Forest Town Church : How We Began

Forest Town Church began in May 2000 with a small group of ten people in Anthony and Helen Rist's home in Watford. They had felt God speak specifically to them to come and start a church over a period of two years.

Initially, three families who had come from South Africa and also settled in and around Watford formed the core group. As word spread more people began to visit the Sunday morning meetings. The need grew to find a more suitable venue and so the church moved in the July to the White House Hotel in central Watford. This was a time of settling into the rhythms of an infant church, setting vision and building new friendships.

After six months the growing needs of the children in the church meant finding another suitable venue and so in December 2000 the church moved into the Cassiobury Junior School. Over the next year, 2001, the church grew to 60 adults and 30 children. Two couples were released as deacons onto the leadership team in July 2001. This meant that three midweek homecell meetings could be hosted on Wednesday evenings. The year was marked by a time of consolidating relationships, envisioning and laying biblical foundations as well as reaching out into the local community through different outreach opportunities.

2002 was a year of continued growth in many areas of the church. The church moved to the Bushey country Club as a more suitable venue for our needs and expanded numerically to about 80 adults and 40 children. In other areas we have seem much growth in people being released into ministry, including new worship teams, and teams to help with the children's ministry.

From 2003 to 2007 the church met at Parmiters school in Garston where it continued to grow. Due to this growth the church had to move again to St Columba's School in St.Albans where we met from July 29th 2007.

In June of 2008 we finally settled into our own building, a newly-refurbished, previously industrial warehouse, building, which comfortably seats 600 people and has rooms for all of the children's ministries.

No doubt a time will come in the future when we will outgrow this new building, but right now we are immensely grateful to God for His abundant blessing toward us and are stretching our legs and finding out new ways in which we can use the facilities to reach out and be a blessing to those in the surrounding areas. Please visit us, we'd love to see you!