We’ve created a Gateway to involve our community

Gateway 2 New Life Church in Launceston has developed a thriving community hub.

Driving back from the south coast in 2010, Kevin and Teresa Pickup each had the same mental picture: a large building filled with community projects, groups and activities.

The couple assumed it was linked to the church plant they were exploring.

But over the past ten years their vision has been realised as Gateway Church’s thriving Gateway Centre community hub in Launceston has become a reality.

The story began in 2012, shortly after Kevin joined the church as a Minister In Training.

His pastor John Berriman took him to visit a large three-storey building which was a former tax office with a view to starting a community project.

They felt it was the right building, but faced a big challenge.

“We weren’t really part of the community except for our Sunday services,” says Kevin, who is now lead pastor of the church.

Undeterred, they took on a lease in 2013 and began to repurpose the building with the help of offenders on community service who spent 10,000 hours painting it from top to bottom.

This link paved the way to work with other community groups and the church sought the Holy Spirit’s leading as they forged a path through the difficult first few months.

“We do everything in partnership with the Holy Spirit and we’ve always found that when we take time to pray and allow him to guide us the break-throughs happen,” says Kevin.

The team saw God break down barriers with the local authority as they began setting up the project.

“There was a lot of resistance from the town councillors and authorities.

“We would be in meetings trying to explain who we were, but they didn’t believe we would be able to provide the solutions the town needed, even though we knew that was what God was calling us to do.

“Then the doors began to open.

“Firstly the Job Centre wanted to work with us because they realised they could have a bigger impact if people could come to a neutral place like our building to complete their training.

“We ran a job club with them and the Launceston Money Advice Programme to develop a place where we can help people get job-ready.

“Working with the Job Centre opened the door for us with the town council and the mayor, and now they’re our biggest advocates – we’ve become a signpost, and if anyone has a problem they come to us.”

From these small beginnings, the Gateway Centre has become an indispensable self-funded community hub which Kevin estimates reaches around eight per cent of people in Launceston each month.

The 10,000 square meter building is split over three floors, with the top floor for the church and the others for the com-munity.

The church now employs six members of staff to run the project.

On the ground floor, Café Avodah welcomes local people, with a free community table permanently available for booking with everything from Knit & Natter and men’s conversation groups, to mental health and game groups.

Likewise, a community room is home to various groups such as Army Cadets, mother and toddlers, health & fitnesssports , groups and training providers.

The first floor is then hired out to charities and Christian organisations.

The Gateway Centre has not just allowed the church to provide practical help, however. “It gives us an opportunity to build relationships with people and share our faith,” says Kevin.

“People like to see who we are and understand what we’re about and can ask questions in safe environments like the community café.

“There we have good conversations and pray with people who are a million miles away from coming to church.”

As these bridges have been built, Kevin has seen the congregation at Gateway Church grow from 20 people in 2019 to around 70 today.

Younger people and those who have used the community projects are also among those who have joined recently.

While Kevin is enjoying seeing numbers grow through the Gateway Centre’s community links, he is also focused on developing the church spiritually.

Last autumn, Gateway Church hosted town revival meetings for 40 nights over three months to help Christians in the area to refocus after Covid restrictions eased; they saw people come to faith, healed, delivered and baptised.

“We get stories every week from people who were at those meetings telling us how God transformed and restored situations,” says Kevin.

The church is also building multicultural links with European and Asian groups in the area, and has just welcomed into the fellowship four Filipino families who were part of a Filipino church in the town which recently closed.

“Teresa and I worked as missionaries in France for three years and learned the importance of helping the international community feel welcome, listening to their cultural needs and understanding how faith works in their environment.”

Whether it’s growing the church or developing community work, following the Holy Spirit’s lead has led to favour and acceptance within Launceston and an ability to meet needs and share faith, says Kevin.

“We’ve seen the Lord’s hand over everything we do and he’s taken us into a place we could never have imagined being able to get to ourselves.

“We’re more than a church now, we’re an integral part of the community.”

The Gateway Church Network in Cornwall

Gateway Church is a network of three congregations in Launceston, Bodmin and Lostwithiel in Cornwall, of which Kevin is lead pastor.

“Our Bodmin church is a smaller church which we’re relaunching at the moment,” he explains.

“We want to create something fresh based on the giftings we have as a group.

“We’re identifying what those are at the moment, going through teaching on things like the role of the Spirit and Elim’s statements of faith.

“I’m teaching church planting and discipling modules and discipling a group to identify our purpose in the community.”

Lostwithiel, pastored by Graham Jarrett and with whom Gateway teamed up with 18 months ago, is focused especially on reaching younger people.

“They’re very much about building relationships with 18-30s and youngsters who’ve been brought up in difficult circumstances.

“We work together and share resources to best enable what we’re doing in our communities.”

The Gateway Churches also inspired Elim’s national Alpha course.

When the Launceston and Bodmin churches came together to run an online Alpha during lockdown they sparked an idea that led to Elim’s national course.

“It was pretty successful so I took the idea and developed it into a regional Alpha with a collective of nine Elim churches in Cornwall in autumn 2020, which had never been done before,” says Kevin.

As part of the Cornwall team, Mark Greenwood saw the potential for expanding the idea and took it to a national level.

“To see it rolled out nationally was a real blessing for our team.”

First published in the July 2022 issue of Direction, Elim’s monthly magazine. Subscribe now to get Direction delivered to your home.

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