24-7 has been involved in Guildford since the official launch of the movement in February 2000. Between 2000 and 2004, the growing 24-7 community in Guildford sent teams to places like Serbia, Cyprus, Thailand and Brazil, and hosted numerous prayer weeks with churches uniting across the city.

Then, in the Autumn of 2005, a group of local Christians gathered to pray and dream together about launching a Boiler Room community. By May 2006, a core community of fifteen people was gathering regularly to meet, eat and pray together, and then we launched, officially, in November that year. The early years were formative and foundation laying with a major emphasis on sharing life together and prayer.

The Guildford Boiler Room (GBR) now has a growing core community of over 70 people. The life of GBR is rooted in 3 smaller mission communities (‘Collectives’) focussing on families, students and the town centre community and we have a renovated building which hosts a prayer room and meeting space. In addition to the Collectives our rhythm includes 24-7 prayer weeks and days, all-together meetings, Alpha courses, creative worship evenings, hospitality, justice projects and Sabbath meals (in fact food is involved in much of what we do!).

GBR members are very involved in their local communities and we are beginning to see friends become Christians – our vision is growth as people meet Jesus. We also have a wide vision and resource a lot of overseas activity, particularly in Europe; in 2009 our first long term missionaries were sent to Glasnost, Macedonia.

“We want to see Guildford changed for God’s glory, but we also feel that part of our identity is to train and send out those in our community to the rest of Europe.” writes Ian Nicholson.

You can find out more about, and get in touch with the Guildford Boiler Room community via their website.