286 partnership

City Life meets on Sunday mornings at 286 Burgess Road, Southampton. In partnership with Swaythling Methodist Church and Flower of Justice we are working together to renovate and transform the building to better serve the community and bring transformation to the surrounding communities, bringing a little bit of Heaven's reality to earth.  

The building was formerly known as Swaythling Methodist Church and was built in the early 1930s to reach out to and serve the local community.  On the first Sunday over 600 children came to the Sunday school. The main hall doubled as a cinema, often with queues of people wanting to get in. During the 2nd World War the building was used as a forces canteen, a fire watching post and provided accommodation for French troops during the evacuation of Dunkirk.  After the war a successful youth club was started that provided most of the youth services for the area.

However, from the 1960s onwards numbers in the congregation began to dwindle. Lower numbers meant that less could be done by the church in and for the community. In early 2010 conversations began about whether or not to close the building; running costs were too high for the ageing congregation.

Around the same time City Life were looking for a new venue, having outgrown the main hall at Cantell School.  Flower of Justice, part of New Community were already meeting in the building, and conversations locally led to City Life moving in to the building in September 2010.  The aim then, as now, is for all three churches to work together in partnership, seeking to once again reach out into the local area to demonstrate the love of God and bring transformation. 

We are seeking to move forwards together to renovate the building and engage more fully with those who live in locality. At the end of April the three congregations held a Dream Day and spent time dreaming with one another and with God about what we could do together to transform both the building we use as a resource, and the community around us.  

The following vision video was put together as a follow up to the Dream Day held in April 2011 at 286 to communicate something of our combined heart, passion and dreams for the building, and how we can impact the local area.

The video was shown at the follow up to the Dream day at the end of July, along with a tree planting ceremony based around the verse found in Proverbs 13:12 - Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. The tree planting is symbolic of our hopes being place in God in order to see dreams fulfilled in our area so that life will be the result for all those living here.

Please call the church office or email if you'd like to get involved in making these dreams become a reality!