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The Light Project is a bunch of people across the UK have a heart to demonstrate and relate the most amazing message of all time to our generation: the good news of Jesus.

We are based in Chester and Cambridgeshire and run a variety of evangelistic projects from outreach to people who are homeless to evangelism courses, from schools work to street art, from city centre chaplaincy to youth clubs, from preaching to urban festivals. Over the past 12 years we have grown to encompass work with over 30 churches with 40 projects.

We were founded in 2000 by Chris Duffett, an evangelist who has a vision that every person in the UK should have an opportunity to connect with the good news of Jesus.

We long for the gospel to be seen and heard all over the UK, we are part of a movement that believes the news we have is worth sharing! As well as a growing team of evangelists who are exploring relevant ways to be the light to the world we train people via a gap year or our Foundation Degree in Theology and Evangelism, accredited by the University of Chester.

“I am still in some aftershock at the impression that it made on me, hugely impressive. The network of the churches, the scale of the project, the atmosphere within the building and the clear commitment to excellence, godliness, evangelism and mission were really outstanding, in my opinion”
The Rt Revd Keith Sinclair, the Bishop of Birkenhead

Who’s behind it?

The Light Project in Chester is led by Gill Reeve and Glyn Jones. The team in Chester forms a small cohesive group seeking to find out what a follower of Jesus looks like in the 21st century: we run a host of mission and evangelism projects and run the foundation degree course in Theology and Evangelism. Both Gill and Glyn are keen academic theologians and enjoy devising new ways to put across good news with the team and churches in Chester.

Chris Duffett, the founder of The Light Project. When Christians take to the streets to spread the gospel it’s often unpopular. But Chris Duffett is no ordinary evangelist.

Chris has been ministering in city centres across the north of England for 16 years. But rather than proclaiming “the end is near” on street corners, Chris says he just wants to love people. For Chris, an average day may involve anything from dishing out free hugs to engaging in some prophetic art.

Chris’s book Smackheads and Fatcats outlines a new vision for evangelism. The inspiration for the book came after Chris met a drug addict. “I prayed for someone who people would call a ‘smackhead’. I prayed with him because I thought he was going to die. He’d taken a bad hit of heroin, and I saw God heal him in front of my eyes. It changed my life and his life. I saw Simon recently and he still talks about that experience when a wave of love came over him and he got better. Remarkably he’s still not a Christian but he believes God healed him.”

Chris’ new book, Big Hearted  looks at what it means to serve a big hearted God and what it means to be big hearted Church. The book is all about going to the least, the lost and the last. It’s about going to those who haven’t heard or experienced the good news of Jesus plus loads of ideas of how to do that as church”.  The book co-incides with the “Big Hearted Tour” to all 13 associations of the Baptist Union to help local churches with various evangelistic projects.