‘East Enders Restoration: The Harold Road Story’ tracks the step-by-step reclamation of a redundant church building in an ever-changing residential part of London’s East End in the1970s. It was a time of high unemployment, especially in inner city areas. It was also a time when churches were closing and communities disintegrating.
In this book Monica recounts her experiences of changing a redundant church into a community-led Christian Centre. This fascinating story relates how, through a Government Job Creation Programme, many young men were employed to carry out the rebuilding of the centre. About half of these young men had police records and 60% of them struggled with reading and writing. This is mainly their story; it is also a true-life story of how the ‘rejected’ and ‘unwanted’ anywhere can fulfil their potential – there is never just one way of communicating the Good News of the Gospel.
The community development principles learnt from this project led Monica and Clifford to even wider challenges in their later national ministry, principles still very relevant in society today.
This freely available digital book can be read here.
Background History
The story of Harold Road Community Centre 1974-1978
Following a successful pastoral ministry in Tottenham in the 1960s, Monica and Clifford Hill moved to the East End of London where they felt called to experiment with new ways of sharing the gospel as it was here that the church was declining at the fastest rate in the country. In the early 1970s, they founded the Newham Community Renewal Programme linking those working in the remaining churches encouraging them to work together. Alongside this, between 1971 and 1974, Monica had become involved in, and taken responsibility for, the recently closed Trinity Presbyterian Church in East Avenue, East Ham in an attempt to recreate a Christian community.
The building had been put on the market so that the proceeds could be used more successfully ‘where the people were’ – seen by the church authorities as being in the suburbs. The remaining members had been assigned to neighbouring fellowships, so they had to build up any community there from scratch and also needed to buy the building. Eventually, with a grant of £20,000 from the Joseph Rank charity, they were able to purchase the freehold of Trinity, but this took time during which they were not permitted to use the church building for Sunday worship. This approach though brought dramatic results demonstrating that with the local community now becoming involved, and trying new things, the centre was expanding so rapidly that it had become viable and practically self-supporting within two years.
Because of this ‘success’, news of which was well known locally, other redundant local churches were ‘offered’ to the Renewal Programme - a second redundant church in Upton Park was one that was offered just two years later in summer 1974.This was a former Methodist Church in Harold Road which had fallen on hard times, the church building itself was unsafe and plans were being drawn up to sell the site for housing. Cliff’s Methodist colleague at the church they were both serving, Rowland Joiner, was positive and the District listened. This time they would not need to raise the money to buy the property (giving hope that denominations might plan more fruitfully in the future). This time it would be on a 25-year lease and they would face a number of different challenges and Monica needed to establish what was rapidly becoming a new bigger department somewhat more loosely attached to the Renewal Programme but also with each as autonomous entities standing on their own feet.
Looking back, the 1960s and ‘70s were times of great change in the restructuring of society both in traditional thinking and in the actual rebuilding of a better society following World War 2. It was during this time that Monica and Clifford had also begun to keep records and consult with others around the country who were also working in this expanding sector of population, and they also took the lead in developing with them a new understanding of ‘community-based evangelism’.
Then, not only did those who now had responsibility for the growing number of ‘redundant’ churches in other parts of the UK start approaching us for advice in an age of growing national church attendance decline, but these methods attracted the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Donald Coggan who would have liked them to share these principles even more widely to make the 1980s a Decade of Evangelism. Following some unfortunate backlash within the C of E, this was eventually carried forward by the Evangelical Alliance. They asked Cliff and Monica to organise a Congress on Evangelism in 1980. This became the start of a period of national and international ministry which would continue for many years in various ways, all underwritten by, and using the principles being learned, first put into action here.
There are many gripping stories of change taking place not just in church communities but in society at large and even in buildings to fulfil different needs, during the 1970s. This particular fascinating story is of the step-by-step reclamation of a specific building in a changing residential part of London’s East End bringing it back into Christian community use between 1974 and 1978. This opened up even wider challenges showing the continuing relevance of community development ‘principles’, plus just occasionally ‘methods’, for today.