A heart for South Wales: Rhodri and Katie’s story
According to a recent alumni survey, 33% of Union graduates are involved in church planting. To get an idea of what that looks like in practice, Kerstin Bowsher caught up with Rhodri and Katie Thomas. Their plant, Gateway Church, is close to Union’s Wales campus and recently celebrated its first year. Union Mission has also been able to invest in the church.
Hello Rhodri and Katie! First of all, could you tell us more about the area?
The plant is in the “Bridgend Valleys Gateway” area, which is a nickname for this Ribbon Development that comprises the villages from Aberkenfig to Bryncethin. The villages of Sarn, Bryncethin and Brynmenyn are the focus of the plant.
The Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (2014) placed Sarn within the 10% most overall deprived areas of Wales, as is typical with many of the Welsh Valleys areas. Unfortunately, Sarn has made national headlines recently with the tragic murder of 5-year old Logan Mwangi. We live in a hurting community.
Could you tell us a bit more about the church?
We are an independent evangelical church with links to the Advance Movement.
A typical Sunday morning service sees around 20 people gathered in our local Cricket Club’s sports hall. A good number of our people are either new or returning to church. We’ve made sure that our services are very accessible to all. We also have a lot of children, so will always do a children’s song and object lesson together before the kids go off to the side for a craft time.
They’re a lovely bunch of people! It’s such a joy to be with people at their start of the discipleship journeys.
What prepared you for this step?
The story of how Gateway Church came to exist in the Bridgend Valleys Gateway begins with Katie and I as students in Cardiff University. A hugely formative experience for us both was supporting a ministry called “Revive” which sent teams of students to support youth work in churches around the South Wales Valleys. This opened our eyes to the desperate state of the church and society in these areas and God called us to “do something” about it with our lives. At the time, we didn’t know what that might look like.
In 2010, we were invited to join the leadership team of Grace Community Church in Porthcawl to “train” team before being sent out to support a church or church plant in the Valleys. We thought it could be 6-18 months... but it was 9 years before God moved us on!
We settled down and got stuck into church life. But we were always sitting on a call to the Valleys and waiting for God’s leading us on. In 2017, through remarkable displays of God’s providence and provision, Rhod finished his work as a research scientist and started a 2- year theology course with Union School of Theology.
What have your experiences of church planting been like?
Over the time in Union, we explored different areas that we might church plant into and eventually felt the specific call to the Bridgend Valleys Gateway. We sold our house in Porthcawl and moved to Sarn in November 2019. Our hopes were to be gathering for prayer meetings in our home and slowly ramp up to public meetings – I’m sure you can imagine how the pandemic changed our timelines somewhat!
Our aim was to embed ourselves into the community and, by God’s grace, the pandemic actually helped us to do that. We had to “stay local” and actually that led us to explore the local area (which is beautiful!), arrange outdoor play dates, drop round care packages, etc. and these sorts of activities probably accelerated our connecting into the community.
Culturally, it is quite different to Porthcawl, with much higher rates of social deprivation. But we find that the gospel has given us all the motivation we need to cross these barriers and plant Gateway Church. In fact, by purposefully embedding ourselves in the community (“incarnational” ministry rather than “parachuting in”) we’ve come to deeply love where we live. Yes, there are problems, but there’s also so much beauty – not just in the countryside but in the people, who value important things like loyalty and family.
Both Katie and I are bi-vocational. Katie is a child-minder and I work in Operations Support and Data analysis. This is a mixed blessing! It does facilitate us doing ministry but it does mean that we are stretched. We’ve adapted to this challenge by being very careful not to do too much too soon. We have a Sunday morning service and a mid-week church group in our home. We don’t have capacity for much more at the moment and that’s OK! What we’re doing now is manageable and therefore future-proofed.
We do have a great team of people with us on this journey. We had about half a dozen adults (and a few kids and a teenager!) sent from Grace Community Church Porthcawl but have added some amazing local people who are prodigals who have come back to the Lord. We couldn’t do it without them!
What keeps you going?
At times it can be hard and tiring. It’s easy to become demotivated on quiet weeks when people haven’t been able to make it. But when we get perspective and think of the people who are coming to church who wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for the church plant, we very quickly feel that it’s a privilege!
Both Katie and I have also found our hobbies really helpful: I’m in a running club and Katie is in a netball team. A huge part of our motivation for these is for evangelism, but we do find they serve us well for our physical and mental health also!
What are some of the lessons you have learned?
Don’t bite off more than you can chew! We’re on constant alert of our capacity levels. We want to give our all and our best to Jesus… but we want to do that sustainably and without burnout. Wisdom is needed!
As church planters, your “buy-in” level is huge. This can be incredibly motivating and incredibly challenging. I’ve been more intentional in mission than I’ve ever been in life – which is great! But my fears for the health and future of the church can feel like a heavy burden at times – that makes me pray a lot! God is doing a lot of good in my heart even through those challenges.
What are the biggest needs of Gateway church at the moment?
Firstly, we’ve been making some great connections with people in the community that we’re desperate to see converted into gospel opportunities, invitations to church, and salvation.
Secondly, we would benefit greatly from a few more people on team. We’ve got a great group of people already but by the time you factor in things like kids work, setup, sound, music, preaching, etc. we’ve come to find ourselves stretched quite thin! So a few more hands to carry those activities would really help us.
What would you say to someone with a heart for South Wales or considering church planting?
I’d say that church planting in South Wales is desperately needed so please keep prayerfully considering it! Wales has a rich spiritual heritage but is now in desperate need of re-evangelisation. It’s important work, often hard but incredibly rewarding.
I would also say please do get in touch with me! I love showing people around this beautiful part of the country and would be delighted to explore what ministry in Wales, or supporting a ministry like ours, could look like.
How can we pray with you?
Please pray with us for the re-evangelisation of the South Wales Valleys.
Please pray for our local community here in the Bridgend Valleys Gateway, that the light and life of Jesus would pierce through to an area that feels so clouded with darkness right now.
Please pray for more workers for the harvest – we are barely scratching the surface of reaching out to these needy areas.
Please pray for the hard workers in Gateway Church, for strength and gospel growth in our lives.
Read more stories about Union Mission and Church Planting here.