A New Home for Revive

After a lengthy period of prayer, discussion and seeking God, the Revive Church leadership have decided not to proceed with the proposed 1000-seat new church building on Kingswood, due to rising construction costs in the wake of Brexit and the Covid Pandemic. The proposed £2 million project has ballooned to £3-4 million, and putting ourselves under such tremendous financial pressure, in such a volatile season, seems unwise to us. Many churches that had been contemplating large new builds in this season are shifting their strategies towards buying existing buildings, as a less expensive and risky way forward. We are one of these.

We know this may come as something of a great disappointment to some, but we have been encouraged by direct words from God that have urged us to dis-entangle from this original plan, after enduring the very slow and difficult, decade-long journey, seeking to build on Kingswood. We still hope to have a good influence on Kingswood, with some exciting new, smaller and very collaborative plans being discussed. Watch this space!

The other good news is that we have very healthy savings in the bank towards our new plan, thanks to all your outstanding giving! That’s all still ring-fenced for a new Revive home base. It is our intention to find a Headquarters in Hull or the region that fulfils many of our original requirements, but with a “new era” twist. We need a hub somewhere to hold a House of Prayer, our administration centre, perhaps just one of our campuses, and space for training, coffee shop, events, evangelism and family gatherings. While Sunday’s may remain simple and flexible across the region, meeting in inexpensive hired halls for now, as we flex around Covid restrictions, we expect our Headquarters would be an excellent 7-day hub and gathering point for all to spend time together. 

Pray! We’re out and about right now, looking for Revive’s new home in the region!

Well, 2020 and 2021 have so far proved to be the most unusual of years for this building project, and many other things besides!

The effect of the pandemic means Revive Church has only met in-person to worship a handful of times in the last 15 months, and this has of course had a marked effect on our income, which has been suppressed by some 20% or so, though this has varied at times over the year.

Our family of ministries have continued with debt counselling, detached youth work, foodbank activities, lunch clubs and many activities online, but we can’t wait to get back to normal!

However, even with this year’s suppression of income, we have still been able to increase our finances raised and saved by the amazing Revive community, which sits at around £800K today. Well done Revive!

The Progress with the New Build Project 

On a practical note, the stages of development that the building project required have moved at a frustrating snails pace over the last 15 months, but it has still moved forward! Technical drawings have been finished, professional estimates acquired (These were rather higher than we’d hoped!), and a process of value engineering to address this is underway.

Reaching this milestone in the process means we have also begun some weeks of meetings with Kingswood Parks and others who may assist us, to see if we can chart a way forward to develop further funding, obtain actual builders costs, investigate lenders options, all while trying to ascertain how COVID and Brexit have affected the market for building. It is quite a maze, but we are moving and having very helpful conversations in recent weeks.

Hopefully more good news will follow soon.

An Interim Home for Revive

After the last 15 months it is obvious that the new building is not about to leap to completion in the next 6 months, and with so many venues no longer hiring out spaces, we are in need of a decent sized building to get us through while we await the new build completion.

To meet this need we are in the process of attempting to secure a large empty retail space in Hull that will hopefully carry us over until we are in our new building. Please pray as plans to have this in place for this summer, including a change of use to “place of worship” are under way right now.

Please continue to pray for God’s favour and grace to reach both our temporary and long-term plans for buildings, that we might be able to do much good in our city and region for years to come.