Come April there will be 5 churches in Brighton, 3 existing and 2 relatively new ones.

It began with the Anglicans who got up and running fairly early in the piece. We were next to move in and then Beachside community Church (Pentecostal) started about 7 months ago. Now there are two other Pentecostal flavours about to be added in March and April, one of Apostolic origin and the other an independent pentecostal group with COC links. I made contact with the leaders of both these churches and sincerely wished them well.

However it means that over the weekend in the local primary school there will be Friday night church, Saturday night church and Sunday night church (all pentecostal), as well as Sunday morning church – the Anglicans.

And then there is us, currently meeting in homes on a Monday night.

I am actually not sure if Brighton can sustain so many small churches of the same flavour… It will be interesting to see how it all develops. In typical church plant scenarios there is a heap of pressure on leaders to get things up and running fast so that the crowds come, the pastor gets paid and so you can offer all the goods and services of the larger churches, because if you don’t the punters will leave.

My experience has been that Brighton is not a place where church going rates highly on the agenda of weekend activities. (And why would it for people who do not see themselves as Christian) It is also suburbia where people are busy and where the middle class ethos of ‘just a little more and I’ll be happy’ predominates. Running a church service to pull a crowd is a difficult business – unless you are happy to pull the crowd from other churches.

It will be interesting to survey the landscape in 5 years time and see what has transpired…

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