About Us and the Church
We look forward to seeing you soon.
You will be made very Welcome!
Shaun & Wendy
Before I tell you about how Catch the Fire Family Church came into existence I would like to give you a little background on Wendy and myself and how we came into the Kingdom of God.
I was brought up a devout Catholic going to Church every week, when I met Wendy in June 1985 she was like her Dad a Church of England member, but she went to the local Catholic Church with her Mum. After 13 months of dating we got engaged and two years later in June 1988 we were married in the Catholic Church that Wendy attended, only after Wendy had had religious instruction and become a Catholic.
Our lives were uneventful for many years just going to work every day and to Church every Sunday. Then in 2002 we went to book a day trip at a local coach company and ended up booking a holiday to the Isle of Wight which was unusual because we had a caravan that we went away in. On that holiday we met a minister who invited us to his House Church meeting, which we attended and before long we were going to the House Church meeting every Sunday evening while going to the Catholic Church every Sunday morning.
Over the next 3 months I learnt so much more about Faith, and the Bible started to come alive to me! After three months I know that we had to make a decision about where we were going to worship and so we left the Catholic Church and later that month in August 2002 we prayed the prayer of Salvation together and asked Jesus to be our Saviour and Lord over our lives.
That was the best discussion that I had ever made and within eighteen months I had started going to Bible College, the first year was at I.C.E. “International College of Excellence” and for the last two years at “Life Christian University”. Although I was never that good academically at school I excelled in my Bible studies.
In 2006 I started training for the Ministry and in June 2009 I was ordained a Minister. Over the next few years Wendy and I worked with our Pastor running the small House Church until our Pastor left for pastures new in America. It was in 2020 just a few months after our Pastor had left that the Lord started to speak to me about “New Beginnings” and starting a Church. The Lord had given me the name of the Church several years before as I walked to work and I saw a pair of cupped hands reaching up to catch a flame in the air. Hence Catch the Fire. The Family Church is what we want Catch the Fire to be a Family Church for everyone. On the 1st September 2020 in the middle of a worldwide pandemic Catch the Fire Family Church became a reality, but within a month the Hotel where we held the meetings was forced to close due to the second National Lockdown. We ran the Church meetings on Zoom until the lockdown was lifted at Christmas, but again the third Lockdown was put in place so we were on the Zoom meetings again.
Finally in March 2021 the Lockdown was again lifted and we have met every Sunday ever since. We are only a small church at the moment but the Lord has given Wendy and I a big vision for the future of Catch the Fire Family Church and with the help of the Lord and some committed people in the Church we will see the vision come to pass!