Our Story

The idea…

Night Church was created from the spark of an idea - a sacred space where people could experience God’s love and peace. In our world, many people have rejected religion, including church, assuming God is fictitious, irrelevant or even malicious.  There are many possible ‘truths’ and more calls on limited attention. Night Church would be a space, not to tell people of God, but to show them.

An answer to prayer
Night Church originated from a team based at The Light Project, Chester who wanted to explore how to connect faith with people who had little or no understanding of the Christian faith. The team felt that there was a real need to be a presence in the night-time economy, where Street Pastors were already engaging. The team prayed consistently, seeking God’s heart to understand where He was already at work preparing the way for this new expression of His love. After a year of careful listening for His direction, developing the vision and values of this new project the team was offered the use of the beautiful, St. Peter’s Church; the oldest church inside the city walls. St Peters is situated in the heart of Chester exactly where the clubbers and pubbers congregate. This historic building, steeped in prayer for almost 1000 years holds an atmosphere of worship; a testament to lives lived faithfully for God recorded in the stained glass windows, altar and the very stones of the building.

Churches working together
From the outset, NightChurch was the work of Christians from many churches of differing denominations across the city. A demonstration of God’s unity and creativity above individual differences. A place where grace, peace, faith, hope and love are part of the fabric both of the place and the people serving there. At the heart of this community is a deep desire to worship and honour God. This is present in sung worship, in prayer and in the hearts of the team as they serve our visitors.

Welcomed by the City
Initially Night Church was set up in Dec 2010 as a 6 month pilot, running once a month with a team of 10 Light Project students and volunteers from 10 different churches. At the end of the pilot questionnaires were completed by 60 visitors and feedback solicited from the volunteers. The overwhelming response was gratitude and delight. Visitors reported “here, everybody cares and understands” and “this is something different, such a friendly and non-judgemental place”. And so the project was continued, rising from once a month to twice a month in 2012.

Night Church offers something different. Instead of telling people about God we invite them to meet Him and experience His peace. Instead of forcing our views on people we invite them to express their views. Night Church gives people space. Space to relax, space to process their pain and space to realise that they are valuable and loved. That there is one place that they can let their masks slip and experience God’s peace. Most of them can’t articulate this; they simply tell us that Night Church is ‘different’, or ‘special’, or that they ‘feel something’.

Growing and developing
In September 2014 Night Church grew up and became a stand-alone charity. Operating independently of the Light Project but maintaining the same people within the leadership team. It has no paid staff and continues to be run by volunteers from churches across the city. In June 2016, the charity was formally registered as charity number 1167728. So far about 15,000 people have visited Night Church. Many return, bringing friends to share in something that they do not dare to name as God. We continue to focus our hearts on Him, attempt to answer their questions and pray for God to reveal Himself to them.

The NightChurch leadership works closely with the Church of St Peter’s at the Cross, who continue to host our work. We have been supported by Cheshire Constabulary and Chester West and Chester Council and are grateful for grants funding awards by John Dwyer’s Crime Prevention Fund and councillor Sam Dixon respectively.

The COVID 19 Pandemic and Beyond

NightChurch was closed temporarily in Feb 2020, as the COVID19 pandemic began. We continued to pray for the city and made plans to reopen as soon as we were safe. Our first evening back was in 2021, opening briefly once a month for 4 hours. It was lovely to have the NightChurch sign up and shining over the Cross once again. That first night, we welcomed over 50 visitors, several having important experiences of the love and peace of God. We were back.

Since then, we have opened once per month.

This is not the end of our story, we would love to open twice per month; we continue to pray for new volunteers to help write the next chapter…