September 1996
On 8th September 1996 Emmanuel Church was birthed in the living room of our founders, Phil and Jill Emerson's, home on Waringstown Road, Lurgan. At this stage of their lives, in their early thirties, they found themselves helping a lot of broken people that had no connection with church. Unsure of what they should do with these people, but convinced of God’s love and purpose for their lives, Emmanuel Church was started. The community gathered and worshipped in the family home for 18 months.
May 1998
God then led the church to a small building in Donaghcloney of only 900sqft and it was there that our community grew to approximately 100 people. This little building became a spiritual home for almost three years and God established deep roots of His love and truth within us. We look back at these days and see them as beautiful times of preparation for His purposes for our lives.
February 2001
As our church community continued to grow, we purchased our first premises at 99-103 Union Street, Lurgan. We had always sensed that the centre of Lurgan was ultimately where God wanted to position us, and we moved there on 04th February 2001. Here we had 3,700sqft, allowing us space to increase the numbers and facilitate the various ministries that were now developing. Again, the blessing of the Lord overtook us and within a year, we saw our community double in size with a significant number of people surrendering their lives to Jesus. We recognised that once again we needed to start praying and searching for another building.
September 2003
God led us to our current ‘home’ on Castle Lane, in the centre of Lurgan, to a massive 37,500sqft. It was almost like a step too far but we believed God was in this, so we went for it. We had our first service there on September 21st 2003. It has been an incredible journey of faith and adventure and we have had the privilege to see many of the original seven dreams come to pass.
Church Planting
Over these last number of years, we felt the Lord began to redefine the vision for the church, and our vision statement was born, ‘Helping to rewrite the story of Craigavon, Ireland and the Nations with the good news of the Kingdom of God’.
We recognised that we had primarily been focusing on rewriting the story of Lurgan to date, and felt the Lord pushing back our tent pegs and giving us permission to enlarge the territory of our influence. Out of Lifegroups, two missional communities began to meet in Craigavon and North Lurgan. These grew in their purpose and identity and are now positioned as two separate churches, Cara (meeting in Craigavon) and Shalom (meeting in North Lurgan).
In December 2017, birthed and confirmed by prophetic words, we planted another Church in Portadown. This plant involved the grafting in of Upper Bann Vineyard Church, our long-standing friends. While they were unconventional beginnings, we knew the Spirit was asking us to enter into sacrificial and joy-filled unity together, as a prophetic symbol of what He is doing in the city. Since these beginnings God has been doing beautiful things amongst us as we have grown in depth and numbers. We believe Emmanuel Portadown will mature into another significant resource church, alongside Lurgan, for the city.
Tobar
Nationally, we began to gather further influence and several key relationships were developed. In 2015 we began to recognise the need to put more focus and resource into this growing aspect of our church, and so ‘Tobar’ was formed. ‘Tobar’ is the name that is given to the apostolic outworking of everything we do in Emmanuel Church. Through this we seek to see other churches planted in the nation, and several other churches have begun to covenant together with us in Kingdom relationship, in what we call the 'Tobar Family of Churches'.
We have lived through the most wonderful mountain-top experiences and survived the darkest, most desperate valleys. In it all God has remained faithful and has done exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ever ask or imagine. To Him we give all the honour, glory and praise.
“He who has an ear to hear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Revelation 2:7
