Barry King is the pastor of Wimbledon Baptist Church and the General Secretary of Grace Baptist Partnership in the United Kingdom. He and his wife Frances along with their children have served there for over twenty years. The mission of GBP is to grow leaders, plant churches and reach nations by assisting churches in the planting of more churches. So far there are more than twenty churches in the partnership with opportunities to add more.

March 2025 Update

Conversion. Baptism. Membership. This is the experience of more than half the membership of Wimbledon Baptist Church. After the baptisms of others who have recently been converted, that number will be closer to two-thirds of the membership. Though the church began with a small core of members whowere previously members of other churches, the growth sincehas been almost exclusively by means of conversion andbaptism. This is–in a sense–as it should be.Butit can be challenging.Discipleship takes time. The church’s pastor has additionalministry responsibilities beyond the local church in Wimbledon. The church’s other elder had to take a break last year. The church’s trainee is also a fulltime student at London Seminary. Beginning to get the picture? A blessing–numbers of conversions and baptisms – can bring along with it the burden of ongoingdiscipleship with not so many to help bear it. That’s where it can become even trickier. More than once in similar situations,we have seen people appear seemingly out of nowhere whoprofess to be Christians and express a desire to help. They, however, don’t always agree withthe doctrinal position or the methodological approach of thechurch. They can unintentionally–love hopes all things! – hinder,harm, or even halt the forward progress of the work. Please join us in thanking God for the conversion of numbers of people at Wimbledon. Pleasepray that all of them will grow in grace and knowledge. Please pray that others sharing thechurch’s ethos will be sent to help with a number of spiritual–and practical–matters. Please pray that the young church would be protected from those who would intentionally or unintentionally do harm to the church.