By Mark Morris, Minister at Dennistoun Bapstist
We started as a church replant at the end of 2015 believing that God had not given up on this wee church in the East End of Glasgow. The church was an elderly congregation of 7 members and in need of much support and guidance. Pauline and I felt the call to leave our Church family at Calderwood Baptist and with their blessing and support we began a journey of replanting what has historically been a prominent church within our Union. By God’s grace we experienced growth as we sought to be disciples who make disciples. The starting point to this was opening up our lives to the people in our community. This has resulted in salvations, baptisms, believers connecting and prodigals reconnecting to the life of Jesus.
We worship in a tiny space and have between 40 and 60 gather on a Sunday morning. There are as many as 18 children in our “extension”; a portacabin at the side of our main building. Our growth pushed us to knock on many different doors in Dennistoun in the hope we could acquire a bigger space for worship. Over the last three years every one of these doors closed and this led us to ask bigger questions about what God was saying to us. We felt led to the community of Riddrie, an area next door to Dennistoun and by His grace we are currently in the process of purchasing an old Episcopal Church building right in the heart of this community.
Our heart is for the East End and North side of Glasgow. There are faithful believers and churches here (which we are so thankful for) but the harvest is still plentiful. Our initial vision for Riddrie and Dennistoun is to be One Church, Two Locations, but it really is so much bigger – if we take seriously the call to be disciples who make disciples then we will organically become churches that plant or replant churches in the East and North of Glasgow. Pray specifically that God would provide us with the workers of the harvest to fulfil this vision for our City.
