The Conders attend Cornerstone Church in Esher under Pastors Chris and Loraine Demetrio where they met Wendy and Rory who also recently arrived from South Africa and soon, they became good friends and began to work together in Christian Television.

Howard was already making videos and learning how to produce programmes to communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Rory and Wendy had come from a media background.

Next Howard joins Cornerstone Church in Bromley which was led by Pastors Hugh Osgood and Julian Melfi.

Both these two pastors saw that Howard’s vision for starting a Christian Television Network was viable and worthy of exploring. And in faith, they took on Howard to head up what was going to be a new project for their church. They took over the burden of the payments for Howard’s Tv equipment and added more kit and took on Howard as a member of the Cornerstone staff.

Within the first year, Howard had trained up a small production team from within the members of the church, but he soon realised he needed at least another full-time member to work alongside him and he spoke to Rory Alec about coming to work full-time with the Cornerstone Church (Bromley) in the media department.
The first time that Howard spoke to Rory, and his wife Wendy about joining Howard, at Cornerstone Church Bromley, they both said that they weren’t called to Television but had a desire to write and produce films, but Howard tried his hardest to persuade them.
Sometime later, Howard tried one more time and said to the Lord I am not going to force my will on Rory and Wendy, so what will be will be. Without further ado, Rory agreed to join the media team full-time and Wendy part-time.
This worked very well for a few months and then there was a disagreement between Howard, Rory, and Wendy. The bottom line was that Howard offered to resign from Cornerstone and then two men of God spoke into the life of Howard just before he left the Cornerstone Church Media department which confirmed what God’s will was for birthing Christian Television in the UK and that Howard, Rory and Wendy were involved according to the two main Prophecies.

Because Howard could see that these prophecies were for real, he first offered to help Rory and Wendy by producing ShowReels/Promos for their new television channel. It was first called ‘The Christian Channel’ which enabled Rory and Wendy to approach Christian Ministries across the world to invite them onto their new channel but first, they needed to approach Sky to request they take on their very first Christian Channel.
Howard was there at the signing and recalls as the three of them were walking into the Sky building, Wendy said how worried she was, wondering if Sky would sign them up and especially as they didn’t have any money, well that’s another story.
However, Howard said “we were all sitting in one of the executive’s offices and the gentlemen from Sky said”, “you must have a very wealthy father to start this project?” Both Howard and Wendy nodded their heads and said, “Yes we do”. (Meaning our heavenly Father is very wealthy).

It turned out to be a real blessing as Wendy and Rory didn’t have to put a penny down, no upfront payment whatsoever, just monthly payments. Usually, new channels must buy an EPG position on Sky, which can be very expensive, for example when God Tv 2 sold their EPG to Revelation Tv, Revelation Tv paid £100,000 for it plus a monthly cost of £7,000 plus VAT to Sky. Also, you must pay Sky three months in advance.

Rory and Wendy began broadcasting The Christian Channel in 1995.

Signing of the SKY TV agreement with Howard on camera – 1995

It was during this period that the Conders had their fourth child, Bethany who was born in August 1995 at Kingston Hospital. They do have the video somewhere when Rory and Wendy came to visit the newborn in the maternity ward, meanwhile here are a few photos from that special day.

The birth of Bethany was also the period when Howard and Lesley had not long started to foster children for Richmond and Twickenham Social services. More on this to follow at some time in the future, although there are some articles which briefly mention that the Conders fostered around 130 children over a thirteen-year period.

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