But the light continues to shine in the darkness. I would love to encourage you about something God is doing in West London.
My name is Dave Seckington and I am married to Anna, daughter of Mike and Helen Walker, much loved members of St Mary’s Maidenhead. Anna and I married at St Mary’s in 2019 and have been so grateful to you for your love and support.
We have recently planted a new church – Shepherd’s Church – “because Shepherd’s Bush needs its Shepherd”. It is a privilege to be able to share with you some of what God has been doing.
Firstly, let me draw you a sketch of our area. It is tremendously diverse. 45% were born overseas. Our next door neighbour is a Hindu place of worship. On the corners of our road are an Afghan grocery, an Eritrean cafe, a Jamaican burger place, and a Lebanese bakery. At one end of our road is a mosque. And many of the people around us are from the hardest-to-reach nations in the world – Iran, Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia. Within a one mile radius of our home, there are over 50,000 residents. Yet, in all the churches combined, there are less than 200 Christians. That is 0.4% trying to reach 99.6%. Shepherd’s Bush desperately needs its Shepherd.
With this in mind, Anna and I felt clear that God was calling us to start a new church in the area to help meet this need. Church planting has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to reach new people, as well as grow Christians, and even bless other local churches. (Tim Keller’s article “Why Plant Churches” online is well worth reading on this.)
So, we decided to go for it. In May 2023, we started monthly meetings for anyone interested to pray and strategize. In September 2023, we started a weekly Food and Bible night in our home, open to anyone. On Easter Sunday 2024, we decided to start monthly Sunday services so we could sing, pray, preach and take communion. In August these became fortnightly and in January this year, we went weekly.
We meet in a Community Centre on the White City housing estate. God opened a door to us there, where no religious groups had been allowed to meet for years. God has brought together a small but amazing core family of believers of many ages. Our dream has been to see new converts out of the harvest, and to see people in the area who needed a church join. Praise God, he has already been doing this – we have seen four conversions, and multiple other “not-yet-believers” (that is a phrase from David Jackman that I love) coming. We are doing weekly evangelism, primarily handing out free tea and coffee in the area with a whiteboard with an evangelistic question on it which we ask people to speak into. We also knock on doors, run community events, do social nights, Q&A nights and try to make sure we have a lot of fun things that we can invite people in to.
It has been an up and down road, it has not all been easy, but I want to encourage you that God is still working. Sometimes it is in small ways – if you came on a Sunday, I don’t think we’d look impressive in a worldly way. Some weeks we have had as few as 12 of us there on a Sunday. But God is working! We pray he is going to do a mighty work in West London and far beyond.
If you would like to pray for us, we would be hugely grateful for prayers for the following:
- Praise God for starting this new church and the amazing core family he has built
- Ask God to bring more brothers and sisters to join us
- Specifically, pray for musicians to join
- Pray for new conversions out of the harvest
For more information visit shepherdschurch.uk or email Dave at davidseckington@gmail.com. Dave also sends out a newsletter every few months which he would be delighted to include you on if you wish.