Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
CITY ON A HILL
‘More children!’ we sang from Isaiah. ‘All your sons gather
and come to you... [they] will yet say... “This place is too small
for us; give us more space to live in”’ (Is 49:18: 20; also see
60:4, 66:8).
Our little ‘Zion’ was expanding. With 400 members, the
chapel was ready to burst and the bustling balcony worried
Cyril the architect. For some Saturday night meetings we now
hired halls in Northampton or Rugby, whilst every fortnight
the mid-week gathering was broken down into ‘area assemblies’
where we could stretch our wings and allow new ministries
to emerge.
New Creation Hall and the Bugbrooke estate, the Farm,
Shalom, Sheepfold, the Daventry houses, Festal Grange, Living
Stones and Vineyard were all filling up and in December
1978 we took over Cornhill Manor, a mile up the hill from
Bugbrooke. The old hotel, still reeking of beer and cigarettes,
provided space for sixty people, and some of the families from
the estate, including Lionel and Marion, moved in.
Local villagers wondered what was coming next and were
relieved when they heard of our plans to spread elsewhere!
Our vision was to stay in the countryside but to spread out.
We pulled up the stakes and extended the ‘tent’. It was only
an extension, as we intended to remain a single church. Central
‘Jerusalem’ (as we called the Northampton area) was
putting its feelers into surrounding ‘Judea’. (We weren’t ready
for the ‘uttermost parts of the earth’ yet!) And so our Zion
fortress spilled over into Warwickshire.
In January we commissioned the twenty pioneers: Mick
‘Temperate’, Pete, Carol and family, the newlyweds Ralph and
Clare, plus those studying in Warwick or Coventry. Eathorpe
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