NORTHERN Ireland's first Living Faith Community Church is to open in west Belfast in April.
The Pentecostal church will be situated on the site of the former St Luke's Church of Ireland on Northumberland Street, between the Shankill and the Falls.
Senior pastor Yvonne Hale moved from her native Australia four years ago to set up the church, having felt there was a need in Belfast.
She said: "The city has one of the highest suicide rates for young people and has seen a lot of war and division.
"We want to help people and hope to set up counselling and training programmes as well as providing food banks and support for homeless people.
"We see it as a community church where people can come and worship and get help too if they need it."
The small congregation, which Ms Hale hopes will continue to grow, has so far been meeting at the church for regular prayer meetings and in home groups.
"Some of them are people who had not been to church in a while and wanted to come back and others joined us because their Protestant churches had closed down," she said.
The pastor stressed that Living Faith Global, as the Belfast church will be known, has no connection whatsoever to Bishop David Oyedepo of Nigeria or his churches as stated in a previous story in the Irish News last May.
"It has been very stressful because we are trying to create something positive here and a place where people can come to be nurtured and ministered to on their own level.
"A lot of people's problems are caused by isolation and not being able to connect with each other. We want to come with the true love of the Gospel and help people become part of a bigger family."
The Belfast church is covered by Living Faith Community Church in Perth, western Australia.
There are 600 Living Faith churches worldwide, mostly in poverty-stricken countries.
