Carey Baptist Church
Encyclopedia
Carey Baptist Church is an independent evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...

/baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 church in Reading
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

History

The church was founded in 1867 and was named after William Carey, a famous missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

 from Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...

, who went to India in 1793, and never returned to his homeland.

Notable past pastors include Rev. Theodore Harold Bendor-Samuel.

Additional premises, The Carey Centre, in Anstey Road (a parallel road behind the chapel) were acquired in 1993, following the closure of Central Evangelical Church.

As of June 2009, Carey Baptist Church now owns part of what was the Oasis Public House.

Carey today

The church building is on Carey Street (Anstey Road) in central Reading, close to the Inner Distribution Road
Inner Distribution Road
Inner Distribution Road or IDR is a dual carriageway ring road that encircles the town centre of Reading, Berkshire, England. It forms part of the A329 that runs from Wentworth in Surrey to Thame in Oxfordshire.- History :...

 (IDR), Oxford Road
Oxford Road, Reading
Oxford Road is a major arterial road in Reading, Berkshire, England, near the town centre. The road leads west to Pangbourne, continuing eventually to the city of Oxford. The road was previously known as Pangbourne Lane....

, and The Hexagon
The Hexagon
The Hexagon is a multi-purpose arts venue and theatre with a capacity of 1,200 in central Reading, Berkshire, England. It is named for its shape....

.

The main service times are 10:30 and 18:30 on Sunday. MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

-format files of the sermons are available on the church's website and Sunday services are streamed live from the website.

The church is affiliated to Affinity
Affinity (Christian organisation)
Affinity describes itself as "a growing network of many hundreds of Bible-centred churches and Christian agencies throughout Britain and Ireland". It was founded in 1953 as the British Evangelical Council and in 1981 numbered over 2,000 churches. The organization stagnated in the 1980s following...

 and the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches
Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches
The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches is a network of over 500 independent, evangelical churches mainly in the United Kingdom that preach an evangelical faith...

.

The current pastor
Pastor
The word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....

s are James Muldoon and David Magowan. Jamie Cater joined as assistant pastor in April 2007 and as of January 2009 has now been appointed position of Church Evangelist, a role which entails overseeing the outreach and evangelistic work of the church. Jonathan Stephen left the church on 16 July 2006 to take up the position of principal of the Wales Evangelical School of Theology in September 2006, while Basil Howlett retired from the position of co-pastor in January 2009.

Missions

The church continues to work in the tradition of William Carey by sending missionaries abroad to India and the Amazon. In 2005 a missionary from Carey, David Barnes, was serving in Aysana, a small village, about five hours down river from Iquitos
Iquitos
Iquitos is the largest city in the Peruvian rainforest, with a population of 370,962. It is the capital of Loreto Region and Maynas Province.Located on the Amazon River, it is only above sea level, although it is more than from the mouth of the Amazon at Belém on the Atlantic Ocean...

, Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

.

Ian Stillman
Ian Stillman
Ian Stillman is a British charity worker and missionary from Reading, Berkshire, in the United Kingdom whose imprisonment and subsequent release from prison in India garnered media attention...

, a deaf missionary sent to India by Carey Baptist, was arrested in August 2000 and charged with smuggling 20 kilograms of cannabis after the drug was found in a shared taxi. It is widely believed that the charges were fabricated. Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...

 "pa(id) tribute" to Carey Baptist on the successful campaign to obtain Stillman's release from prison.

External links

  • Carey Baptist Church group on Facebook
    Facebook
    Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK