Melville is a great place with wonderful people and an incredible vibe, but it's also a place where churches have struggled to establish themselves over the years. Some ten churches have closed in the past decade, and another six church plants have started and collapsed (often within eighteen months) in that same time frame. In late 2001 Sean and Monica Callaghan, part of the Hillside church eldership team at the time, felt God calling them to plant a church in Melville. In May 2002 Melville Junction was started with one other couple from Hillside Church - Paul and Rebecca Rouillard - and a group of dedicated Melville locals. As we were planting God spoke clearly to us out of Nehemiah and tasked us with restoring the “burned stones” in and around Melville - those people who, for whatever reason, had found themselves outside or on the fringes of the church community feeling hurt, jaded and wary of excesses and extremes they had encountered previously.

Our first meeting space was a dance studio on Main Road. The glass walls meant that everyone driving past could see what we were doing and we competed with the noise of the traffic and Roxy’s Rhythm Bar just across the road. The car guards outside sold drugs while watching our cars and the Sunday School met in a room between the dance studio and the adult store next door. What a great place to be the church! We lasted about a year in the glass box before it was sold and we were given a week’s notice to find somewhere else to meet. We began renting a beautiful, red-brick Gereformeerde Church building on 1st Avenue. This was our home for several years, but in February 2007 we were able to buy our own property, an old Herformde Church building right up against the Melville Koppies.

In early 2006 Sean and Monica felt that God was calling them to hand over the leadership of Melville Junction and move on. So, in February 2007 they handed the church over to Paul and Rebecca and moved to London where they have joined Greenwich Vineyard Church.

As Paul and Rebecca took over the reins they heard God speaking to them out of Isaiah 54, and specifically around a transition from working with burned stones to building with precious stones. Melville Junction was planted with a strong desire to see the burned stones restored and we have seen God do an incredible work of healing and restoration in and through this church. As we move forward into the next phase in Melville Junction's history we believe God's command to us is to "enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes," which comes with the incredible promise that "you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities" (Isaiah 54:2-3). So we're in the process of enlarging the place of our tent and shouting for joy, confident that as we do that God will fulfil his promise to build his church as a resplendent, glorious city on a hill (Isaiah 54:11-13).

That's our story so far, but there is much, much more happening in the life of Melville Junction. This web site will give you an idea of what's happening and where we're going, but the best way to find out what God is doing in and through us is to come along and see.