Our Story
Walsall Community Church traces its roots to the ministry of Vic and Jenny Gledhill and the family of churches that emerged from their work during the 1980s. After returning to the UK from Canada, where Vic had worked alongside Barney Coombs, they helped establish a new church in Birmingham in 1982. As that ministry grew, new churches were planted, including Walsall Community Church.
From the beginning, the church was shaped by a simple but powerful conviction: People are Important – the biblical commitment to love God wholeheartedly and to love our neighbours in practical, sacrificial ways. Alongside faithful preaching of the gospel, the church sought to demonstrate God’s love through acts of compassion, believing that words and actions belong together in Christian witness.
In Walsall, this vision led church members beyond the walls of the building and into the streets. Teams reached out to those experiencing poverty, addiction, homelessness, and social isolation, offering friendship, prayer, practical support, and the hope found in Jesus Christ.
Over the years, Walsall Community Church has connected to the wider Synergy Family of churches and grown into a diverse community of people from many backgrounds and generations. Today, our vision is to glorify God by loving what He loves, following the Holy Spirit into the adventure of faith, and forming a biblical community that transforms the world. We are grateful for those who laid the foundations before us and excited to see the next chapter that God will write through our church family.
Over years of ministry, first in Birmingham and then moving down into Walsall and on regular visits to India, Vic became concerned that a ‘words only’ gospel was not reaching people.
Our responsibility, Vic felt, is to love God first; but the second commandment – to love our neighbour – has huge implications (Matthew 22:34-40). Where were the acts of kindness? Where were the demonstrations of the sheer goodness of God to people? So, under a slogan that would become his ‘catchphrase’ – “People are Important” – Vic began to preach, teach and live a new evangelistic reformation’. In Walsall, street teams reached out to the poor, the prostitutes, the gamblers, and the drug addicts. Through his visits to the churches in Britain, North America, India, Nigeria, and Scandinavia, others caught the vision. Many new initiatives sprang up to take the gospel to the needy, to pray with non-Christian people wherever possible, and to see good works as valuable to the King in themselves, and a means of touching needy people with the kingdom of God.
Vic now leads Trans4m International, continuing to mobilise the church to sustainable, community-strengthening, aid and development work amongst the world’s poorest communities in sub-Saharan Africa and south east Asia.
WCC has continued to build on Vic’s foundation as we love God and love what he loves: people and much more.
From our base at the Goldmine Centre and at 33 Lower Hall Lane, we call people to the adventure of faith and form a biblical community that transforms the world around us.