A planner’s dream and a church’s vision
Association of Grace Baptist Churches (SE)
Date posted: 1 May 2020
Thamesmead was
the brainchild of
the
Greater London Council’s city planners:
a new town on the south bank of the
Thames estuary. Building on marshland
east of Woolwich, developers
initially
experimented in the new urban architecture
of
the 1960s before returning
to more
conventional Barrett housing in the 1980s.
When phase
two was built, Titmuss
Avenue Baptist Church was planted, with
a new building overlooked by high-rise
homes and aerial walkways. The initial team
under Michael Toogood established a small
fellowship
that
then
received wonderful
pastoral
care
through
the ministries of
Derek French in the later 1980s and Robin
Dowling
in the 1990s. In the 2000s the
church struggled
for direction as Sunday
attendance (paradoxically) increased.