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Our Story
Stour Valley Vineyard Church started in 2007.
Andrew and Emma Stewart-Darling pioneered this church plant when they felt called to the market town of Sudbury. Stepping out in faith, they started having church in their living room with a handful of people who loved Jesus. The church grew, started the towns first foodbank and marched on through the pandemic.
Joel and Kady came on the scene in 2021 when the Lord started stirring in their hearts for “more of the Holy Spirit” - although at the time, neither of them knew what that meant! Coming out of the conservative evangelical tradition, Joel and Kady were unfamiliar with the gifts of the spirit and disagreed with them in principle. However, the stirrings intensified, and both felt that there had to be more to God than what they knew.
As they pressed into prayer, both felt the Lord was calling them out of their current church in California in order to move across the Atlantic with their 4 children, to the UK! After one illuminated step at a time, things gradually began to be revealed. The faith journey became more and more intense and the Lord kept coming through.
After much prayer, discernment and higher level interviewing, Andrew and Emma felt confirmed that Joel and Kady were the right successors for SVV. In November 2021, the baton was passed to Joel and Kady to take on the next chapter of the church.
Since then, Joel and Kady have been pressing into all things of the Holy Spirit, including the prophetic, healing and deliverance. They spent a summer following Steve Nicholson around the UK learning as much as they could in ways of partnering with the Holy Spirit and “doing the stuff”. They are passionate to equip and teach others all they have learned so far and would love to see the church understand her authority in Jesus, and the power that each follower of Jesus has as a kingdom ambassador in His name. Worship and prayer are top priorities for Joel and Kady, and if they could sum up the goal of SVV’s Sundays, it would be ‘encounter and transformation’.