Our Church Story

What was first called Glastonbury Christian Fellowship grew out of a prayer group that met for years in the home of local optician, Keith and Pat Gillmore. GCF was started on 4^th September 1983. Bringing a series of foundational Christian teachings, we grew in a year to nearly 30 people, some were new Christians and some established believers who found an emphasis on Christian life that they had not experienced elsewhere. In this time, we sought support from similar groups and joined up with Harvestime (later to become Covenant Ministries).  In the early 90s we changed our name to Mid-Somerset Community Church when we joined together with Street Christian Fellowship and linked up with Lifelink International – an offshoot of Covenant Ministries.

We are now called Grace Community Church reflecting our reliance on the Grace of God as well as the fact that we had become known as Grace Church while hosting  the ‘Grace’ arts festival over a number of years with Street Harvest Church. We are also now independent of any covering organisation but work together with other churches locally and around Somerset.

We have gathered in all sorts of venues over the years; an old chapel at the top of Silver Street, the Town Hall, St. Benedict’s School and St. Dunstan’s School. We moved to our current premises in Landmark House in 2012 and are able to expand into an additional unit to accommodate the growth we are experiencing.

Following a series of different leaders, Tony and Bernie Martin from Loughborough came to lead the church in 1998 and brought a renewed emphasis on God’s grace and freedom in Jesus. They felt it right to step aside from leadership in 2022 though they still are very active in the church. Our current leadership team works well together, and we are being blessed as God adds to our numbers and to our spiritual growth. You can find out about our leadership team by clicking here.

We have experienced the joys and trials of Christian life and seen people healed and lives transformed. We believe it is vitally important for there to be a vibrant Christian witness in Glastonbury and that is what we have sought to be. We have consistently tried to base our worship and teaching on sound biblical principles but with an expression of spiritual life that embodies the desire of Jesus who said He came that we might have life and have it in all its abundance.

We are extremely thankful to God for His love, leading and guiding all the way. It is His wonderful grace that enables us to keep on as we do, not our own abilities. We are a group who have grown together to truly love one another and believe we can genuinely claim to be a local expression of the ‘body of Christ’. We feel we can truly say, ‘God is among us to do us good’!