An abundance of love

THERE'S A remarkable new building on Bradford's skyline.

It's nothing special to look at and wouldn't seem out of place on any humdrum out-of-town shopping development.

But the Abundant Life Centre's new church hall is one of the more unusual developments to be unveiled in the city this year.

For starters it cost £1.6 million but none of the money has come from grants or outside funding bodies.

Instead, the church has paid for the building by borrowing money and holding a massive fundraising appeal among its congregation.

The Enlarge The Place appeal was launched with a Sunday service which raised an astonishing £620,000.

Paul Scanlon, senior pastor at the Abundant Life Centre, admits the new building is not the most attractive in Bradford - but he is still glowing with pride.

"It's not just bricks and mortar -- it's a tool . We're not saying it's something that's architecturally fabulous," he said.

"It looks like a glorified B&Q store from the outside. But it's a tool to get the job done. It's the people that make the church. And we shouldn't forget that."

The centre decided it needed a bigger hall because its main church building in Wapping Road was regularly full to bursting point.

With seating for only 800, it was having to put people into an overflow room and relay services to them on closed-circuit TV.

The new building, which opened yesterday, is at the back of the Wapping Road site and takes up much of the car parking area.

The Enlarge The Place campaign was backed by a charity concert by comedy duo Cannon and Ball but most of the money came from individual donations from churchgoers.

Mr Scanlon is proud that the church is self-funding, with donations also paying for its outreach work and 20 staff. "They are all salaried by the giving of the church. People give to vision. They don't give to needs," he said.

"If people see the bigger picture, people want to invest in something that will outlive them. People would rather put their finances into a legacy."

"We get zero in terms of public money, which has been my abiding challenge and increasingly so."

"We've never asked for money from anyone - and nor should we for church buildings."

The new building has enough room for 1,500 people to sit to start with and that number will soon be upped to 2,000 when new seating is introduced.

To put that into perspective, the new hall simply dwarfs Bradford's best-known seated auditoria. The city's cathedral holds only 1,000, while the Alhambra Theatre has fewer than 1,500 seats and even the mighty St George's Hall can squeeze in only 1,671 when it is an all-seat venue.

"It's a very large auditorium, probably the largest in the north of England from the inquiries that we have been getting from people interested in using it. And that means everyone from professional bands to orchestras," said Mr Scanlon.

"It's more of an arena. It's certainly a top notch professional building."

As well as boasting impressive proportions, the new hall is fitted out with state-of-the art equipment, such as hi-tech lighting and video projections walls and a £150,000 sound system.

But it is the extra space that Mr Scanlon really appreciates.

"You're stifled in your creativity because you don't have the room. I used to think of ideas but couldn't bring them on because there was no room," he said.

"Even psychologically, our leadership team has felt very released having found space to do things in the new building that we couldn't do before."

The original church will continue to be used fully. Pastoral work and the main auditorium will all be transferred to the new building but the old one will house youth church meetings and inner city operations geared towards the homeless and deprived.

"That place has been full for at least part of the time for the past two years. That's why we started to have two meetings on a Sunday," said Mr Scanlon.

Eventually he hopes to build up a membership of 10,000 in Bradford.

"If it wasn't church, it would be phenomenal, what's happened here. The fact that it is church, we think, makes it even more phenomenal," said Mr Scanlon.

"We're putting the city on the map all around the world with our television programmes.

"It's church, Jim, but not as we know it.

"It's time something good and exciting was said about church, although in fairness, a lot of church deserves it when you think of some of the drivel that you hear."

Where it all began - 28 years ago

The Abundant Life Centre started in Bradford in 1972 and now has more than 1,000 regular members.

"It was started in people's homes by people who were disaffected by the deadness of what was happening in the church at the time," said Paul Scanlon, who has been involved in the church for 26 years.

"We became known as the House Church Movement."

For 15 years the church met in the 300-seat Church House building in North Parade, Bradford.

It was when it outgrew that building that it started to look for a site to develop its own church and eventually moved to Wapping Road in 1989.

For two years it also hired the Odeon cinema for its meetings.

Mr Scanlon was born and bred in Dewsbury and had never been to church until the age of 15, when a teacher at his secondary school changed his life.

"Our family was complete non-church, which makes my life even more of a miracle for which I thank God," he said.

"I realised it wasn't about church. It was about a relationship with a person. I came to know Christ but I realised I couldn't make it on my own and I had to plug in with other people."

After initially joining a Pentecostal church, Mr Scanlon became involved in the Abundant Life Centre and trained to go full-time into the ministry in 1981.

He believes the church he has helped to establish has an entirely modern approach which other churches would do well to imitate.

"At the heart of what we do is finding needs in the people of the city and meeting them," said Mr Scanlon.

"The whole concept is different. It's no good a church sitting there saying 'Come to us.' We've got to come to them.

"TV goes out to people. The Internet goes out to people. We've got to go out to people in the 21st century. We don't have a going-to-church culture any more. It's finished.

"The day we held a gift service just before Christmas we bussed in 1,000 people from some of Bradford's poorest estates. It wasn't us saying 'Here's an event. Hope you can come.' It was us taking it out to them.

"We need to gain some ground on which to share Christ with them, to bless them and give them some dignity in a lot of cases.

"The days of the church being a religious Sunday club for spiritual fat cats are over. Any church that wants to be relevant in the 21st century has got to see that that's over.

"We've good links with several of the traditional churches in Bradford but we're too busy to stop and ask them what they think of us.

"Any church that is a religious club inside the four walls of its own life and that has no relevance and doesn't reach out to needy people should shut down. It's a waste of time, space and money.

"All of our meetings are public. We are saying it all the time. It's not my concern how churches respond to that voice. If they feel threatened by it or feel it's wrong or are suspicious, that's their problem."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.