Since we felt God speaking to us about having a permanent community in Canterbury, He has been teaching us more about the missional inheritance that is here.

The City of Canterbury is an old Roman city and, in fact, still has its Roman walls around it. It is a beautiful city and is located in the South East of England in a county called Kent. Kent is also famously known as “the Garden of England”.

East Kent is surrounded by coastline, so there are many beaches that can be visited, the closest one being about seven miles away. Although Canterbury is a city, it is also surrounded by many beautiful villages and countryside, and there are many walks that you can do in the area. Canterbury is also a World Heritage Site because of three specific historical places: Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey and St Martin’s Church, which were all considered key to the re-evangelisation of England in 597 AD.

St Augustine’s Abbey has been a place that God has continued to highlight to us, as it was a place where many people came together to live in community, be trained for missions and then be sent out. This is a concept that felt so familiar to us as we visited the ruins of the site to walk, pray and learn more about the history. Again, we believe we are joining in with something that is much bigger than us.

Canterbury has also historically been a significant place of pilgrimage over many years, and you can still walk today the path that St Augustine took as he arrived from Rome with his forty monks to re-introduce Christianity to England.