Replanting in Abingdon
God is leading us as the S&L Advance family of churches to replant our church in Abingdon in 2026. Let us explain!
Since the late 1970s God worked among us to see churches planted in many communities across Oxfordshire and beyond. Abingdon Community Church (ACC) was planted in 1992 from housegroup in Botley of people in Oxford Community Church joined by others from across the family of churches.
More recently, ACC has had some difficult years (more on that here) but with caring and nurturing leadership from the ‘Abingdon support team’, ACC is 'on the up' with freshly expectant faith and nurturing community life.
Now, God has been speaking about replanting the church. What do we mean by ‘replanting’ and what does God want us to do?
‘Planting’ a church means to start a new community of Jesus-followers (disciples) in a particular location, establishing foundations - for example, of community, outreach, doctrine and leadership - with the intention reaching that location with the gospel. It's a pattern we see exampled in the New Testament, where apostolic teams travelled around established new communities, appointed leadership and continued to relate in a parent-like fashion with those communities so that they grew to flourish and thrive.
That pattern, of churches relating well to apostolic/support teams that they might be "thriving churches advancing God's kingdom", is exactly what we're about today as S&L Advance.
Back to Abingdon, God has been leading us to work on several priorities:
to reinvigorate culture of faith and community as we noted above
to renew vision to be a church for the whole of the town, not just a part, and for the wider region, not just Abingdon town
to relocate Sunday gatherings to be viisble and accessible
to recruit people to give the church capacity to step into all that God is speaking about
to rename the church reflecting this new season and focus
These five Rs are a bit of a mouthful, so we're bundling all that together and simply talking about replanting.
There's more on the replanting project, including much more detailed answers to several FAQS at www.abingdoncc.org.uk/replant or watch this short video.
Andy O’Connell
Church Oversight Team and Abingdon Replant Lead