History
The present church building was founded as Horbury Chapel, and used by the Hornton Street Congregational Church, Notting Hill, in 1849. The building was used from 1935 by the Bible-Pattern Church Fellowship (an Elim Pentecostal Church offshoot founded by George Jeffreys), and also known as the Church of the Foursquare Gospel (not to be confused with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel), when it became known as Kensington Temple.
The use of the building reverted to the Elim Church in the early 1960s, and the church as it is known today was founded in 1965 by the Elim Pentecostal Church minister Rev. Eldin Corsie. Under his ministry in the late 1960s–1970s the congregation grew to 600, and then to several thousand under Rev. Wynne Lewis (later to become the Elim Church's General Superintendent) during the 1980s.
Since the 1980s, nicknamed by members of the church as 'K.T.', Kensington Temple has planted 150 churches across London . Today, It has around 50 churches in its Kensington Temple London City Church (KTLCC) network. Over the years, many churches K.T. has planted have opted to become independent churches or to have an official status as a self-standing Elim church.
In 2000, Kensington Temple began to transition into a cell church, and today it has hundreds of cell groups meeting weekly across London. The same year, K.T. moved its offices from Tabernacle, an ex-BBC warehouse in North Acton, to Monarch House in North Acton.
In 2005 the church moved its offices from Monarch House to Summit House, Hanger Lane, London. Congregations continue to grow, as do peripheral services.
Read more about this topic: Kensington Temple
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (17371809)