| Biography | In September 1849 Horbury Chapel, Notting Hill was officially opened. It was built as an outreach into this fast developing area of London by Hornton Street Congregational Church situated in the nearby village of Kensington. The church was socially-minded and ministered effectively to the poor in the area.
The church also had a strong missionary emphasis supporting many overseas missions. Gladys Aylwood, the great missionary to China, found Christ following one of the services at Horbury Chapel and Rev. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist minister preached there.
In the 1920s the building was renovated, given new seating to a new maximum of 1,100 and renamed 'Kensington Temple'. The congregation grew to a regular 800 people and was frequently filled to capacity.
However in 1939, George Jeffreys resigned from the Elim movement over the issue of the sovereignty of the local church. Shortly after this, in 1943, the majority of the congregation left the Temple in the hands of George Jeffreys' Trustees and started a new church called 'The West London Christian Fellowship'. The new fellowship, kept its link with Elim and met in a series of different venues under the leadership of a succession of different pastors until 1958, when Eldin Corsie assumed the pastorate at Holland Park Mission.
Following the death of George Jeffries in 1962, the Trustees of Kensington Temple offered to sell the building to Elim, and three years later in 1965, Eldin Corsie led a congregation of around 60 people back into KT.
In September 1980, Wynne Lewis came to the church. During his ministry at KT, which lasted just over a decade, he led the church from 600 to 5,000 people. Much of the growth came from the international community that was attracted by the fellowship groups that Wynne Lewis started but the real breakthrough came in 1983 after Wynne was laid up for many months following a car crash.
In 1985, Colin Dye joined the leadership team and founded the Bible Institute. He also planted the first Satellite Church in Barnet where a fellowship group had been meeting in Eldin Corsie's time. During the second half of the eighties, the church's missions ministry also took on a greater significance when the entire leadership accepted their responsibility for world evangelism. The church was now filled several times each Sunday, and there were up to 40 different satellite congregations. In 1991 Wynne left KT for the post of General Superintendent of Elim, and Colin Dye was appointed Senior Pastor.
Under the leadership of Colin Dye, KT continued to grow regularly reaching up to a maximum of 15,000 people. Church planting also continued to be a major focus and with that Colin developed Kensington Temple and its satellite churches into a city-wide structure called the 'London City Church'. This network linked everyone together and initiated a comprehensive strategy to win London for Christ. Colin instituted the 'City Celebrations', which aim to bring together the central congregations and the network churches into a large venue on a regular basis. In 1992, 4,600 gathered in the Royal Albert Hall and in 1993, 10,000 came together in Wembley Arena. These developed into full scale 'Holy Convocations' held at the Wembley Arena (October, 1998-1999). In 1999 the 'Revival Healing Services' at the Royal Albert Hall were reminiscent of the great Elim Meetings with George Jeffreys earlier in the century.
From March 1996, Colin was able to preach and share the vision from Kensington Temple into many different venues at once. A number of the London City churches were linked together through a special satellite broadcast. This networking programme helped the churches to share a common vision to build a City Church as well as becoming an effective church planting strategy.
The main goal of the 1990s was to develop 2,000 churches, fellowships and groups by the end of the year 2000. The goal wasn't totally fulfilled, but the 1990s saw Kensington Temple plant more churches than any other group in Europe. The church offices moved into a former BBC building in North Acton in the autumn of 1996. The scenery construction warehouse space adjoining was converted into a 3,000-4,000 seater auditorium. It was renamed `The Tabernacle' and opened in March 1997. The training aspects of the church played an increasingly key role in the growth of the church. The Bible Institute under Colin Dye grew to be the largest Pentecostal Bible School in Europe attracting students from many nations.
In 2000, Kensington Temple and the London City Church network began to transition into a cell church, following the G12 cell church model pioneered by Cesar Castellanos in Bogota, Colombia. |