Why DUC?

For many years God has blessed what Ozzy Road Baptist Church has done in partnership with others, and during this period we have naturally made friends who share our values and desire to build God’s Kingdom especially in the urban areas of Derby. More recently God has challenged us to grow with more intention, and while on sabbatical in 2017, our Minister, Graham looked at a number of examples of how churches and congregations were doing ministry together in different places – and he even did some reading on the topic! So we learnt things from many of these different places but when it came to a structure which would help us to do church in a different way in Derby, Beacon Church, a multi-congregational Baptist Church in Stafford gave us lots of ideas http://www.thebeaconchurch.com/

In September 2018, Ozzy Road Baptist Church and Boulton Lane Baptist Churches began a journey to explore what a multi-congregational church might look like and be like. This is how the vision for Derby Urban Church began.

In a very messy way, but led by the Holy Spirit, the number of potential congregations and also ministries that could be part of Derby Urban Church has grown. It is an exciting time!

We have realised the importance of growing smaller things, which allows more mission and discipleship whilst at the same time being part of something much bigger. We are trying to find a way to combine all the benefits of being small with none of disadvantages, with all the benefits of being big, and none of those disadvantages either.

For instance, our first new congregation that has grown out of an existing ministry – Friends United in Jesus – was able to entirely concentrate on ‘growing the vine’ because the ‘trellis’ already existed. It’s very small but that is also its strength because it isn’t trying to be a separate church. Instead it is valued equally with other parts of DUC.

Our intention is to have a single Trellis which supports all of this enabling us to share in building God’s kingdom together fully. While this is being built, we are have started with building on relationships, supporting and encouraging one another and doing mission together. We continue to find that God blesses what we do together and have realised that if DUC continues to grow it will always be messy! But its also a very exciting journey as we follow the Holy Spirit….