About Us

Our Church

We are a group of Christians living in the Send, Woking and Guildford area who meet together regularly to worship God and to help and encourage one another to learn about and experience more of the love that God has for us in Jesus Christ. We offer a wide range of activities for all ages from Mums and Toddlers to Over-Sixties.

Part of our church name is ‘Evangelical’, which simply means bringing good news. As Christians we find the good news in the Bible, news of real hope. This news is so different from the news in most of the press, radio and television. We believe that the Bible is God’s word for us; and that it is complete, true and accurate. The Holy Spirit helps us to understand it and to face the practical, ethical and spiritual challenges of life today.

The good news is that we can enter a personal relationship with God. This is because God has sent his only Son into the world to be our substitute, to be punished instead of us for our wrongdoing. When we ask for forgiveness and trust in the Lord Jesus we begin a new life with Him.

We hope you will accept our invitation to come along, learn about and experience God’s love for you, and respond to the challenge of God’s word. Do get in touch with us via the Contact Us page if you’d like to know more, come along to our Sunday meeting (10:30am), or one of the other activities during the week.

Who’s Who

Pastor

Pete Killingley

My name is Pete, and I’ve been Pastor of Send Evangelical Church since October 2014. I’m married to Sophie, with 2 children, Phoebe and Solomon. Before I became a pastor I lived in West Wales and worked in criminal law, spending many hours at the local police station. I also have a degree in Economics. With my free time I love running, and taking Sophie to Costa Coffee where my drink of choice is usually a Tropical Fruit Cooler.

I became a Christian in 2004. I’d always assumed that there was a god out there somewhere, but that he was irrelevant to my life. But while at university I heard the Christian message from the Bible that there is indeed a God (a good and loving and holy God), but that I had sinned against him with my thoughts and words and actions. But because God is so rich in love and mercy, he sent his own son Jesus Christ to die on the cross to pay the penalty for my sin.

Suddenly the message about God didn’t seem irrelevant anymore – I realised it was the most important message in the world. I believe it is true because there is no other decent explanation for who Jesus was and what happened to him after he died. And I believe it because the Christian message explains the world and why the world is the way it is better than any other worldview can.

Please do get in touch via the website (my email is pastor@sendec.org), or come along on a Sunday, if you’d like to chat about this amazing message and what it means for you.

Pastor in Training

Kurt Holmgren

Kurt Holmgren is married to Lucy and they have a son named Jonathan. He has worked as a primary school teacher in South Africa and here in the UK. Kurt has stopped teaching to pursue children and youth ministry as well as theological training. He is working part-time for Send Evangelical Church as a pastor-in-training with responsibility for children and youth. Kurt is also studying part-time at Oak Hill theological college in North London on Mondays and Tuesdays. He enjoys going for walks with his family and playing guitar and piano.

Elders

Click any image to read the elder’s bio

Steve Gilkerson

Ian Mair

Giles May

Deacons

Jono Nel
Treasurer

Clive Woodland
Church Secretary

Church Structure

Church Vision

Strapline

Love God, love one another, love the world

Send Evangelical Church is a community of God’s people who exist to love God, love one another, and to love the world. Therefore, we are a Bible-based, prayer-saturated, Gospel-centred, Spirit-filled church.

Extended Vision

We love God because He first loved us. Loving God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is at the heart of all we do, and follows Jesus’ great command to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ We love God by worshipping Him in all we do.

Loving one another and loving the world are expressions of our obedience to Jesus’ other great command to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’.

We love one another by encouraging one another, speaking truth to one another, confessing sins to one another, forgiving one another, bearing one another’s burdens, serving one another and praying for one another as a community of God’s people in Send.

We love the world by stewarding God’s creation, by caring for all people because they are made in the image of God, and above all by seeking to share the Good News of God’s love and Christ’s saving death, going out from Send to the ends of the earth.

We are a Bible-based church because we recognise that the Bible is the authoritative and true Word of God. By His Spirit, God speaks to us through His Word, guides us through His Word, and shows Jesus to us through His Word. It contains everything we need for life and salvation, and so we build our church around its truth.

We are a prayer-saturated church because we recognise that it is through prayer that we speak to the God who has first spoken to us, and enjoy our relationship with Him. We also pray because we are utterly dependent on God for any fruit in our lives, our ministry or our mission.

We are a Gospel-centred church because we recognise that the Gospel message, that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and rose again on the third day, is the foundation of our relationship with God. Through the Gospel of grace we receive forgiveness of sins, adoption into God’s family, the sure and certain hope of heaven, and the power to live for Jesus today. Without the Gospel we are without hope and without God in the world.

We are a Spirit-filled church because we recognise that the Holy Spirit indwells each and every Christian from the moment of conversion; and He also dwells in us collectively as the Church, the body of Christ. His work is to glorify Christ by giving us spiritual life in Christ, transforming us to be more like Christ, showing us Christ through the Bible, and building up the Church by His gifts. It is the Spirit who enables us to be Bible-based, prayer-saturated and Gospel-centred; and to love God, one another and the world.

Member’s Stories

How some of our members found that Jesus is real:

George Osborn

A church member

I was brought up to go to church and sunday school, my parents being quite involved in the church. In my teen years, I began to fashion my own ideas on how the world should be run, being attracted by various “isms.” When I went to uni, I met a group of Christians who befriended me and I soon started to attend an evangelical church. For some time, though, some intuition told me that all was not right between me and God. Things culminated in a night out with the girls in my digs and a “one night stand”. At first I thought of it as a rite of passage but the truth dawned when my mates found out and chided me for my hypocrisy.

I then felt deeply ashamed and also afraid that God would have nothing to do with me now. Desperate for reassurance, I thumbed through my bible one night and came to Isaiah [1:18] “Come now, let us reason together”, says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” In my mind’s eye I saw Jesus sitting at the foot of the bed reasoning with me and a sense of peace came over me. Back at home that Easter, with the help of a booklet I had been given on how to become a Christian, I knelt by the bed and asked Christ into my life.

There have been times when I have messed up badly, even as a Christian, and “leaked” the gospel. However, in the words of Paul the apostle, “Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus” (Phil. [3:14]).

Robert Norris

A church member

My family were not church goers although I attended Sunday School. I often thought there was more to life and asked questions at school and college. Eventually, whilst working as a teacher, I was invited by a colleague to a ‘Harvest Supper’ at her church. The speaker said something that made me realise I had been ‘sitting on the fence’ for several years and it was time to make a decision.

I plucked up courage to go into the local evangelical church where, as well as being welcomed, I was surprised to find the version of the Bible easy to read. I listened to sermons and read the Bible for 3 months before realising I believed what was being said. I then made the decision to accept Jesus into my life.

After 25 years, I am still learning more about God but I know I have His guidance in all aspects of my life and the sure hope of a future with Him.

Debbie Hurdle

A church member

Family tragedy led to questions: Was there a God? Was there a heaven? Had they gone there? Would I? I cried through tears for 6 months.

A friend; a testimony; a leaflet started the tears flowing again. The cause? – re-reading the last words “he died for YOU, because He loved YOU, to save YOU to teach YOU.” These words gave the personal implications to all I knew about Jesus, but I had no assurance of his existence. Crying out “If you are there, show me!” There came the overwhelming sense of responsibility to meet God halfway.

What to do? I saw that Christians read the Bible & pray. Through this He personally revealed himself, bringing assurance, hope, purpose & eternal life. Read the Bible and pray to God: he will show himself to you if you earnestly seek him.

Anne Tennant

A church member

My testimony is one of God bringing himself to me gradually in his loving caring way.

I was at a point of my life when things had evened out and I had more time on my hands. Roger and I had accepted that we were never going to be able to have children and had moved to a new house in West Byfleet and I had left work. I wasn’t looking for God or anything, just going to start a new phase of my life, but looking back I can see that God had just cleared the path for me.

My next door neighbour invited me to a coffee morning which was run by a member of Send Evangelical Church and it was at one of these meetings that for the first time in my life I heard someone sharing his faith, which was obviously real and alive for him.

I was invited to join a bible study group and God started to work. Things made sense and became real to me and I knew that I wanted to be a Christian. But there was a part of me that was still sceptical and I couldn’t stop thinking that I was just conning myself that I believed. I had already prayed and asked God for forgiveness and acceptance through Christ, but I went again in prayer and asked God to let me feel his presence and he graciously did. I was stopped in prayer by this feeling of power, and then it was gone.

I knew from then on that God was God and he had given me the faith to believe in him. My life seemed to have meaning for the first time and I had this truly amazing relationship with God!! My Christian life has been up and down, but his love has always been there; he has walked with me or carried me. He is my loving heavenly father and saviour that I don’t deserve but that I know that one day I will be with forever.

Eileen Lovell

A church member

Affiliations

We are affiliated to the FIEC group, Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches and as such we hold to their statement of faith and practice. We love their heart to exist to encourage & equip our family of independent churches to thrive, impacting our nation with the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The churches of FIEC are committed to these truths of historic, biblical Christianity. Below is our Doctrinal Basis.

1. God
There is one God, who exists eternally in three distinct but equal persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is unchangeable in his holiness, justice, wisdom and love. He is the almighty Creator; Saviour and Judge who sustains and governs all things according to his sovereign will for his own glory.

2. The Bible
God has revealed himself in the Bible, which consists of the Old and New Testaments alone. Every word was inspired by God through human authors, so that the Bible as originally given is in its entirety the Word of God, without error and fully reliable in fact and doctrine. The Bible alone speaks with final authority and is always sufficient for all matters of belief and practice.

3. The Human Race
All men and women, being created in the image of God, have inherent and equal dignity and worth. Their greatest purpose is to obey, worship and love God. As a result of the fall of our first parents, every aspect of human nature has been corrupted and all men and women are without spiritual life, guilty sinners and hostile to God. Every person is therefore under the just condemnation of God and needs to be born again, forgiven and reconciled to God in order to know and please him.

4. The Lord Jesus Christ
The Lord Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, and lived a sinless life in obedience to the Father. He taught with authority and all his words are true. On the cross he died in the place of sinners, bearing God’s punishment for their sin, redeeming them by his blood. He rose from the dead and in his resurrection body ascended into heaven where he is exalted as Lord of all. He intercedes for his people in the presence of the Father.

5. Salvation
Salvation is entirely a work of God’s grace and cannot be earned or deserved. It has been accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ and is offered to all in the gospel. God in his love forgives sinners whom he calls, granting them repentance and faith. All who believe in Christ are justified by faith alone, adopted into the family of God and receive eternal life.

6. The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit has been sent from heaven to glorify Christ and to apply his work of salvation. He convicts sinners, imparts spiritual life and gives a true understanding of the Scriptures. He indwells all believers, brings assurance of salvation and produces increasing likeness to Christ. He builds up the Church and empowers its members for worship, service and mission.

7. The Church
The universal Church is the body of which Christ is the head and to which all who are saved belong. It is made visible in local churches, which are congregations of believers who are committed to each other for the worship of God, the preaching of the Word, the administering of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper; for pastoral care and discipline, and for evangelism. The unity of the body of Christ is expressed within and between churches by mutual love, care and encouragement. True fellowship between churches exists only where they are faithful to the gospel.

8. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper have been given to the churches by Christ as visible signs of the gospel. Baptism is a symbol of union with Christ and entry into his Church but does not impart spiritual life. The Lord’s Supper is a commemoration of Christ’s sacrifice offered once for all and involves no change in the bread and wine. All its blessings are received by faith.

9. The Future
The Lord Jesus Christ will return in glory. He will raise the dead and judge the world in righteousness. The wicked will be sent to eternal punishment and the righteous will be welcomed into a life of eternal joy in fellowship with God. God will make all things new and will be glorified forever.

More details can be found here – https://fiec.org.uk/who-we-are/beliefs

Send Evangelical Church Privacy Notice

How Send Evangelical Church (“we”) use your information

Your privacy is important to us. We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your information.

The categories of information that we may collect, hold and share include:

Personal information (such as name, telephone number, address and email address)
Characteristics (such as gender, ethnicity, language, nationality, country of birth)

Storing your data

We hold your data for varying lengths of time depending on the type of information in question but in doing so we always comply with Data Protection legislation. We will contact you annually to check that the information we are holding is accurate and that you agree to us holding it.

Who do we share your information with?

We will not share your information with third parties without your consent unless the law requires us to do so.

Requesting access to your personal data

Under Data Protection legislation, you have the right to request access to information that we hold about you. To make a request for your personal information contact the Church Secretary.

You also have the right to:

object to processing of personal data that is likely to cause, or is causing, damage or distress
prevent processing for the purpose of direct marketing
in certain circumstances, have inaccurate personal data rectified, blocked, erased ordestroyed; and
claim compensation for damages caused by a breach of the Data Protection regulations.

For further information on how your information is used, how we maintain the security of your information and your rights to access information we hold on you please contact the Church Secretary at churchsecretary@sendec.org

If you have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Contact:

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice, please contact the Church Secretary