We’re a 24-7 Prayer community in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex since 2007 and still feel like we are marking out new territory. Our calendar is marked with regular prayer rhythms over the year–to centre our personal and corporate lives in prayer. Our family church gatherings are based around food and relationship-weekly House Churches across our town are full of life, with a focus on encounter. We are a sent people have a reach across our community: a pioneering chaplaincy in local schools and Performing Arts college, meeting in local restaurants, and many small businesses and projects.
Proximity Church is a one-year experiment that has continued since 2007. In the beginning, we simply met–just a few families–to eat, pray and welcome guests to come and stay .Learning as we went along, a house set aside for community quickly became buzzing with life–prayer and parties.
Sally Harman describes it like this:”We thought. ‘I think this is it, I think this is the Kingdom!’ and it was really exciting. We’d been in church forever, but there was this sense of God opening new doors for us and fanning into flame. Individuals came and prayed, and we wanted to pray corporately aswell; so we started to build in rhythms of prayer in creative and regular ways. ”After being established, the Community soon got busy reaching out into the local area; in Stanford everything revolves around teamwork and every person being actively involved.
