East Hull Presbyterian Church
On Saturday 8 December, East Hull Presbyterian Church marked the opening of its extended and refurbished premises with a service of thanksgiving led by Bill McCully. The preacher was Ian Hamilton, minister of Cambridge Presbyterian Church.
Greetings were brought by representatives of the Liberated Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. Representatives of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales, to which the Hull church belongs, were in attendance as well as many from local evangelical churches.
The Hull church had its origins about 26 years ago in the aftermath of the amalgamation of Presbyterian and Congregational churches to form the United Reformed Church; a few stalwart souls felt the need to preserve a distinctly evangelical witness in the unfashionable eastern sector of this large city.
The church met in hired premises for a number of years before acquiring an old building behind one of the main roads in East Hull. The building was refurbished to provide a main sanctuary and small kitchen/toilet block. Later, a vestry or small meeting room was added.
The inadequacies of the building became evident as the years went by, and we gradually acquired small amounts of land around the church. Finally we embarked on a £160,000 building programme which enlarged and refurbished the main church building to seat up to one hundred. A large extension was built at the south end, to provide a kitchen, meeting room and entrance foyer. At the north end another smaller meeting room was added.
Kingston upon Hull has become a bleak place spiritually. So it is a privilege to join with other Evangelicals to proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hull has recently been celebrating its most favoured son William Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade. But the universal slavery is the ‘bondage of sin’.
Our privilege is to preach Jesus Christ, who came ‘to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised’.
Peter Cresswell
