Very Early Days 1994 - 2003
London Christian Fellowship origins started as a Salvation Army congregation in 1994 under the name of “EastWind Community Church” planted by Kevin and Cathi Kennelly. For nine years, Eastwind was a vibrant growing missional church that was meeting the spiritual and practical needs of the people in the east end of London Ontario.
New Beginnings 2003 - 2014
London Christian Fellowship still under the leadership of Kevin and Cathi Kennelly started the summer of 2003 as a non-denominational church with support from many friends at New Covenant Ministries International. We met from home to home and park to park. Those early days were exciting as we ventured out exploring what God had in store for us as a church. We were an eclectic bunch of people who simply loved Jesus and loved each other. As we organized we went from meeting in a community hall to spending the next couple of years at the London Public Library in downtown London.
In 2006, London Christian Fellowship found a home at the London Christian Academy where we met and grew for the next couple of years. In 2008, LCFI made a move to an industrial unit on First Street. We quickly outgrew the first unit we occupied and moved to a larger unit until 2011. That year God really challenged LCFI by leading us to move from the comfort of having our own space to once again occupying a school gymnasium and to move to the north end of London where we meet at Masonville Public School.
2013 was a particularly difficult year for LCFI as Kevin Kennelly, while ministering in Asia came down with Acute Pancreatitis. After a month in hospital in Hong Kong, Kevin spent the next 4 months battling the disease that finally took his life on November 14 that year. Kevin has been greatly missed, he was a great father, mentor, spiritual leader and friend. Kevin laid the foundation of a church that loves Jesus and loves each other as a family.
2014 – 2017
In mid 2014 after seeking the Lord in prayer, LCFI moved to a pastoral leadership team model. Under this new structure, the pastoral team included Cathi Kennelly, Jason & Elisabeth Heffren and Jeremy & Katy Males. Under this structure, LCFI continued with the mission to gather people, equip them for ministry and deploy them into God's harvest field. Cathi stepped down from leadership in 2017 and remained an active part of the ministry team at LCFI until 2019.
2017 - Today
LCFI has been on a journey to transitioning to a house church model from the traditional model of church since 2016. The leadership has been making adjustments towards this transition in faithful obedience to the Lord’s leading. As in other movements of God we often don’t always know the why of what we are doing other than that he is asking us to move in a certain direction. In the fall of 2018 the Lord led the leadership to explore the house church “model” further which culminated in members of the leadership team attending the Church Intensive training at Francis Chan’s We Are Church. Through this training the leadership gained a more complete understanding of why we were making the transition other than just obedience and what house church is supposed to look like.
LCFI leadership discovered the most distinctive or important part of We Are Church is not their structure or model but the values that are the basis of what they do, essentially their DNA. These values are the foundation for godly leaders who shepherd godly churches. The leadership of LCFI determined that these values are consistent with our values and have decided to incorporate these values into our current structure.