The history of The House Newcastle is actually just one fragment of His-story. God is revealing Himself through communities of His people all over the world; we’re just blessed to be one of them!
The formation of The House began in 2001 when Pastor Drew and his wife Tammy moved to Newcastle from California, three years after first visiting the city on their honeymoon. During this time they felt God calling them to someday return to Newcastle and plant a church.
Upon their return with a few other missionaries, who came with them for a season, they started meeting in their house, and eventually moved to a community centre in Heaton. With just a few people Calvary Chapel Newcastle started. As word spread about the work of the church in the town, youth and university students started to attend the Sunday morning gathering and it began to grow.
Eventually the whole church moved to Newcastle City Centre to be based in “The Upper Room” (a 5th floor coffee shop started by the church as an outreach to the youth of the city which was 88 steps up with no elevator). It didn’t take long for the upper room to be jammed packed, the church was growing and we needed to move, even for the simple fact that our 88 step workout program wasn’t proving popular with families.
That led us to where we’re at presently - The ground floor of a large building in the city centre that was an old catering warehouse. With a lot of hard work from the church and the help of family and friends we have completely renovated the place. We now call it “The Basement”, which hosts the best coffee shop in town - totally unbiased of course! At the same time we changed the name of the church to “The House” to be more in line with the values of the church not being a place we go to, but a community of people that God’s presence abides, and welcomes all to Himself through.
That’s a bit of our history, not so much about buildings but rather about transformational stages God has taken us through, to build us! We’re looking forward to see how His-story will continue to unfold in our history as we continue as a gospel community living to wholeheartedly follow Jesus. We invite you to come join the journey with us.
Blessings,
The House family