"We'd had a Christian community house in Manchester, but it had closed down. A committed core held the ground, but for a number of years we found few people who wanted to get involved and fewer still who would stick at it.

“Early in 2005, Chris sensed God saying that we should get together as many people as possible at 11.15am on Sunday mornings and pray for God to send people. Some of us were pretty sceptical about the whole thing, but we did it – partly out of love and respect for Chris. We would stand and join our hands and metaphorically ‘ring a bell’ over the city, calling people tocome to us. We took it seriously – even apologising to God if we were late.

“And people started to come – and carried on coming. We were evangelising, but they weren’t particularly coming through that: they were just turning up! We baptised twenty-fi ve people that year and they’ve carried on coming this year.”

Curby admits, “I’ve learnt my lesson: now we trust God and go with what He is doing. The result is we’re stretched (four leaders and more than sixty people) – but we trust God for that as well. Now we have a vision for Christian community to rise up again in Manchester – and with greater strength than ever before.”