Beatrice Smith and Joe Brady both felt a call to plant a new church in Greater Manchester - but the fruit of that call, the planting of Restoration Church, took the better part of a decade to emerge.
By David CornishJune 2023
Presented by CCX, together with Restoration Church
Droylsden, Tameside, sits on the eastern edge of Greater Manchester. A once renowned centre of textile manufacturing, it’s now better known to the wider Manchester population for its prominent IKEA store. It’s an area that some locals describe as feeling ‘forgotten’, where closures and endings are more common than fresh starts.
Despite growing up in a nearby town, Droylsden wasn’t a region Joe Brady had ever considered planting a church onto. Having recognised Joe’s call to leadership, his church leader encouraged Joe to meet with two others who shared a vision for starting ‘something’ in the local area. A coffee meeting with Beatrice Smith – who’d been praying for God to move in the region for the better part of a decade – and Jess, ran far longer than any of them had expected. It resulted in Joe picking up a parking ticket and, more significantly, a certainty that God was calling them to plant Restoration Church in Droylsden.
This video, created for the Multiply 2023 Church Planting Conference, tells part of the Restoration Church story, as told by Beatrice and Joe, and church member Ann.
