Registered Charity No 327271

Plumbline Ministries is headed up by Simon Matthews along with his core team and currently oversees 17 churches in the UK and Republic of Ireland, along with a number of ministries and outreaches all over the world.

The seed for Plumbline ministries was sown on 29 September 1969 at around 9.00 pm when Simon came to the Lord as a 15-year-old in a meeting led by the evangelist Don Double.  By the time he was 17, Simon was regularly preaching and knew that God was calling him to full-time ministry.  Leaving his secular job at the age of 18 to work for Good News Crusade as a trainee evangelist, Simon went ‘on the road’ in Britain and overseas, preaching in churches, schools and missions and leading youth weekends, seeing thousands of young people making commitments to follow Jesus.  In 1977 Simon married Julia and they continued in ministry together.

In the early 1980s a dissatisfaction began to arise in Simon and Julia despite seeing good fruit from their travelling ministry.  There were so many young people on fire for God, but so few churches that could lead and encourage them to reach their full potential in God.  The firstfruits of Plumbline emerged at this time as Simon developed a vision for church planting and development.  In 1984 Simon and Julia felt God calling them to leave their role with Good News Crusade and to relocate to East Anglia in order to concentrate on church planting and building.

And so Plumbline Ministries was born.

Simon had been ministering for some time into a Church of England youth group under the leadership of Dick and Jean Jennings in Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire.  Dick and Jean felt called in 1982 to establish a house church – Hemingford Grey Christian Fellowship – and they called on Simon and Julia to help develop this work.  Moving in 1985 with their young family to Huntingdon, Simon and Julia thus created an apostolic based from where a vision could take shape based around “Jerusalem, Judea and to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1.8).  Key people were quickly added to this work, Huntingdonshire Community Church was born, and other church plants soon began to take place.  Simon felt a call to lead this new church and so he took over as Senior Leader from Dick Jennings and began to grow not only a local fellowship but the Plumbline Ministries’ vision across the region and the globe.

From the base in Huntingdonshire Community Church, a number of other works and churches were planted out.  Many churches now belong to the Plumbline family, either through having been ‘given birth’ by Simon and Julia, or by later ‘adoption’ into the family. Some of these, such as Kingsgate Community Church, developed rapidly and have ‘grown up’ and left the ‘family business’ to establish their own work, whilst retaining links and relationship with Simon and Julia.

Plumbline also provides a covering within the ‘family home’ to a number of para-church ministries, which both feed into churches and are fed by them.  This dovetailing of local churches and local, national or international ministries is a key aspect of the uniqueness of the Plumbline family and Simon and Julia’s vision to release individuals, ministries and churches into their God-given destinies.

After 23 years as Senior Pastor of Huntingdonshire Community Church, Simon passed on the leadership in 2009 and now focuses full-time on the wider apostolic ministry of Plumbline Ministries.  A key part of the future vision is a prophetic word that God gave him a short while ago of ‘777’ – developing 7 key people in 7 networks of ministries in 7 parts of the world.  Some of what this entails is already clear, but much is yet to be revealed and developed.

The future is exciting for Plumbline Ministries as it continues to develop in “Jersualem, Judea and to the uttermost ends of the earth”.