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Zac’s Place is a church in Swansea. It is a small chaotic community of Jesus followers where the most fragile of life’s walking wounded try to work out their faith, because they quite simply wouldn’t fit anywhere else. It’s also the spiritual home for the local chapter of the motorcycle club God’s Squad. Zac’s Place was founded in 1998 and for nearly twenty years has been led by Sean Stillman – a “painfully shy, nervous preacher’s kid” – whose front-line ministry, at Zac’s Place and on the road, has cost him dearly, including physical beating. In Zac’s Place, chaos and disorder sit alongside community and grace in an environment that sometimes resembles an AA meeting mixed with a casualty department.
This is Sean’s personal story of a transformed faith alongside the broken, the story of the church he started and the European-wide growth of an unlikely bunch of biker missionaries. The thread that will run through it is the ‘greater righteousness’ that Christ was looking for – what can happen when our concern for the perfect performance is stripped bare and replaced with poverty of spirit.
Sean Stillman works in Christian ministry primarily among those many consider to be far removed from many church cultures.
Much of Sean’s work has been among fringe groups including biker communities and associated groups, where he has operateed in both a missional and a chaplaincy role – a role which has been hard earned over many years and many miles on the road.
His work has also given him opportunities of speaking in mission gatherings, prisons and in a wide variety of mainstream churches throughout the UK and overseas – including Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine, Finland, Germany, USA and Holland. He was a regular contributor at Spring Harvest for many years and has previously been an associate of Youth for Christ and a supported missionary of Baptist churches in his hometown of Reading and also Swansea. Aspects of his work have been widely covered in the press over the years, including ‘The Guardian’, ‘The Independent’, BBC1, CH4, Scottish TV, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio Wales and he has worked in conjunction with HTV on a TV series.
Having been in Christian ministry since 1988, he was ordained in November 2002, by Rev. Dr. John Smith and the leadership of St. Martins, in Melbourne, Australia, with whom he and Exousia Trust have had a long association. Sean has also been an Associate Missioner for Fresh Expressions.
