The vision planted at HTC in 1776 continues to grow nearly 250 years on
Inspired by the ministry begun at HTC by William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect, we are renovating and renewing our church building to meet the needs of those it serves, today, and for the next 250 years. This project is called Revitalise 250.
We pray, as they did, that what we do will, by God’s grace, echo across London, the UK, and beyond.
Enabling R250
The whole R250 project is going to cost £6.2m. We have raised or have accounted for £5.7m of that (£4.35m has been donated, £350k of pledged income is coming in over the next year, and £1m has been loaned by congregation members).
We therefore still need to account for an additional £500k.
If you are able to give a lump sum to R250 or a regular monthly amount then we would be very grateful. We would love everyone to give generously, proportionately and cheerfully to Revitalise 250! Thank you for considering this.
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Our main entrance is currently dark, uninviting and it often becomes a bottleneck on a Sunday to people getting in and out of the building. The secondary south entrance (the Wilberforce Centre) is currently poor, and there are no welcoming fellowship areas in the church. We need to advertise our alive and active community.
We have planned a more visible and welcoming entry to celebrate that Jesus welcomes all. We are going to open up and make better use of the space in both the main entrance and the secondary south entrance and create a 'meet and greet' space with tea and coffee facilities. These changes will greatly improve the flow of people, and vastly improve accessibility -
By God’s grace, our church congregation has more than doubled to over 700 people on a Sunday, over the past ten years. This is incredible, but it means we have outgrown our building as it currently stands!
A lack of available and flexible spaces means significant calendar clashes as we seek to meet the needs of all in our community through various groups, courses or clinics. We also have to utilise other spaces, away from the church building to provide all our children's groups that support our Sunday services, which is far from ideal.
With the creation of more meeting spaces within the proposed extensions, we will be able to host all our Sunday children's groups at our church building, alongside our main services and be better positioned to meet the needs of our community at any time. -
Our building was last redeveloped in the 1990s, meaning the significant growth we have had since then has put extreme pressures on our buildings facilities. We frequently experience people queuing for our toilets, which are out-dated and in a poor state of repair. Additionally, our kitchen is falling apart and if we wish to cater for church events, we frequently need to hire-in additional equipment to make even the most basic of meals possible.
Our project will double the number of toilets, with them better located throughout our building and will install accessible toilet facilities that meet current standards. We are also incredibly excited to be installing a new kitchen facility that will significantly increase our catering capability and capacity.
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We want everyone who enters our building to feel included in the event or service that they are attending. Our current audio-visual system is old and has been modified many times, meaning it is actually operating at over-capacity, leading to unreliability.
An new and improved audio-visual system will better enable everyone in the building to clearly hear and see what is going on, including those in the galleries, so that the experience of all who enter the building is enhanced, and that the effort that is put into services and events tangibly translates to enjoyment of those in attendance
Why R250?
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"At the moment it’s difficult to give people a proper welcome whilst hurrying people inside and prevent a bottleneck from forming in the entrance - not a great way to be welcomed into a church if you’re new! I can’t wait to meet and greet people properly on Sundays and have the space to have tea and coffee with them"
Adwoa Boliston, PCC Member -
“I’m very excited about all the planned improvements to HTC. I’m quite a foodie person and have cooked a few meals in the old kitchen. Usually a bit of a nightmare, problems with hot water, fridge, freezer, storage and the location by the loos wasn’t great."
Julia Harvey -
“We’ve loved seeing the church grow over the past few years and have faith that there’s more to come. We’re so excited to see this transformation - a more flexible space for services and courses, and more room to grow our kids groups. We can’t wait to see the space enable more expressive and joyous worship”
Nat and Hannah Colman -
“It is brilliant that more and more young families are coming into our church but the lack of capacity means some children have to travel to a seperate building for their groups. It will be amazing to have more space so adults and children can be co-located"
Oli Gayle, Churchwarden