King's Daughters

We had a beautiful day together on 8th September, thank you so much to you all for your incredible support and prayers. Feedback and testimonies have already started flooding in, have a read of some of them here . Also, keep an eye on our YouTube page as we update it with the speakers messages and conference highlight videos. We had the stunning Instruments of Praise gospel choir lead us in worship and it was truly heavenly. We also had Daughters of Davis who absolutely blew us away with their fantastic acoustic folk/soul vibe. Our Women in Business section was a real treat with stalls offering all sorts of beautifully displayed goods. Jill Chitty from the Entrepreneurs Circle spoke to the women in business offering practical tips for business growth. Other breakout sessions included a Hope for Justice talk by Naomi and Cynthia shared her testimony of life as a Samburu woman . Molly Catherine Beebee from Cirencester Creative Dance Academy dazzled us with

Here it is!  My MissioNexus interview  Listen to the interview here Read their thoughts on my book below More info on the book here Buy it on Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com  The Tale of a Church Planter The ups, downs, frustrations, joys and everything in-between on the roller coaster ride of church planting. Summary The author is a married woman church planter. She and her husband recently started and developed a church together in England. Therefore, the value of this book is that it is written from a woman's point of view. Like many wives of church planters, she did not have the title of pastor, yet she functioned as one as she devoted just as much time and energy to the church start and development as her husband. Angela approaches the subject candidly, with humour and depth of understanding of what it takes to plant a church. She faces the good times joyfully and the difficult times (and there are many!) with determination and wisdom, giving i

A few weeks ago a preached a message at D7 Church called Moses But!  It is all about how to unleash your potential and how to avoid giving the same excuses that Moses did.  Listen to it here .

Dear Church, My heart is breaking because I am hearing regular reports of how much you Christians dislike church.  Did you know that Jesus died for His church.  Jesus' love for the church is made abundantly clear in Ephesians 5:25-32.  You cannot love Jesus and not love His church - to love Jesus is to love His church.  Jesus is the head of the church and we are the body of the church.  To not love the body is like saying to me that you only love my face and not the rest of me.  It's totally ridiculous, my face is me and my body is me, it is all me. A common debate that I hear is that the church is not the gathering of believers but it is simply individuals that love Jesus.  People say that they can serve God at home on their own and don't need to meet with other believers.  Once again I cannot stress how ridiculous this theory is.  Is my physical body merely the individual pieces of my body or is it the individual pieces of my body living together and depending up

A life of difficulty and disappointment set 33-year old Michael Leehan up for the worst decision of his life—to make a deal with the Devil to follow and serve him. Practicing the dark arts that include ritualistic cuttings and blood sacrifices, while fine tuning his manipulation and control skills, Michael launched into a twenty year downward spiral that included job loss and detachment from loved ones, and even jail time.  But God had another plan that included a group of Christian men to love him and pray for him—even when it became evident his assignment from Satan was to kill their pastor, Craig Groeschel. At first I was sceptical and didn't buy into the whole Satanist thing as it seemed too stereotypical with the usual burning of candles at the tips of a pentagram, killing cats and reading the book of shadows.  Perhaps many of us including myself are desensitised by TV programs such as Charmed, which I watched a lot of in my youth.  BUT, it wasn't long be

Over the past few weeks it has been on my heart to speak to our church about SIN - again (do you remember the last time ?).  I can't say that I was very excited at first to bring this message and I knew that I would not be anyone's favourite preacher afterwards!  But as the days went by the conviction grew and so I did preach on sin last Sunday and will do so again this coming Sunday.    It grieves me that there is little difference between the church and the world these days.  That the divorce rate is just as high in the church as it is in the world and that things like pornography, homosexuality, materialism, gossip and other such things are commonly found in the lives of 'mature' Christians.  Mostly, it breaks my heart that so many pastors are 'falling' into sin these days too.     So what is the answer?  How can the church become a holy place again where God is respected and feared?  I don't have the answer but I do know that if we continue to t

Church is not a one man or one woman job! It can’t be mostly because God says that no flesh should glory in His presence. If we could successfully build a flourishing church on our own then it is quite likely that we would become proud and even arrogant. God made us relational and dependant on each other in order to do His will. Eric and I realised this right from the start, we knew we could not pull it off on our own and so we got stuck into recruiting team members right from the word ‘go’! Before even thinking about planting a church, I would highly recommend building a team that will work with you and support you no matter what! It’s not about quantity but about quality. A small team with the right heart will do so much more than a large team with a bad attitude. Sounds easy doesn’t it, but I can assure you that finding people with a great heart that will just shut up and get on with it is not easy! Our team started way back in 2006 without us even realising it. They were

There have been days when I have wanted to give up. MANY DAYS! Tiredness had overcome me and I had grown weary. It’s not the sort of weariness that can be solved by sleep. This sort of weariness was deep down within my soul; it seemed to seep right down into my bones and made my belly ache. I had known many of these sorts of days.  There had also been many Sundays when I had not wanted to go to church. Yes, I confess, many Sundays when I had just wanted to stay in bed and leave Eric to get on with it. A few Sundays I managed to make it into the car and all the way to church but then had just stayed in the car outside church and cried. On a few occasions I had even started the car and reversed out of the parking space with the intention of driving away. Despite the battles that have raged within my soul some Sundays, I have always pitched up. Not always with the best attitude, not always with the enthusiasm that I should have, but I pitched up. That is step one to surviving

I didn't sleep well last night.  I was troubled.  What I had heard yesterday disturbed me.  Surely that can't be true.  Surely that sort of thing doesn't still happen in this day and age.  There are women in this world, many women, who have real problems.  Life threatening problems.  These women have no help and they continue to suffer without any hope of change.  I tossed and turned all night, wrestling with God, saying, "What can I do, I am just one woman with little to offer."       It was then that I realised that King's Daughters is not about me, it never was and I never wanted it to be, but it is all about what God wants to do for His daughters in this world.  He is grieved that His precious daughters are suppressed and we who are free should rise up and do something about it. How?   I don't know but that doesn't mean we will sit back and do nothing.   When? Right now.   Who?   You and me Why?  Because we can Together, we can mak

Lorah-Kelly brought a word to our pastors meeting one morning, a simple word but one that would change our perspective as a church. She started by reading a verse from the book of Isaiah. “...the least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation. I am the Lord, in its time I will do this swiftly.” - Isaiah 60:22 The Least of You This could be talking about a small amount of people and could also mean the least of you as in Matthew 25:40 ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ At the time we were least in every possible way. Our attendance numbers were very low and at the same time we were reaching out intensively to homeless people and welcoming them into our church. The Smallest This could be talking about a small amount of people or literally the smallest or youngest children. Again, we were smallest in both senses of the word as we were small in numbers and the kids team were doing an excel

It was 2am and we were still sitting in our living chatting with the two young men that might well have been our future sons-in-law. Perhaps that was looking too far ahead, but as a mother, I was always on the lookout for potential husbands for my girls. Very ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I know, but unless you are a mother with young ladies at home, you will never understand the insane drive within a mother to find a suitable match for her girls.  Lorah-Kelly, Jordan, Eric and I sat with the boys and were glad that we had finally met some Christians that seemed to be mature in their faith. Up until this point, we had struggled along with raising the lost and the baby Christians that were born in our church. Determined not to build a church on transfer growth, we pushed forward with what and whom we had.  It was a relief though, to think that perhaps God was sending some labourers to us, to help us with our work.  We began spending more and more time with these two young boys and were q

“He made it!” That was the remark I made to Eric when I read Ewen’s very first blog post . His post was rich with love for Jesus and gratitude for what He had done in his life. My heart swelled with pride. Ewen was turning eighteen and I felt as much pride for him as I did for my own children.  I first met Ewen when he was fifteen years old in 2008. He dropped in to see what was happening at our Friday night youth group when we were meeting in the community centre. Clearly he was a trouble maker.  That night, I also noticed a display of deep cuts all over his arms.  The image is still vividly imprinted in my mind as I knew that those bleeding wounds on his arms represented the state of his heart.  Many teenagers came to us with heart wrenching stories full of hurt and confusion. The first time I met Ewen, his manner and body language made a clear statement that he was not to be messed with. His foul language and rough exterior combined with the cigarettes, drugs and alcohol d

My name is Angela De Souza, I am the mother of four gorgeous children, Lorah-Kelly, Jordan, Daniel and Amy. My husband and I are the senior pastors of D7 Church and at the time of this writing I served in the capacity of Executive Pastor too.  I can honestly say that no recipe or formula for church building exists - God does not work in this way! D7 Church is living proof of this. Not because we didn’t try, we did try, we tried just about everything.  Oswald Chambers writes, “Never make a principle out of your experience, let God be as original with other people as He is with you.” In the same way I would say, don’t try and copy our journey or make principles out of our experiences, let God be as original with your church as He was with ours. We did not fit into a mould or a recipe, even though at first we tried to. Our bookshelf is lined with books that tell you what works and what doesn’t work. Our computer is filled with files of blog posts from mega-church pastors and docu

This past Sunday at D7 Church I had the privilege of preaching the first message of the year in our brand new venue .  Of course being in a new venue presented all sorts of challenges and distractions and we had time pressure to get out of the venue early as the staff were hung over from their New Year's celebrations!  I hope that even though I had to skip through the message quite quickly and even though the message was quite informal with lots of chit chat in between, that they most important bits came through - the fast that fasting is an essential part of the Christian life and without it we lose out on so much that God has planned for us.  Read more about fasting here or listen to the message .

I couldn't have said it any better than Eric so I am going to point you to his blog for a review of this movie.  It has left us radically challenged, read what Eric has so say about it here .  Be warned though, it does have some very gruesome scenes.

  The ups, downs, frustrations, joys and everything in-between on the roller coaster ride of church planting. I can honestly say that no recipe or formula for church building exists - God does not work in this way! D7 Church is proof of this. Not because we didn’t try, we did try just about everything. Our bookshelf is lined with books that tell you what works and what doesn’t work. Our computer is filled with files of blog posts from mega-church pastors, documents with strategy from other churches. We have attended conferences and visited other churches to try and learn about building a church.  It was only when we gave up and said so to God that we began to have breakthrough. This is our story. Cover Photo by Lorah Kelly   Available at: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Kindle Contents: Introduction In the Beginning Never Cancel Do Not Grow Weary A Wolf and Abandonment The Least and the Small Pitch Up and Press On Build a Great Team Why Me? It’s Not About You

A couple of Sunday's ago a preached an usual message and my opening sentence was 'sin smells like fart'!  I was so nervous to preach this message. It wasn't a pretty message. It wasn't planned.  I had a totally different message planned which I have since preached .  On this particular occasion, I felt that God wanted to say something to His church and so with ten minutes notice, before church started, I scribbled down some rough notes and preached a message called Sin Smells Like Fart.  I think it is titled Why Jesus? on our church podcast page to make it a little easier on the ear, but the message is the same.  Have a listen here .

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 'Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labour: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.' I have had this silly thought running around my head for ages but am not sure if it is even a remote possibility! What if a group of churches got together, agreed on each churches strength and weakness, and supported each other based on that. We could do more than we can all do on our own by trying to be good at everything all the time? Perhaps that didn't make sense, here are some examples? If a particular church is strong in leadership training and another in women's ministry and another in music, then all of the churches involved would agree to support the strength of the other church. If your church had leadership classes and a leadership conference and our church wasn't strong in this area then we would send our people to yo

Last night we took a group of 14 people to Hillsong Conference in London.  It's was such a lifechanging experience for all of us. We spent several hours in traffic in the mini bus, ate loads of cheese rolls and fought over which radio station to listen to but it was all worth the short time we got to spend in the conference.   Priscilla Shirer was the speaker for the evening and her message was truly amazing.  She unashamedly told us how nothing matters except Jesus and the most important thing that we can do with our life is to point people to Him.  Although we had a long drive home and only got to sleep at 3am, I woke up refreshed in my spirit, knowing what we have to do at D7 Church .  Yes we have been a church that passionately and desperately seeks Jesus, but it's time for more.  The people of Gloucester don't need Eric or I or anyone else on team, they need Jesus.  They need His healing power, they need His word for their addictions, they need His presences that

What a privilege for me to be able to record another worship CD with my wonderful husband and my lovely Lorah along with the rest of D7 Band - a memory we made together that I will treasure forever!  We had a fantastic time recording our new album, In the Stillness, and I am really looking forward to sharing it with you as soon as it's becomes available.  In the meantime enjoy a silly video clip from us at the studio at hear a sneak preview of 'Show Me'!