About

Discovery Ministries

Discovery Ministries exists to help people realise their place in the Kingdom of God through music, teaching and storytelling at concerts, services, church events and retreats. 

As Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of Kings to discover it.”  That tells us that God wants us to do a bit of Biblical archaeology, to ask questions, to seek and find, to knock on the door and expect it to be opened.  The great commission in Matthew 28 is to make disciples, not just believers. And God is glorified as we seek to be his disciples, finding out more about who he is, and who we are in him.

David & Melanie Churchyard

David and Melanie have been sharing their faith and encouraging fellow pilgrims on their journeys with Jesus for more than 35 years, during which time they have both been church elders, PCC members, homegroup leaders, worship leaders, and run Alpha Courses and Bible studies.  They have led retreat weeks at Ashburnham Place and led worship at Spring Harvest’s Le Pas Opton holidays in France.  

For about 12 years they were actively involved in their church in Eastbourne where Melanie was also Church Manager and Assistant Treasurer and David was Director of Music and a lay preacher.  They led worship together for most Sunday morning services and many evening services for several years.  In his spare time David has written and recorded many songs, a stage-musical, a pantomime which is becoming a children’s book, several murder-mystery plays and drama scripts, and even presented the occasional Sunday show on a local radio station.   

Melanie is the CEO of Childs Charitable Trust, a grant-making trust supporting organisations which actively share the Christian gospel both in the UK and overseas, and she is also the Administrator and a Trustee for the Stuart Hine Trust. Between several music and writing projects, and a lot of gardening, David provides copyright expertise to Praise Trust and administrative support to the Christian Music Publishers Association.  He is also a Trustee for the Stuart Hine Trust.  David was previously the charity manager at Quicken Trust, which seeks to transform the lives of people living in poverty in the Ugandan village of Kabubbu, and prior to that was the UK Operations Manager for CCLI.

We Were On The Radio

The Screaming Donkeys

The Screaming Donkeys is the name under which our family band performs but, if you’re thinking ‘von Trapp’… don’t.  We play infrequently, with the help of friends who augment the band, for parties and social events or for services and carol concerts.  During the pandemic lockdowns we recorded over 80 songs and music videos for our church’s online services. Some of these videos are still available on YouTube.  We have also made a couple of CDs.  Find out more on the Music page.  

In December ’23 the Screaming Donkeys played a couple of ‘Celebration of Christmas’ gigs. They were great fun and well received.

Yesterday evening was amazing in so many ways. What a talented family, quite incredible, so much skill and enthusiasm. It was wonderful to have an event like that not in one of the churches. Such a mix of people came who were all able to share the Christmas story and sing heartily, but I doubt would come to church.

Julie, Milverton, UK.

Following a gig we did with Garth Hewitt, he commented on how pleased he was that he could now add to his résumé ‘I played with the Screaming Donkeys’.

Our Christmas album, Carmina Laetitiae, can now be found on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and the usual streaming platforms.

The Story Of My Father’s House

The seed for My Father’s House was sown back in the early 1990’s.  Friends of ours were going through a traumatic time and they really needed a place to get away from things, but there was nowhere local and costs were prohibitive.  So, the seed was planted that perhaps one day we would be able to offer Christians a place of escape, refreshment and perhaps the chance to reconnect with God, without them necessarily having to worry about the cost.  Retreat is too grand a word – we don’t offer any formal schedule or itinerary.  We simply want to be able to offer a place to ‘be’.

In the intervening years, which included a move from Somerset to Eastbourne in 1999, we have tested the waters a number of times, and a few family members and close friends have prayed with us.  But the answer was always ‘not yet’.  That was until the summer of 2018 when David took voluntary redundancy from his work at CCLI.  It’s fair to say we felt totally at peace about that decision.  We didn’t know what God was planning but we felt sure it was right for David to leave a role he had enjoyed for nearly 20 years.  

One of the readings we were given at that time was from Isaiah 46:4 “Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”   We wondered if this was the right time to pursue the retreat idea and, in June 2019, we found a place in Cumbria.  A beautiful old ten-bedroom vicarage in need of complete renovation.  Not in a position to do anything at the time, we just kept watching the house online and praying.  A daily reading at that time was from John 14:1-3, “Do not let our hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s House has many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” Given the number of rooms the old vicarage had, the verse seemed apt and, even if nothing else came of it, we decided that the name of the project should be My Father’s House.

In the September we found out that the house in Cumbria had sold.  Melanie’s daily devotion that day said, “We might not understand God’s plan at the moment, but his plan is always superior to ours.” So, although disappointed, we were still reassured that God was in control.

Back To Somerset?

In December 2019, quite unexpectedly, David’s dad died. David inherited one third of his house and we began to consider whether we should relocate ourselves back to Somerset.  The day we travelled to Somerset for the funeral, Melanie’s daily reading was again John 14 1-3, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s House has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?”.  The irony was not lost on us.  If we bought the house in Somerset then the project would be literally ‘My Father’s House’. 

The house was much too small for what we had in mind, so it would need renovation and extension.  It would likely cost a lot, but the plot is a third of an acre so we could extend and still retain a really good-sized garden.

As we thought and pondered what we should do over the coming weeks, one of the readings that we had in church was Genesis 28:20, “Then Jacob made a vow saying ‘If God will be with me on this journey I am taking and will watch over me and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.’”

We decided to proceed with the purchase of the house in Somerset and set about getting an architect to draw up plans to extend the little two-bed bungalow into a five-bed house with separate office and music room.  The architect was confident we could do what we needed within our seemingly small budget.  This would mean we could retain our house in East Sussex and our grown-up kids could stay there.  We thought that would be a perfect plan.  It turns out our architect was very wrong where costs were concerned, even before the price of materials escalated.

Lockdown

In March 2020, the pandemic lockdown kicked in and lots of things ground to a halt.  We were feeling frustrated because we wanted to press on, but in June were encouraged by a daily reading from Habakkuk 2:3, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.”  David’s dad had also given us this verse back in 2007 at a time when we were ‘testing the waters’ for creating a retreat.

At that time, another daily devotional spoke of having a ‘quiet place to meet with God’.  The Celtic tradition calls this ‘a thin place’ where the veil between this world and Heaven seems porous.  That same day Melanie came across a letter she’d had from David’s mother written in 2006, just three months before she died.  She’d written about how much she treasured the times we’d spent chatting and praying in the front room at the house in Somerset.  We decided that, whatever happened with the house renovations, we would try to keep the original fireplace in that room and make it a ‘thin place to meet with God’.   Virtually everything else in the old house is gone, save for a few walls, doors and some roof tiles, but the fireplace remains in situ. 

We couldn’t get to the building site due to the lockdown restrictions, but on 21 June 2020 Melanie read from Joshua 1:3, “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses.”  The exciting thing about this reading is that it’s in the past tense. God has already done it.  He says wherever your foot treads I have given it to you.  We were not to worry about the planning permission, or probate, or the registering of the property  – God was going before us. He had already given us the land.

Daniel’s Seventy Weeks

On 29^th October 2020, Melanie was on day 17 of a 40-day prayer challenge and also day 277 of a ‘read the bible in a year’ programme.  Both readings for that day were from Daniel 9 where Daniel is praying about how much longer Israel must remain exiled in Babylon.  The angel Gabriel visited Daniel and announced, “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.”   Melanie was praying about My Father’s House and wondering when the building work might be finished.  Given the fact that both readings were the same for this particular day, perhaps it was an indication that God was giving us a timeframe of seventy sevens from that day.  A quick calculation brought us to 3^rd March 2022.   This date seemed a very long way off.  Could we be sure it was right?  Having checked it again, there was a realisation that this would have been David’s dad’s birthday!  Melanie says “This actually gave me goosebumps.  We really felt God was giving us more confirmation to go ahead with the project.”

By the time the plans were drawn up, planning permission applied for and builders’ quotes in, it was clear to us that, reluctantly, we were going to have to sell our house in East Sussex to fund the build.  So, at the beginning of March 2021, we put the house on the market.   Strangely, David’s hairdresser had always said she wanted to live in our house, so we asked her if she wanted to buy it.  It turns out she was in the process of selling her house and, within two weeks of us deciding to sell, we’d accepted an offer from her.  This was great because we saved on estate agent fees and our buyers benefitted from a Stamp Duty ‘holiday’.  God’s timing was perfect. 

We met with the builders in April ’21 and they told us their start date would likely be the end of July, but then the job they were scheduled to do first got stalled, so they asked if they could begin sooner.  Of course, we were delighted and as lockdown restrictions had eased a little, we were able to make a visit to the house for their first day on site.  That was 17th May 2021.

We moved to Somerset in June 2021 and stayed with family throughout most of the build.  We thought it would be for 3 or 4 months based on the builder’s estimates, but it was ten months later that we finally moved out and into our new home.  We’ve seen Grand Designs, so we weren’t really surprised.

Summing Up

That year was fascinating, exhilarating and terrifying, each in equal measure.  One of the challenges of lockdown was that building materials doubled or tripled in cost.  We have been properly stretched.  And yet, every tradesman that we’ve had to deal with (and there have been a lot!) has been great and they have all said how much they have enjoyed working on the site.  We have loved watching it progress.  This doesn’t mean there haven’t been issues during our own ‘Grand Designs’ project, but it really does feel that God’s hand has been on the project from the start.

So, what about that date of 3^rd March 2022.  Melanie says, “Well, I know I shouldn’t have been, but I was amazed when at the close of the working day on 2^nd March 2022, David came to tell me that the builders had told him they had finished.  This was odd, because there were still a lot of tidy-ups and snags to fix, but essentially, in their view, the build was complete.”

God’s perfect timing.  The God who knows the end from the beginning, had his hand on the build.  We spent the next few months painting and decorating the entire house.  It was exhausting and expensive.  

Our possessions finally came out of storage on 20^th April 2022 and shortly afterwards Melanie’s parents relocated here from East Sussex.  A year later and the lawn was, at last, laid in the back garden, finally removing any hint that we’ve been living on a building site for a long time.

It has been a long road and our lives have certainly changed in the last few years, but we feel sure God is walking with us and guiding us.  We’ve been told by lots of people that the space is greatly needed and will be well used.  We’re excited to see how God will use us and My Father’s House in the years ahead.