A Christian Bank’s Biggest Loan Ever: £1 Million to Build a 650-Seat Church Topped With Flats

• Kingdom Bank lent £1 million, its largest loan ever, to Dundonald Church
• The Wimbledon building has a 650-seat auditorium, meeting rooms and offices
• Flats in the scheme are for private sale, with profits supporting homeless services
• Christian housing charity Green Pastures acted as developer

A small Christian bank made the biggest loan in its 60-plus-year history to help a London church finish a new home, Premier Christian News reported on 18 June 2021. Kingdom Bank lent £1 million to Dundonald Church in Wimbledon, south-west London.

The project, which began in December 2020 and was due to open in September 2021, includes a 650-seat main auditorium, meeting rooms, a youth club games area and offices. It also includes residential flats for private sale, with profits from those sales going to support homeless services in the area. The development was delivered by Green Pastures, a Christian housing charity founded in 1999. Dundonald is part of the Co-mission church planting network.

Kingdom Bank chief executive Paul Houghton said: “It’s a major project in southwest London and something that we’re able to back and support and it’s exactly the kind of thing that we want to be doing as Kingdom Bank.” He added a note of realism: “We’d love to be doing more lending at that kind of level. But clearly, that’s not the average church that will need to borrow and is in the position to borrow a million pounds.”

Houghton said the bank had been little known but that new ownership by a group of evangelical investors now allowed it to “support churches in a way that we’ve never done before.” Green Pastures said it had been “a delight” to develop the project alongside the Dundonald team.

The model is worth noting: rather than simply borrowing against a building, the church combined worship space with homes whose sale helps fund both the project and a social mission. Mixed-use schemes like this can make expensive urban sites work for congregations that could never afford them otherwise.

For Jamaican churches planning building projects, and for diaspora congregations in the UK, the lesson is that specialist lenders and faith-based housing partners exist, and that a well-designed scheme can pay part of its own way. The key is a clear plan, professional development support and a realistic view of how much debt a congregation can carry.

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