50th Anniversary of Trinity Centre, East Ham
Trinity officially celebrated their 50th Anniversary on Friday the 8th December 2023 when the building was full and overflowing. The current leaders are very conscious of their roots and happy to honour their founders, so Cliff and Monica brought greetings via zoom on their great day.
Trinity was significant at the start of Monica and Clifford's national ministry. Using new concepts of community-based evangelism, Trinity was the first inner-city redundant church that Monica reclaimed for the community. Following a successful first year, the NCRP bought the building from the URC in 1973; and the community itself bought it from NCRP some years later. Although it now reflects local people of all faiths, it still has Christian principles underlying it and is responding to the current needs of the community.
More details can be found on the current Trinity Community website. For their 45th Anniversary, they created an Oral History for a Faith-to-Faith project, click here.
Our own site will eventually have many more details and links to those early years in the 1970s.
In this Page
Clifford and Monica's greetings for Trinity Centre's 50th Anniversary celebrations
Greetings from Clifford and Monica Hill for Trinity’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations - December 8th 2023
It is so good for us to be with you on this very special occasion - even if it can only be by Zoom for which we do give many thanks as we do not travel far these days.
We have always been known as ‘Cliff and Monica’ since we founded this centre 50 years ago and we have many happy memories of those early years.
In 1972, the Presbyterian church no longer required this building and as soon as it closed, they allowed us to use it. One year later we raised the money and purchased the whole site to use for the good of the community. But before the sale went through it had already become a thriving centre of community life.
We began by using ‘community development’ principles – meeting local needs with local people.
The first need we responded to was for a Mums and Toddlers group, closely followed by a Lunch Club for the Elderly, and then an After School Club which was a great success.
The Youth Club rapidly became the most popular in the area. In fact, that youth club helped to protect the place from vandalism, and all the groups helped to paint and decorate and run this centre from the start – it belonged to the people.
Pastor Paul’s father led one of the first West Indian churches to find a home here, and it was always intended to be a Christian Community Centre open to people of all faiths.
You may have seen some of the oral history of those early days which we recorded for your 40th birthday ten years ago - this is now on display in the hall.
Congratulations as you celebrate your 50th birthday. We want to bring you greetings and good wishes and we pray that you will continue to grow and flourish.
We hope you will continue with a spirit of service and caring for each other for another 50 years and more.
We wish you joy as you continue to work with others throughout the area, making this a real centre meeting the needs of local people, by local people caring for each other.
God bless you all.
