In Depth:  Mike Finnis

Hanney Chapel, Oxfordshire, moved into their newly extended and refurbished building in September

The new £130,000 extension to one side of the chapel building balances an extension built a few years ago on the other side to provide Sunday School rooms. Designed by church member Christian Randall, it gives a new glass frontage, a kitchen, crèche room and storage space, while increasing capacity for meetings by 20 to 90.

Much-travelled pastor and missionary the Revd Gilbert McAdam started a new chapter of his life on 31 March, on the northern coast of Scotland with his wife Emily and their ten-year-old adopted daughter Claire from the Philippines.

Mr McAdam, 66, was inducted as minister of Wick Harbour Mission, answering the prayers of the church’s five woman members who had kept the cause alive since the death of their former pastor Jimmie Cormack in 2008.

A village chapel, on the brink of closure 16 years ago, welcomed its new pastor into the church on February 15. Mark Fisher, the 27-year-old former assistant minister at Heath Evangelical Church, Cardiff, is the first full-time pastor at Hanney Chapel, Oxfordshire, for 60 years.

More than 200 supporters, including a double-decker coach load of 70 from the Heath, heard the story of Hanney Chapel’s renewal with the help of Abbey Baptist Church, Abingdon. In 1998 Hanney Chapel was down to just two members, Sue Aitken and Margaret Oxley, when they sent a plea for help to Abbey Baptist Church. That church was considering church planting, so the request was warmly supported by Abbey church.