History

There has been a long history of involvement of Community Church in the village of West End.  Indeed the roots of what is now the city wide New Community Church can be traced back to the current site of The King's School in Quob Lane.  In the 1970's the site was home to West End Evangelical Church with which Southampton Christian Fellowship merged to form Community Church in 1977.

As the church grew it developed a vision to reach beyond itself through a number of projects.  In 1982 the Quob Lane site became home to one such project, The King's School, whilst the church met in a number of other locations across the city on Sunday mornings.  Central Hall was acquired in 1990, and whilst the mostly cosmetic renovation works that followed improved the facilities, they didn't address the need to upgrade the outdated underlying electrical and plumbing infrastructure.  So, in 2005 Central Hall was closed for 5 months to enable these major infrastructure works to be completed.

Whilst Central Hall was closed, a group of people from Community Church started meeting again at Quob Lane on Sundays.  During this period there was a growing sense of purpose in meeting together locally in West End.  So, when Central Hall reopened and 'New' Community Church was formed, the meetings in West End continued!  Over recent years the group has been committed to seeing the church in West End become more established and prepared for growth.  Little did we know of the sudden and unexpected growth that was to happen in September 2008!

New Life International Church had been meeting in Midanbury and Chartwell Green for the last 9 years.  Pastors Paul and Julia Franklin felt it was time for the church to move on, and moreover to merge with New Community Church in West End.  The vision and ethos were the same, several of the members were already known to one another, and there were complementary skills and talents among the combined membership.  So, since then we have been meeting together as one church in Quob Lane!