Jesus Fellowship Church

I take this opportunity of saving a record of a baptistic body in the United Kingdom, which appears to now be defunct. The Jesus Fellowship Church, also known as Jesus’ Army, grew out of the Bugbrooke Baptist Church in Northamptonshire. The Bugbrooke Baptist Chapel was built in 1808. The church over the years participated in the Baptist Union of Great Britain and and, much more recently, the Evangelical Alliance. Around 1986, the groups withdrew from the Evangelical Alliance, and was excluded from the Baptist Union of Great Britain over differences in policy and in practice. It appears that this church has ceased to exist, possibly around 2023. See Jesus Fellowship Redress Scheme report for more details. “Worship Time: The Journey Towards the Sacred and the Contemporary Christian Charismatic Movement in England,” a PhD thesis by Esther Elliott, provides an extensive look at this group.

The Jesus Fellowship Church self-described as: “an orthodox Christian group which is reformed, evangelical and Charismatic.” Elliott reports their history, faith, and practice this way:

“As a group it was once a member of the Evangelical Alliance and its activities are frequently mentioned and advertised within the pages of Renewal, a popular magazine of the Charismatic movement. One-time members of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Jesus Fellowship consider themselves to be rooted in the Baptist way of faith and practice. Born out of the congregation of Bugbrooke Baptist Church in Northamptonshire the Jesus Fellowship number their participants to date at approximately two thousand five hundred [circa 1998, rlv]. The Fellowship practise communal living, aggressive evangelism, full immersion baptism, speaking in tongues, foot washing and a weekly Eucharistic rite which they call ‘agape’ or the love feast. They believe in God the Father, Son and Holy spirit, the full divinity of Christ, his atoning death and bodily resurrection, the availability of justification by faith to all, Baptism in the Holy Spirit and believe the bible to be the fully inspired word of God.” (“Worship Time,” Elliott, PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 1999, p 96)

Jesus Fellowship Church is also mentioned in Baptists Around the World edited by Albert W. Wardin, Jr. (Nashville,TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995, pp. 182, 186).