Our Story

1878
Catford Hill Baptist Church starts in 1878, led by a pastor in his early 20s. The church plant was part of Charles Spurgeon’s vision to reach London.

1985
Catford Hill and Allerford Chapel come together to become King’s Church Catford.

1995
Steve and Deb Tibbert arrive to lead King’s, a church of around 200 people.

1996
We begin to run the Alpha course which has run each term since, seeing hundreds of lives changed as a result.

2000
King’s starts to grow and King’s Centre 2000, a major extension of the building, is completed.

2001
The Jericho Road Project, our mercy ministry to the homeless and disadvantaged, is launched, and South Lee Christian Church joins King’s.

2004
Over 500 people are now coming to King’s. To accommodate this surge in growth, a further extension to the auditorium is completed.

2005–2008
As the number of people joining continues to rise, we become a church with multiple meetings – a second meeting starts in 2005 and a third in 2008.

2008
The Gracism series helps us take intentional steps in building a diverse church.

2010
We purchase a new building in Lee which will go on to house a new site and our offices.

2011
King’s becomes a multi-site church as Downham Family Church joins us, and we launch the Lee site. We are now one church meeting on three sites in Catford, Downham and Lee, with over 1,000 people attending each Sunday.

2012
Since we are no longer based only in Catford, we change our name to King’s Church London to reflect our wider vision and reach.

2014
The newly refurbished Lee auditorium opens, accommodating 500 people.

2017
We explore the issues around diversity further in our Invited series. To serve our growing team, we move the offices to fantastic new facilities on our Lee site.

2018
King’s gathers over 1,500 each Sunday. We launch Vision 2030, and a fourth site opens in Beckenham.

2020
We start the year with 21 days of prayer with hundreds gathering to pray and worship. In resonse to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sunday services, groups and prayer meetings go online.

2021
Phil and Sarah Varley, who have served King’s alongside Steve for 20 years, move to the Netherlands to plant a church in Rotterdam. King's starts to gather again in-person.  

2022
King’s continues the process of rebuilding after COVID-19, meeting back together across our sites. We run our Undivided series looking at the topics of Race, Grace and Galatians.