Cornerstone - How a large church grew from a small one in Nottingham

In September, Cornerstone Evangelical Church, Nottingham celebrated the 40th anniversary of Peter and Valerie Lewis’s ministry there.

The story of Cornerstone tells how God can have plans for a small, back-street church in a Midland city which has touched thousands of lives and reached to the ends of the earth. No one should underestimate the potential of small churches, but we can also rejoice in the strategic role of larger churches in Britain today.

First move

When Peter and Valerie came in 1969 the church was a small Baptist one in Hyson Green, a district in downtown Nottingham. Peter was 24 and Valerie 28. The church then had about 40 members, most of them middle-aged or elderly. Through the 1970s they saw a new church develop. Valerie had a strong vision for student work and gradually students from Trent Polytechnic and the University of Nottingham trekked across the city and a number of young professionals joined them. Peter wrote his first book, The Genius of Puritanism, and began to speak more widely.

However, their old Victorian building became an increasing liability and for three years the church prayed and searched for a new building. Eventually, to their great joy, they were able to buy a nearly new but failed social club which had been opened at the very time when they began to pray! In 1983 the church moved to Raleigh Street in Radford, a location nearer the city centre and on a good bus route, and renamed itself ‘The Cornerstone Evangelical Church’.

Doubled in a day

On the first Sunday of the next university term, one church member came rushing in saying, ‘There are long crocodiles of students coming this way. You don’t think they could be coming here, could they?’ Valerie said, ‘No, they’re probably going to one of the big city centre churches’. Then the crocodiles turned off into our new building and the congregation doubled in a day!

During this period Peter began to go abroad to preach and teach, especially in the Far East and the church welcomed its first overseas students. In 1987 they planted a new church in the north of the city, with many of their young families and children (and half of the elders). The loss of so many children was quite upsetting for people and Valerie and Peter began to pray for just ten families to join them. At the end of the year God had given them the ten families — but they came not from Britain but from all over the world: Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America, mostly connected with the university or overseas Christian missions.

From 1971 to 1988 the church had a succession of ministers’ assistants being prepared for ministry: Bob Letham (now with WEST), Jeff Saunders, Rob Burwood, Paul Painter, and Mark Finnie (Paternoster Press). This led on to the discovery of the strategic role of management and administration in the church freeing up other ministries (‘liquid engineering’, Peter called it!). After Valerie Lewis and Clare Evans (later Clare Powell) as part-time administrators, they acquired their first full-time church manager — Julian Hardyman, now of Eden Chapel; then Matthew Evans, now of Rock Baptist Church, Cambridge; Kit Erlebach; and now Spencer Hampton (described by Peter as the most important person in his life next to Valerie!).

Too small

In the 80s and 90s Peter preached in various student conferences and conventions, including Spring Harvest and the Keswick Convention. In 1992 The Glory of Christ was published.

Soon the premises were far too small and the area increasingly difficult. After ten years there the church moved into a large school near the university and medical school. Its numbers soon doubled again, with yet more students!

‘You need some old people’

When George Verwer of Operation Mobilisation came to preach, he commented, ‘Brother, you need some old people in this church to pray for all these missionaries you are sending out’! And so they prayed for older people to join them. And when they came, what a blessing they were: often with great experience and pastoral understanding and some of them extraordinary workers, the first to arrive and the last to leave on a Sunday. Now young families, too, form a great part of the church.

During these years Peter wrote two pastoral and devotional books, The Lord’s Prayer and God’s Hall of Fame. In 2000 IVP published The Message of the Living God, the first volume of a new series of The Bible Speaks Today.

Evangelistic success

One of the most significant events in their history was the arrival of Colin Webster to be their assistant minister and evangelist.

Peter writes: ‘The church’s growth and development in the past 13 years has been in large measure the result of Colin’s unceasing zeal for souls, his untiring pastoral care and his imaginative discipleship programmes. He has headed up personal evangelism (one-to-one, on the street and in his home), Discovering Christianity (for small groups seeking answers to questions), Easy Access (a six-week Genesis to Jesus course), and many other projects and special meetings. He is greatly loved by all who know him and his coming marked one of the greatest blessings our church could have’. Colin and Peter have seen several hundred come to Christ in these years.

Peter puts much of the growth of the church and its ministries down to its teams. Cornerstone is today a church of 550-600 adults and 130-150 children with over 20 missionaries and a home team of nine full-time staff and five apprentices. The staff includes: a youth minister, Pete Brown; a children’s worker, Amanda Smart-Gosrani; and a minister-in-training, John Russell. There are over 20 house groups and 50 house-group leaders. There are meetings for international scholars and their wives, mums’ fellowships, a luncheon club for the elderly and a variety of children’s and youth groups. House group leaders, ministry team and elders also help to meet the pastoral needs of the church. Valerie exercises a pastoral ministry throughout the church which involves a pastoral care team, a ‘visiting’ team of 12, and a ‘fast food’ team (have a baby or a fall and you’ll know why it’s called that!).

The church has a flourishing international ministry with 30 nations represented in the church as a whole, mainly overseas scholars and their families, including many mainland Chinese scholars (Cornerstone’s present International Student Worker, Liz Middleton, speaks fluent Mandarin!). On a Sunday morning there is a Farsi language meeting for 30 or 40 Iranian and Afghani believers.

Expository preaching

Close to the heart of the church is Peter’s systematic and doctrinal expository ministry. He defines good expository preaching as ‘releasing the energy of the text’ and its effect in Cornerstone has been to prepare many men and women for service in churches large and small of all denominations. Some have taken up preaching and pastoral ministries and many more continue to encourage and support evangelical churches and expository ministry. With a constant through-put of strongly-motivated students they have seen many missionaries going to other parts of the globe, short and long term. Most of their missionaries have been young — in their 20s and 30s.

For over 20 years a succession of Cornerstone people have been involved in the ‘soup run’ to the homeless on the streets of Nottingham, a ministry most recently brought indoors to a large Anglican church building. A more recent venture has been the ministry of one of their former missionaries to prostitutes.

On the move again

Today, once again, Cornerstone is a church ‘on the move’ — this time to the buildings previously owned by MFI, situated in an exceptionally prominent place in the city. A little over a year ago the church was told it must vacate the school. Weeks of prayer and a succession of Gift Days followed. The church has now raised a total of £3.5m in previous funds, gifts and pledges. It hopes to buy the site without debt but will have to raise at least £2m more to remodel the buildings. Past as well as present members of the congregation have joined in the new work with great generosity and sacrifice but now they also need the help of God’s people at large.

Peter told the church, when it began the building fund, that they were building not only for themselves but for future generations and perhaps even for a hundred years of gospel ministry. Today Cornerstone Church is eagerly pressing forward on all fronts, at home and abroad to bring to many ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4.1-6).

Peter’s expository series of sermons are being put on the Cornerstone website (http://www.cornerstoneuk.org.uk), with several hundred there already in both audio and text. They form a resource for Christians in Britain and beyond and a treasure trove of material for preachers.