SOME HISTORY

For over a century (120 years), this gathering of Christians met together under the building name of Bolton Gospel Hall. More recently, a rigorous process of seeking out the Scriptures, was undertaken to be named according to both our identity as people and our gathering centre who is Jesus, with a Biblical term that is reflective of the Lord and believers — who are of necessity identified with Christ and the body of Christ — rather than any particular building name nor organization of church names.

In addition to the primary objective of clarifying our identity with Christ, there was a desire to be more approachable and relevant to those who are seeking Christ, as seen by the apostle Paul who made himself variously approachable to the communities he reached out to (1 Cor. 9:20) and in the spirit of togetherness of the early church who had all things in common (Acts 2:44).

A NEW CHAPTER — CLARIFYING OUR IDENTITY

This autonomous local church began months of soul-searching consultations with the Word of God (the Bible), which defines a local church as a local gathering of people (1 Cor. 3:9) who are representing, and named after the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 3:15), not any other group or organizational name. In the Bible, the “church” always refers to people — A) all people who follow Christ globally regardless of locale (Acts 5:11, Acts 20:28, Heb. 12:23, Eph. 1:22, Eph. 3:6,10, Eph. 5:23-27, Col. 1:18) and B) also referring to local gatherings of Christ-followers (Acts 11:22, 1 Cor. 1:2, 1 Thes. 1:1, Rev. 1:4).

In the Bible, the book of Revelations mentions the “lampstand” as something that God himself upholds as a symbol of the local church’s expression of Christ’s perfect love shining through imperfect human hearts. As Jesus is the light (John 8:12, 1 John 1:5), so are the believers a light in each community (Matthew 5:14-16). The Christians in Lampstand Bolton Christian Church, are regular folks who nonetheless have a passion to shine brightly the light of Jesus in love (Luke 8:16), and in unity with all the Lord’s people everywhere, as expressed in God’s Word “with all the saints” (Ephesians 3:18).

The new name, ‘Lampstand Bolton Christian Church,’ was recently launched to more accurately reflect identification with Christ who is the Light of the World, and according to the Biblical pattern of addressing local Christians in the early church (IE: letters in the Bible were written to the church of God which is at Corinth, or to those of the church of the Thessalonians, for example etc.)