It’s wonderful to be part of something

Forge Sphere

LifeSpring is part of Forge, this a group of churches found across the South and South East of England. They are all community churches based in villages, towns or cities with an aim to be involved in the local community and be a light to the community. There are two in Kent, three in London, one in Fareham, New Forest and three others in the Basingstoke area. Forge gathers leaders across the churches, has a camp once per year, training events and leadership development.

Forge Sphere - forgesphere.org

Basingstoke Community Churches (BCCs)

LifeSpring Community Church is also one of four Community Churches Connected - with Hope Community Church, Hub Community Church and Community Church Tadley also located in the area. Each of the churches holds to the same beliefs and core values, but they also have their own flavour, outreach activities, meeting places and emphasis. The churches have a Core Team which oversee the work, have a central office and finance base along with sharing training and use of facilities. Formerly Basingstoke Community Churches now CCCs has been a leading church in the area since the 1970’s, and we at LifeSpring Community Church aim to continue moving forward with living and speaking out the gospel across the area.

One Church

Within the greater Basingstoke area, stretching out as far as Overton and Whitchurch are churches that are part of One Church. It is led by a team of church leaders from a variety of churches, all with an aim to see the mission and Kingdom of God grow across the Basingstoke area. One Church both puts on and supports mission activities in the area and churches.

One Church - onechurchbasingstoke.org

Churches Together

The churches in the villages really enjoy working together. We are actively involved with Overton Churches Together and Oakley Combined Churches. In Overton there is a group of leaders from The Community Church, St. Mary’s Anglican, The Methodist Chapel and the Catholic church that meet to plan various ways of doing church together. The churches gather together to worship each year on Palm Sunday, Pentecost, Remembrance Day and the last Sunday in December. There are other events that take place throughout the year too including the ever popular Big Birthday Party and Christmas carolling in the square.

In Oakley there are leaders from the Community Church, St. Leonard’s Anglican and the Methodist Chapel that meet quarterly to pray and plan together. The churches gather together to worship twice per year, once in February and once in July. There is a well-attended Good Friday walk of witness that happens along with other events in the village throughout the year. It’s really important to us that we are a part of the bigger picture of what is happening in the villages and churches together involvement plays a part in this.

Home for Good

An area that The LifeSpring Church holds as very important is the well- being of children in care. Home for Good is a Christian charity that exists to encourage the church, inform the church and empower the church to be involved in the lives of children in care along with the families that adopt and foster. We celebrate National Adoption Sunday each year, we have children in care that come to our outreach activities in addition to our Sunday gatherings. We feel that this important and have information about this great charity available at all of our meetings.

Home for Good - homeforgood.org.uk

Other

Little Creations - facebook.com/thursdaymornings10am

Uganda

We feel it’s important to have our influence in other nations too; the main one that we work into is Uganda. We have a wonderful missionary called Annie Crowe who lives and works there, her story is that she is a former teacher and has worked in Uganda for over 30 years. She originally went with Ambassadors of Aid, an organisation which ran children’s homes and inaugurated the well-known ‘African Children’s Choir’. Annie’s main task was to set up ‘catch up’ schools, especially for those children who had suffered loss of education through the terrible war years under the Amin and Obote regimes. After about 3 years moved to become the Director of Education for the Deliverances Churches, based in Kampala but with Churches all across Uganda. She has continued with this work and there are now 20 schools established.

Kakeeka Church

A few years ago, through showing unconditional love to a Rastafarian con man, a wonderful Church sprung up around her with many men, women, students and lots of children. Many live in a car wash bay area, which is rather like a breakers yard, and some still live in old abandoned vehicles. Many lives have been restored and previous street fighters, robbers, drug addicts and alcoholics are now free, doing honest work and living honest lives. The church was originally called the Washbay Church and now it is part of Deliverance Church Uganda. We see Kakeeka as a sister to church to us, many of our people have visited and we have direct contact with the church.

We have a fund where we collect money to give to Kakeeka, it’s work at Christmas, hall hire, and various other needs within their community. We also have relational connections with Deliverance Churches, New Hope Uganda, Jan White (A Doctor originally from Basingstoke) in Mbale (Eastern Uganda) and with Patti Squire (Hub Community Church).