Press Announcement September 2008

Sonrise Church Announcement.

Glenn and Cathy Khan the Senior Pastors of Sonrise Church in Hastings in conjunction with the Trustees of the charity have decided to invoke the 18 month clause in their 5 year lease with Hastings Borough Council for St Mary in the Castle..

This means that at the end of January 2009 they will no longer be the tenants of St Mary in the Castle.

Glenn and Cathy Khan wish to make the following statement:

“ We would like to thank all those who have given us their support and encouragement in the last year of us running St Mary in the Castle. As many in the community would be aware that since January 2007 we have been the subject of a faith hate campaign. So extreme has this campaign against us as a family been that on several occasions we have had to involve the police.

We feel that even though we have proven that we can run St Mary in the Castle very successfully as a community venue for the whole of Hastings we are still not being left alone to enjoy our tenancy of the building.

We are no longer willing to put our family, our home and congregation at risk due to a small minority of people who unfortunately seem to have the support of the local Labour party which saddens and shocks us at the same time. A councillor within the Labour party had published a letter against us with false and incorrect information, which gives our full home address, this has now been placed on the Internet putting our family and us at risk once again.

The Local Labour have never offered us any support except for councillor Godfrey Daniels who helped resolve an issue in regard to the road outside the building, The Labour party do carry a great responsibility in how we have suffered both as a church and as a family. Had they kept to looking at what is best for Hastings and not seen us a pawn to use in their fight with the local Conservative Party we may not have suffered so much.

We were shocked by the hatred we witnessed at the council meeting in January 2007 when our proposal for St Mary in the Castle was discussed. We were personally threatened by members of a local arts group, but we had hoped that as people saw us fulfilling our promises in regard to keeping St Mary in the Castle open to the public this would abate, this is clearly not the case.

From a Christian perspective we choose to forgive those who have attacked so often in the last year and half and hold no malice against them, in fact we would ask that God would bless them.

St Mary in the Castle is a unique building that we saw had great potential for us and the community and that’s why we presented a full business plan to Hastings Borough Council at the end of 2006.

We believe we have fulfilled all our aims in that business plan, including opening it up as a Community and Arts Centre, Art Gallery and Coffee Bar, with Church Services being held on Sundays.

We would hope who ever the new tenants are after we leave, they would continue to make St Mary in the Castle available to everyone in Hastings.

We would again like to thank all those who have given us their support and encouragement and all the local churches who stood with us in prayer.”

Glenn and Cathy Khan
Senior Pastors
Sonrise Church