1. History

2. Facilities

3. Organisation
     Leadership    Ministries    Community    Young Adults    Creative    Whitefields Leadership College    Waverley Development    City Hearts charity  

4. Criticism and controversy
     Hope City Church and City Hearts    Dave Gilpin    Audacious Church (Formerly Hope City Manchester)   C3 Church  

5. References

6. External links

History

Hope City Church was founded in Sheffield in 1991 by Dave and Jenny Gilpin, who had been a part of an Assemblies of God church in Brisbane, Australia. After seeing the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 on television in Australia Dave and Jenny went to investigate the possibilities of starting churches in the UK. After a three-week speaking tour of small churches across England in December 1990, they returned at Easter 1991 to pioneer the church, which was first called The Hope of Sheffield Christian Church. It has been described as "a church that was born out of tragedy – and a church which is based around one crucial four-letter word: hope."^[4]

The Church was once noticed when it undertook a big advertising campaign which included the use of large billboards and the sides of busses to promote the organisation and assert that it was not a "traditional" church. ^[5]

Hope City has also planted churches in Liverpool,^[6] beginning in historic venues such as the Black-E and Epstein Theatre. It has planted in Leeds,^[7] Newcastle, Sunderland, Birmingham, Lancashire^[8] and in Accra, Ghana, Frankfurt, Germany, Darmstadt, Germany, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, London, and its most recent location York. They now have 3,000 members in 11 locations.^[9]The Church has also used venues such as club's like 'Tiger Tiger' in Newcastle as well as St James' Park.^[10]

Hope City has been linked to the movement of evangelical-style churches in Australia, most successful being Hillsong Church.^[11]

In 2010 an additional church was established in Accra.^[12] In 2012, a new Hope City Church in Frankfurt, Germany was established.^[13]

Facilities

The church bought an old tool factory in 1998 in the United Kingdom and called it The Megacentre.^[14] The building contains a play centre, a nursery and conferencing facilities.^[15]

In 2009, Hope City Church bought the former Archive building of Leeds central library on York Road which has been converted to contain a 400-seater auditorium and community and conferencing facility for Leeds.^[16][17] In 2018 the Leeds building was sold to developer who plans to convert the space into 52 apartments. The Leeds congregation have since relocated their services to meeting in a city centre hotel.^[18]

Organisation

Leadership

Founders Dave and Jenny Gilpin are the senior pastors pastors of Hope City Church. Hope City Church is governed by a board of trustees.^[19] Jen has a 'Diploma in Ministry' ^[20] and Dave Gilpin studied a degree in Civil Engineering followed by one year at a bible college in Brisbane before becoming a pastor. ^[21]

Ministries

Hope City's ministries include: Whizz Kids, She Is, Hope City Sons, Creative, This New Republic, Whitefields Leadership College as well as Project 180^[22]

Community

In 2002, Hope City Church started a Night of Honour in Sheffield. The event celebrates community heros, children and community service.^[23] The church also runs other community projects out of The Megacentre.^[24]

Young Adults

The Church hosts 'Young Adults' nights for their 18-30's age group across their locations, with 'This New Republic' Conference taking place annually.^[25]

Creative

The church produced shows for both the annual Night of Honour and their 20th Anniversary celebration,^[26] both at the Sheffield City Hall.

They have also produced two albums, Devoted and We Are Ready, which was produced by Eliot Kennedy.^[27]

Whitefields Leadership College

Whitefields Leadership College is a part-time church-based training programme based in Hope City Church's building The Megacentre in Sheffield, UK. Its teaching days are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The programme has three Internships. These are called Creative Arts, City Hearts, and Leadership and Ministry.

Waverley Development

In 2018, Hope City Church joined a steering group responsible for designing a brand new country park on the Waverley development in Rotherham. The group is part of the 'Well North' project funded by Public Health England and is part of Hope City Church's plans to relocate to the Waverley area and build a 1500 seater facility.^[29] A £10million project that aims to deliver a wide range of benefits for the Sheffield City region.^[30]More than 600 houses have been completed at Waverley and about 3,400 are set to be added over the next 15 years. Plans for the development also include a £50 million town centre featuring a town square, bus station, hotel, shops, a gym, health centre, pharmacy, offices and parking for 577 cars. The leisure, business and retail scheme could create 700 jobs.^[31]

City Hearts charity

City Hearts is a charity that houses and helps both women with life controlling issues and victims of human trafficking in the UK, and runs education programmes in Ghana, Africa.^[32] City Hearts (UK) was set up by Hope City Church and Hope City church is the 'controlling party,' employing Hope City pastor, Jen Gilpin, as CEO. 'Hope City Church controls City Hearts (UK) as it is able to appoint and remove all the

trustees of City Hearts (UK)'.^[33]

Criticism and controversy

Hope City Church and City Hearts

In March 2018, a Channel 4 News investigation into Hope City's charity, City Hearts, meant to support victims of trafficking, produced a report finding abusive cult activity and untrained staff left in the care of vulnerable adults within their Sheffield Restore Programme and the linked safe house. The report highlighted interviews with 'around 40 people who were cared for or worked for the City Hearts charity in Sheffield.' Victims of the safe house report on camera being discriminated against and ostracized for their sexual orientation and instructed they are gay because they 'have a devil' in them which needs to be corrected through the City Hearts / Hope City church. Channel 4 News points out the founders of City Hearts make no secret of their homophobic views. Another victim disclosed a City Heart's mental health counsellor coercing her to publicly share the intimate details of her trafficking experience on stage in the church, denying her graduation of the Restore Programme unless she obeyed. Former Hope City and City Hearts staff claimed they received no training or professional guidance before being put in charge of the safe house and responsible for much of the client's lives and futures. They report the culture of the safe house was to offer no practical help or acknowledgement of issues, but to suggest prayer or scriptures as a blanket answer, even for critical situations such as self-harming.^[34]

Hope City Church has been criticised for promoting the prosperity gospel; suggesting members should make sizable and recurrent offerings in addition to the tithe in return for financial breakthrough and blessings.^[35] Furthermore, the church also promoted the controversial Toronto blessing by hosting a meeting 'with visitors from America who had been to Toronto' where 'people were prayed over so that they might be slain (supposedly) in the Spirit.' ^[36] 'Critics referred to the Toronto blessing as self-centred and evil and claimed that the strange manifestations were warning signs for other Christian believers to stay away. Others defended the blessing as historically rooted in earlier revivals, such as those seen by pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards, and as having positive effects in the lives of participants.^[37] In his book, Counterfeit Revival, Hank Hanegraaff claimed that the revival has done more damage than good, and that the Toronto blessing was a matter of people being enslaved into altered states of consciousness where they obscure reality and enshrine absurdity. Hank Hanegraaf also stated in a 1996 Washington Post interview that, "It's nice to feel all these things, but the fact is, these feelings will wear off, and then disappointment steps in. I call it post-Holy Laughter depression syndrome."'^[38]

Dave Gilpin

In September 2008, Senior Pastor Dave Gilpin faced criticism from an online Christian Podcast (Pirate Christian Radio) in a sermon review, labelling him as a "Charlatan". It likened Pastor Gilpin's talk to a poor stand up comedy act and highlighted that after thirteen minutes of speaking there was "nothing whatsoever to actually convict it of being a sermon." It accused Gilpin of being self-obsessed and using a church pulpit purely to promote himself, stating "...his head is so big I'm sure he's sucking up every last bit of oxygen with every breath he takes."^[39]

Audacious Church (Formerly Hope City Manchester)

In October 2002 a team of pastors from Hope City church set up Hope City Manchester which went on to become Audacious City church ^[40] and today Audacious church maintains strong links with Hope City church, inviting pastors to preach in their Sunday morning services. ^[41] Similar to Hope City, there have been concerns raised over Audacious church 'brainwashing' its members, 'controlling' them and teaching a prosperity gospel.^[42] The pastor from Audacious City Church was also criticized for claiming to have defeated an atheist in an Atheist Society debate, despite claims by the debate society that the event never occurred.^[43].

C3 Church

Hope City is part of C3 church. C3 has been criticized for teaching false doctrine, teaching prosperity gospel.^[44] Since C3 was 'founded in Australia in 1980, the church has suffered multiple scandals within its own ranks. More than one pastor has been charged with fraud. Another was accused of covering up the sexual abuse of a young boy.'^[45][46] Phil Pringle, founder of C3 global church and friend of lead pastors of Hope city,^[47] has also been criticized for 'grooming' church congregations to pay for legal fees after a C3 pastor was accused of fraud for using church funds to fund his wife's music career.^[48][49][50]

Reference was made to C3 Church in the Business Review Weekly (BRW), Australian edition article "God's Millionaires". This article noted that "Prosperity theology is practised by the bigger Pentecostal churches, including Hillsong, Christian City Church and Paradise. This promotes the idea that wealth and worldly success are signs of God’s favour."^[51]

References

External links

• Hope City Church
• City Hearts

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