History - Anglicans and Baptists Working Together

It was a marriage made in Heaven !

Both St. Andrew's Parish Church and Gorleston Baptist had set their sights on developing work in the Cliff Park area. St. Andrew's had experimented with a Sunday School in the South Gorleston area in the early 1950s. Later a presence was established with a curate's house on the Cliff Park estate.

Gorleston Baptist starting looking southwards a few years later but made the first move with plans for an experimental service at the Cliff Park Middle School on Easter Sunday 1997. By this time the Rev. Paddy McGlinchey was the St. Andrew's assistant minister living on Cliff Park. When he got wind of the service he approached the then Baptist Minister, Richard Hughes, and from an initial chat over a coffee, the idea of the two denominations coming together to jointly plant a church was born.

Members from both churches formed a "core group" who met, prayed and planned together. The project had the blessing of both churches and - in a blaze of publicity and just in time for Christmas - Cliff Park Community Church began life on December 9th 1999. Described as "a new church for a new millennium" it even broadcast live on Sunday January 2nd 2000 on BBC Radio Norfolk. The church was very much up and running and is a plant which has continued to flourish.