Tucked away in front of the Oasis Café and close to Spon Gate School is number 1 Upper Spon Street, the home of a beautifully renovated, small, red brick church. If you happen to be walking past it during the weekend, the sound of singing and sweet choir melodies catch your immediate attention. It is difficult to fail to notice this building’s simple yet effective and remarkable architecture. It is the place of worship for the ‘Redeemed Christian Church of God, Covenant Restoration Assembly in Coventry’ (RCCG CRA Coventry).
Carol and Marijn met with Pastor Abiodun (Abi) Olaitan, the presiding pastor of the congregation. He explained how he and the Church came to be in Spon End:
I came to Coventry in 1998… but the Church moved to this building three years ago. The Church used to be in Barr’s Hill College in Radford, we used the school hall for eight years before we moved here. The building in Spon End has been derelict for ages, it had been a church before but [it] was abandoned for about ten or fifteen years before we moved in. Therefore, when we bought it, we had to spend a lot of money on the building.
The building’s interior, indeed, seemed spacious, solid and welcoming. While the structure is old, originally hosting the St Saviour’s Mission Church, the building is not listed. During the interview Marijn and Carol were guided around the site. Even though the building had been derelict, it is now quite sizeable with a capacity of 250 members. It hosts a lot of events, including weddings. It has rooms for children, equipped with video installations, playgrounds and different musical instruments. It is also sound-proofed “because,” as pastor Abi explained, “we do not want to [be] a nuisance to the neighbourhood.”
We were interested to learn more about the relationship of the Church to Spon End:
Before moving here we heard of negative stories related to Spon End. One of the parishioners had told me that there used be some incidents of violence. When we moved in we noticed some of these vices… but we were here to make a change in the community… Initially, we noticed that it was difficult for us to engage and reach out, it needed a lot of effort.
At this point we were eager to hear more about the activities and steps the Church has taken to engage with the Spon End community:
We pray, we try as much as possible to engage [with] the local community. Every month we pass by the neighbourhood and ask: “what can we do as a church to be of help?” We try to engage the youth of the community and the teenagers.
Further, as you can see, during the holidays the place is open. People come in, and they can use the play-area, there is a nursery here and a school. We also have this venue open as an area for community meetings… because this building is one of the largest in Spon End, we opened it to make it free for community meetings and activities.
We also organise an outdoor barbecue picnic during the summer, which is free for the community. Every Christmas we have a Christmas feast, where we provide free meals for the community (breakfast and lunch). We have been doing that for eight years and we have continued to do that after we moved to Spon End. Also, every Wednesday we have free food for everyone in the community from 5:30 to 7:00.
So, all of this worked. These activities give us a connection between the Church and the community. After a while, the vices died down and it wasn’t as bad as when we moved in here, and after some years we can see a lot of positives in Spon End.
For such a small neighbourhood, Spon End has historically been a centre of many religious and community centres (for instance, see our posts on Jewish Spon End here), some of these are focused on the local community, but many also serve wider Coventry.
We wanted to know more about the Church’s relation to the many community centres in Spon End. Abi explained that the congregation spreads flyers around, but that it also advertises its activities in many of the local organisations. The Church is…
… part of the community’s initiatives… so we work with the Rose Community centre, we meet occasionally. We are also part of the initiative with the Oasis café [see our story with Lindsey].
Besides that, the Church draws on a larger community from beyond Spon End, and it might even extend beyond Coventry:
The meetings on Sunday [draw a crowd of] around 150 or 180 [people]. We meet Wednesdays and Sundays, and a lot of our congregation is from Spon End, but not all of the congregation is local. We have members from different locations from Coventry. We have founding members, which are like family, we have members coming from Rugby, Birmingham… etc. We have students from Coventry University and the University of Warwick. While we have more members from African communities, we have a mixed culture, many nations, and the Church is not [restrictive]. We do a lot of singing and dancing, and it helps a lot with building the community.
Like in so many of the other stories we listened to, this small neighbourhood in Coventry brings together people from different walks of life, and hosts communities that extend even internationally. We are quite grateful to Pastor Abi for inviting us into the Church, and for talking to us about what he and his congregation do to weave links with Spon End and its residents.
Spon End 