the story so far
The Well is a Christian faith community and church founded in 2015.
We are a church for the whole of Sheffield and beyond, with a particular heart for life around Ecclesall Road, which is an intersection between students, young adults, businesses, the poor and young families.
What we have in common is a passion for Jesus, His presence and purposes, and a passion for our city. We’re a community that’s learning what it means to follow Jesus and share what we find with the diverse expressions of culture around us. Our heart is to build a relationship with you – whatever your situation in life.
We’re a people taking deliberate steps towards the kind of community we know we can all become: full of vision, dreaming and expectation. We aim to treat people according to their destiny, not their history. That means this is a great church for those who do not yet know God in Sheffield, or who aren’t confident to navigate the ‘right’ way to ‘do church’ on a Sunday. Instead, you’ll receive a genuinely warm welcome and some good coffee.
The Well Sheffield began in spring 2015, when around 25 friends and family, led by Nick & Marjorie Allan, responded to God’s call to establish a new faith community in Sheffield. With a shared history and a common vision, we set out to plant a church that would reach the unchurched, rooted in our identity in God, committed to discipleship to Jesus, and open to the power of the Holy Spirit.
From the beginning, our dream was simple but bold: that the strong sense of community and family we experienced together would multiply into a church where the presence and power of Jesus were central. Hungry for authentic New Testament Christianity, we stepped out in faith.
2015
#OpenTheWell
God led us to the former Methodist church building on Ecclesall Road, a place with a history of discipleship and healing dating back to the early 1900s. It felt like the perfect meeting point of people, calling, and place. As we prayed, painted, ate puddings, and worshipped, we began to receive prophetic words about ‘unblocking old wells and digging new ones’ (Genesis 26:15–22).
Becoming a Baptist church was a great fit, and the national Baptist family offered us strong support.
The Well Sheffield Baptist Church publicly launched on 20 September 2015 with a street party and a packed worship service of about 200 people. From that day forward, parties and celebrations have remained central to our culture! Almost every Sunday since, we have welcomed new people—those new to faith, returning after time away from church, and Christians sensing God’s call to join our community.
A pivotal moment came in 2016 when the building was put up for sale. Against the odds, and competing with major businesses, we placed the winning bid through sacrificial generosity, persistent prayer, and the support of the Baptist Union and Yorkshire Baptist Association. That miracle became a defining marker of our faith culture: “For with God nothing is impossible” (Luke 1:37).
Inspiring 1902 vision and fundraising document for the original Endcliffe Methodist building.
From launch to lockdown, we grew by around 100 people each year. Ministries for children, youth, and students quickly emerged, fuelled by an “all hands on deck” spirit of volunteering. We sought to engage and serve the city, joining in with local community activities and charities and the ministries of existing churches, hence our tag line “Serving Sheffield since 2015”.
Community groups sprang up across Sheffield and beyond: places of friendship, faith, food, and mission. Some grew into new church expressions in areas including Dronfield, Upperthorpe, Woodseats & Greenhill.
From day one, The Well has been a missional church. Teams in Well T-shirts have often taken to the streets offering prayer, sharing the gospel, and giving out Bibles. We rejoice that many have since found faith in Jesus and been baptised.
We’ve always had a significant focus on worship and prioritising the presence of God. We are perhaps most clearly defined by our passionate spirituality. Many people have encountered Jesus simply by hearing the music or by experiencing God in our times of worship.
Every ministry, missional activity, staff time and gathering starts with testimonies, prayer and listening to God, and our regular Furnace weeks of 24/7 Prayer have often preceded significant breakthrough in the life of the church and mission.
After lockdown we received a prophetic sense that “new wineskins” were coming. We responded by committing to our Thursday Prayer Meeting which has grown in popularity ever since.
In 2024 members of our worship team began to song-write collaboratively, which led to the birth of The Well Collective who launched their first worship album in September 25.
Training believers in whole-hearted discipleship to Jesus has always been at the heart of The Well.
The vision is that all our people would take responsibility to be a disciple who raises disciples. Together we are learning simply to BE with Jesus in His word and Spirit, to BECOME like Him, and to DO what Jesus did.
Over the past decade The Well Sheffield has authored and run regular training courses, such as: Bible Basics, Father’s Heart, Naturally Supernatural, Evangelism Bootcamp, Dreams to Reality, Holy Habits, Intercession, Safeguarding and Mental-Health Awareness.
It is the ‘apostolic’ nature of The Well Sheffield that we provide a space for folk to follow their God-given callings, for a leadership pipeline to be formed, and for people to be trained and supported to start new initiatives and ministries for the sake of the city. We’re proud to have called, invested in, and helped to train 5 new Baptist Ministers in recent years, all of whom are in church leadership today.
A Church Family & Missional Movement
People of every age, life-stage and cultural background continue to find a place of belonging and purpose at The Well. It’s exciting how we’ve developed into a multi-cultural community. We celebrate this in many ways, such as our ‘All Nations’ Sundays and food fayres, our street parties, weekends away, and fun at festival times, like our city-renowned carol services, and the newly popular ‘Beer and Carols’!
We are an all-age church family, with a clear call to invest in younger generations. Kids and youth work, students and young adults ministries have been key to our growth and fruitfulness for the past decade. In 2025, we’re still welcoming numbers of young people who are hungry to encounter God, and we each have a role to play in discipling them.
Multiplication
At the opening service of The Well in September 2015, we heard prophetically that our new church plant would go on to plant churches, who would plant even more churches.
In 2021 ‘The Well at Woodseats’ began to gather publicly as a growing community. We supported and journeyed alongside our dear friends in this church plant, discerning that January 2025 was the right time to mark the launch of a new autonomous Baptist church. Now re-named as ‘The Ark’, in time, we believe they too will develop to become a resourcing and planting church, and expressions of this have already begun.
We’d love to get to know you. Pop in or get in touch!
Together, we are committed to ‘go’ and raise new disciples, who will imitate Jesus in His words, works and wonders, in everyday life.
That’s the movement of missionary disciples that Jesus began… we call it ‘church’.
