The North Norfolk Harvest Field

The Norfolk coast is a barren place for true evangelicalism. Churches are few, and there is a great need to strengthen the fellowships that are here, faithfully preaching Christ to the community.

The journey so far

Grace Church sits in the village of East Runton, between Cromer and Sheringham. As a church, we have been on a journey. 

We currently have sole use of a Methodist Chapel, and this is the base for our ministry. A new vision meant change: we introduced a new Bible version (the ESV), a large screen, and removed the pews from the church building, as part of creating a brighter and more flexible meeting space.

Formerly Cromer Baptist Church, we completed our move to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) in July 2024, becoming Grace Church North Norfolk. The new name better reflects our geographical location and also communicates our heart to reach this part of Norfolk.

A new website and livestreaming our morning service help raise our profile further and the membership has now increased from six to ten.

The task seems big. Every few months, we have spoken together about the need to maintain the vision, and we can only do that with the Lord’s constant help. 

We saw encouragement and growth through 2023, but 2024 was much harder, and we are still predominantly an older congregation. Whilst our congregation has almost doubled, the workers are still few.

Every summer, and at a lesser level throughout the year, we are blessed by many believers joining us on their holiday breaks. This is precious to us, but we are aware that our harvest field (Matthew 9:38) is local.

The next steps

We very much feel the need for some to come and join us as co-workers for the Lord.

We are looking for our next pastor/elder, alongside others, to join the leadership team.  We would love to hear from any men who would be interested in being our next pastor. There is funding in place for two years initially to help this process of revitalisation continue.

We would value prayer that our current meeting place – on an annual renewable licence from the Methodist Church – is not withdrawn.

We are also in need of good evangelism strategies – we find that hard.  Our strength is felt most certainly in our weakness. We so much need the Lord.

God has blessed us very much, but we say to the Lord that we ourselves are powerless but “our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). We know that it is only the Lord who will build His kingdom here. Please pray that He will do that through Grace Church North Norfolk.

We join with King Jehoshaphat in singing, ‘give thanks to the Lord, for His steadfast love endures forever’ (2 Chronicles 20:21).

Main photo by Aleksander Korobczuk on Unsplash: Cromer, Norfolk.