OneBody Southampton: This is your church

There was a mixture of nervous apprehension and excitement on the morning of 19th November, as people from across our city came together to St James' by the Park in Shirley for an event to launch OneBody Southampton, a unity group of churches and projects in the city.

Southampton - this is your church

What is OneBody Southampton?

The group is made up of churches and projects that are united by our faith in Jesus. It has grown over the past 24 months, starting off as a small prayer meeting early on Monday mornings where a number joined together to pray for unity in the city, asking God to move powerfully in his church.

Over time this grew into monthly leaders collective meetings at which leaders met to pray together, to deepen our friendships, to share and support each other. More structure and team was needed, and a steering group (known as an enabling collective) was established to explore the needs of the city and to plan and respond.

OneBody Southampton

What does OneBody do?

As a group of churches, united in our faith, OneBody exists to celebrate and encourage community by encouraging connections across the churches and projects to grow. We host leaders collective meetings, and we are working on other connection opportunities for those involved in different spheres in the city, such as education, healthcare, business, arts, media, and government.

We believe we have a role to help communication across churches, and we host and run a vibrant online community providing links with over 80 churches and charities here. Our website is developing to become a place to find out recent news and future events, as well as hosting information on collaborative projects already happening. We host information and links to many of the fantastic outreach and support projects that are happening across the city. We're also developing a comprehensive mapping tool showing the churches, projects and community support activities that are going on across our city.

And finally, we actively encourage and facilitate collaboration across the church. When we really colaborate, there is a true alignment of our aims and we can bring everything we have together so that what we do together has a greater impact than what we could only do on our own.

How does OneBody relate to Kings' Church?

A few years ago, our friend from Life Church, Chris Kilby prayed over us as a church saying 'it's time for King's Church to stand up and take your place in the city'. As a church God has impressed on us many times that we are called to be visible to those around us (Matt 5:14). And so, in line with this, we have been involved in OneBody from the start, seeking simply to do the things God lays in front of us. Nathan is a part of the enabling collective and is responsible for running and growing the leaders collective. There are many others involved who we have been in friendship with over the years.

Our prayer for our city

At our launch event, we renewed the prayer that was prayed in our city when it first became a city in 1964. We continue to pray for unity in our city, for God's richest blessing and that everyone in our city will have a specific opportunity to know Jesus for themselves.

If you're interested to find out more, please check out the website, and also feel free to speak to Nathan.