Church planting in Suffolk
Graham Jack (third on the left) with his family, including his father, Victor (right)
Graham Jack grew up watching his father lead people to faith across East Anglia. Now, decades later, he is back where it all began – replanting a church on a Bury St Edmunds estate and trusting God to do it again.
Graham Jack’s earliest memories of mission involve a caravan.
His father Victor is a Counties evangelist, and Graham spent many summers of his childhood travelling throughout East Anglia, watching people come to faith in his father’s mission tent. It was on one of those trips, aged nine, that faith became his own. He had been listening to a sermon on sin and forgiveness and realised, with a child’s clarity, that there was much he wanted forgiveness for – mainly fighting with his brothers. That night, in the caravan, he asked God to forgive his sins.
When he woke the next morning, something had changed. Graham felt an inner glow – something he likens to the old Ready Brek adverts. “I always believed,” he says. “But that was the moment I knew Jesus was my Saviour.”
Graham grew up in the small village of Drinkstone, not far from Bury St Edmunds, raised by two Christian parents alongside his two younger brothers. He laughs recalling his teenage years, when he grew tired of being compared to his father. “I remember saying to him when I was seventeen: Dad, I will never, ever preach.” It is a line that makes him laugh now – because of course, that is exactly what he went on to do.
From the farm to the field
First, though, came farming. Graham worked the land for a number of years before the call to mission came one day while he was out on his tractor. “I was listening to a song – I want to serve the purpose of God in my generation – and I just sensed what God wanted me to do.
Graham went on to study at Moorlands College, where his interest in mission was catalysed. He still remembers a week of street preaching in Scarborough – a task many of his fellow students found daunting, but which came naturally to him. “I caught on fire with the opportunities,” he recalls.
What followed was several years of international mission – in Nepal, India, Romania, and then with OM’s Ship Ministry – a pivotal period in which he came to know who he was and his deep desire to help people come to faith.
It wasn’t until 2010 that he returned to the UK, following the loss of his mother. He completed a Masters in community and discipleship and began working with Bridge Community Church in Bury St Edmunds, just miles from where he had grown up. It was during this period that he met his wife, Caroline. The couple went on to have two children together, later adopting their third and youngest child.
A church born on the doorstep
Graham’s current work in Bury St Edmunds is a replant of a church that first opened in 2015 on the Westley estate – rooted in one family’s willingness to open their home.
Over several years, Graham and Caroline built connections on the nearby Priors estate, a neighbourhood marked by addiction, family breakdown, and an entrenched sense of hopelessness. Then they met Jess* – a young woman struggling with severe addiction. They opened their home to her, supporting her as she built a life away from addiction and gently guiding her towards faith. Then Jess introduced them to a friend. And then another. One life touched became many – and out of those relationships, Bridge Community Church Westley was planted in April 2015.
The congregation navigated the pandemic with difficulty, and attendance dropped significantly in its wake.
Now, Graham is looking to rebuild – returning to his roots in mission and returning to Counties as part of that. “I’m thrilled to be rejoining such a familiar organisation,” he says.
Praying for Westley
Graham asks Ignite readers to pray for two things: that God might raise up a movement of disciples through the Westley plant – people equipped to share the Gospel with their own families, friends and neighbours – and for wisdom and grace as he finds his feet again with Counties.
The passage that has carried Graham through this season of change is Psalm 68:5–6: “Father to the fatherless, defender of widows – this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy.”
For Graham, it is not merely a favourite verse. It is a description of everything he has watched God do on one estate in Bury St Edmunds – and a promise of what he might yet do.
*not her real name
To find out more about Counties’ church planting work, visit: countiesuk.org/church-planting. If you would like to Church Plant with Counties please email ceo@countiesuk.org