About us

Our story

In 2014 The Bishop of Winchester, The Bishop of Southampton, The Archdeacon of Bournemouth, local Bournemouth clergy and laity in the Deanery Synod, invited HTB in London to plant St Swithun’s Bournemouth led by Tim Matthews.

At the invitation of Bishop Tim Dakin, Tim and Debi Matthews moved from HTB London to Bournemouth. Their task was an experiment: could a new church serve the city, especially younger people who didn’t consider themselves Christian or church goers?

A small team moved in to the empty building at St Swithun’s and began to meet…

The church quickly grew through informal contemporary Sunday services and Alpha, opened a homeless shelter, offered courses to enhance people’s core relationships and began to help those caught in addictions.

Two and a half years in, St Swithun’s joined with St Clement’s in Boscombe to relaunch that site for similar mission to the local area, in partnership with its two church schools.

Learn more about Lovechurch by reading our book!

Our vision

As a community of people following Jesus, we want to be famous for love.

We love God, love people, love life and that’s why we LOVECHURCH.

Our hope is that, together, we will Love God, expressed in passionate worship and prayer, and love the people, and all aspects of life, that he has made. We believe that church (the global family of those who worship and follow Jesus together) is God’s instrument on earth to demonstrate and enact His love for all of creation.

Our mission as a church in Bournemouth, is to accomplish three purposes which we believe are the specific tasks that God has entrusted to us here. These are:

To play our part in the evangelisation of Bournemouth - that means sharing our faith with everyone we know 24/7; the transformation of Bournemouth’s society - this means bringing God’s Kingdom to bear in every sphere of life; the revitalisation of the church - that in every community there is a Spirit-filled, life-giving fellowship of God’s people.