Seeking to be faithful and to be open to God's calling remains an ongoing venture in our life as a Church. Our extensive site offers us a wealth of opportunity to extend our mission to the community in which we live. Over many years Abingdon Baptist Church has been challenged over the adequacy of its premises and site in terms of its mission at the heart of Abingdon. Bits have been done here and there, often of the fire fighting variety, but vision was also apparent when opportunity was taken to increase the size of the site by taking the chance to purchase additional land to the West of the Scout Hut.

A whole project was successfully undertaken with the renovation of the original manse into what is now the mission of ’35 Ock Street’. The success of ‘No 35’ simply underlined the inadequacy of the rest of the site and at the Church Meeting in January 2009 a Special Project Group was commissioned to pull together all the discussion, thinking and prayers of many years and to seek God’s leading in turning them into a plan. The challenge set by the church was to devise a possible way forward in just a year.

The response was spectacular with some seventeen people volunteering to work on the project in pulling together the feedback from all parts of the church and beyond and to help find and then work with an architectural partner. JBKS, represented by Kelvin Sampson, became our partner and delivered copies of the Feasibility Study in February 2010.

A huge thank you to the members of the Special Project Group who gave their time over the year and a very big thank you too for the contributions of the eighty or so members of the church and congregation who took the time, either individually or in groups, to respond to the questionnaire produced in conjunction with the architects.