Tell us a bit about yourself and your ministry:
My name is John and I’m the Senior Pastor of Eden Baptist church in Cambridge. I’m married with three children, and for the past 13 and a half years I have lived and worked in Hong Kong. I was the pastor of an international church there, and before that was involved in church leadership in the UK. We moved back to the UK in December 2023, ready for me to start working at Eden. Eden is a church in the middle of Cambridge. We have a real range of people who come along and have around 400 people who come and worship with us every Sunday. There’s lots of ministry in the week too, with toddler groups, youth work and regular events. We are quite a diverse congregation with a real mix of ages, stages and backgrounds, which is similar to our previous church in Hong Kong. As we are still fairly new to the church, I am in a period of listening and learning, but there’s lots to do – I love getting to know people, preach God’s word most weeks, and try to remain faithful in our community.
What’s something you’re particularly excited about in your ministry?
We have lots of students who are part of our congregation, which is really exciting for me, as there weren’t that many students at our church in Hong Kong. Many English-speaking students in Hong Kong end up studying abroad, so this wasn’t an area of ministry that I was involved in. So, being able to get to know students again and help them grow in their faith is really exciting. Another real passion we have as a church is training. A portion of the congregation at Eden are here for a limited period, whether that’s for study or work. We think it’s important to train people up and send them out, knowing that they are going back to different countries and cultures as well as other churches in the UK. So we spend a lot of time in the Bible, helping people to love it and read it more.
Why did you choose to buy this property?
We originally spoke with Kingdom Bank back in July, as I had accepted the role at Eden, so needed to move to Cambridge. As part of the move, we knew we would need to get a mortgage. When we were looking for a house, we wanted to be relatively near the church so that we could show hospitality to the church family and so I could make it in and out easily for church activities. Our house is not only a family home, but is also a blessing that we can share with others. A big reason we purchased this was not only the location which is easy to get to, but also the layout, as it lends itself really well to hospitality.
How were Kingdom Bank able to help?
Kingdom Bank was sensitive to our situation, which was fairly complex. As we were living in Hong Kong, and weren’t UK residents at the start of the process, we couldn’t provide lots of the normal paperwork or do things in the usual order. The team were sensitive to this, and were flexible in their timings and schedules. We really appreciated this, as we’d been out of the UK for so long that we didn’t know much about buying property. But we found that people were very patient with us. Overall it was a positive experience, and our mortgage advisor Janet was very helpful in finding ways to make things work, even if there wasn’t an immediate fix. She worked really hard to help us get this house, and was happy to answer any questions we had along the way.
If you’re in Christian ministry and looking for a mortgage, we’d be delighted to see if we can help, including discussing shared ownership options if appropriate. Get in touch by completing our mortgage enquiry form to find out if a Kingdom Bank mortgage could be right for you, or click here to find out more.
Your property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.
