When a young child ran down the street shouting, ‘Come and look everyone, they’re opening the church! They’re opening the church!’ the minister knew something good was happening.
John Bavington, an evangelical CofE minister in Bradford, is leading a £1 million plan to rescue an old, shut-down church building and then plant a new congregation plus a community hub with a soft play area.
St Columba’s is in the Horton Grange area of Bradford, which has a high Muslim population. It closed for worship more than two decades ago and was almost sold off.
Bavington, vicar of St John’s, Great Horton, and St Wilfrid’s, Lidget Green, first heard about St Columba’s while he was on a 24-hour prayer retreat. A retired clergy member asked him: ‘What are you going to do with St Columba’s?’
He and his team have already seen several providential provisions of things that are needed, though there is still a long way to go until the building is fully renovated, and the total cost, £1 million, has yet to be fully gathered.
Bavington said new life had already been brought to St Columba’s with an African church congregation already starting to meet there.
