What's New on Kingdom Connect — Spring 2026 Update
It's been a busy month behind the scenes here at Kingdom Connect, and we're absolutely delighted to share what's been built, improved, and launched since the start of March. From a brand new Ministry & Charity Directory to venues for hire, a community prayer wall, and the ability to shape the platform with your own votes — there's quite a lot to get through. Grab a brew, and let's go.
🏛️ The Ministry & Charity Directory
This is the big one. Kingdom Connect now has a full third-tier directory specifically for UK Christian ministries, charities, para-church organisations, and mission agencies. It sits alongside our existing churches and events directories, and it's been built with the same care for quality and verification that you'd expect.
Whether it's a food bank in Bradford, a prison ministry in Bristol, an overseas mission agency based in London, or a national Christian media organisation — if it's genuinely serving the UK church, there's now a home for it here.
This feature was upvoted by a member of the community on our roadmap board, and we built it. That's exactly how Kingdom Connect is supposed to work — more on that below.
What the directory includes
- Organisation types — Charity, Ministry, Para-church, and Mission Agency, each clearly labelled
- Focus areas — 15 categories including homelessness, food banks, youth work, children & families, overseas mission, evangelism, prison ministry, addiction recovery, mental health, social justice, and more
- UK regions — Filter by region, or mark as operating nationally
- Charity Commission verification — For registered charities in England & Wales, we cross-reference charity numbers directly
- Full contact & engagement info — Email, phone, website, social media, volunteer URLs, and donation links — all with privacy controls over what's shown publicly
- Photo gallery — A main image plus a full gallery for each listing
- Related events — Events can be linked directly to a ministry listing, so followers can see what's coming up
You can browse the directory at kingdomconnect.uk/ministries. Submitting a listing is free, and every submission is manually reviewed before going live. Ministry leaders can also claim their listing to take ownership and keep it up to date themselves.
🏠 Venues for Hire
Churches have a lot of space. Space that often sits empty on weekday mornings, or quiet Tuesday afternoons. Kingdom Connect now has a Venues for Hire section — a searchable directory of church halls, meeting rooms, and community spaces across the UK that are available to book.
Whether you're looking for a space for a small group, a local training day, a community project, or a mid-week meeting, you can now search by location, filter by capacity, and find somewhere suitable with a direct booking request. Each venue listing includes photos, a description, facilities info, accessibility details, and transparent pricing.
If you manage a church building and would like to list your space, it's straightforward to get set up. Visit kingdomconnect.uk/places/venues to browse or list.
Christian Retreats — coming soon
The groundwork for Christian retreat centres is also in place. This is a distinct offering from the venues section — think residential getaway destinations, quiet days, and retreat houses rather than hourly hire. It's currently paused whilst we gather feedback from retreat centre providers, but if you run one and would like to be among the first listed, do get in touch.
🙏 Community Prayer Wall
One of the most meaningful additions to the platform this season is the Community Prayer Wall. Members can share prayer requests with the wider Kingdom Connect community, and others can respond in a way that feels appropriate for a Christian space — not a simple "like", but a considered reaction.
When you see a prayer request, you can respond with one of four reactions: Pray, Care, Peace, or Standing. It's a small thing, but we think it matters — responding to someone's vulnerability with something that carries meaning.
Prayer requests can be shared anonymously if preferred, and when a prayer is answered, members are encouraged to mark it as such and share a brief note of what God has done. Those answered prayers are precious, and making space to record them felt important.
Requests can also be categorised — health, family, work, church, spiritual, world, bereavement, or other — to help people find what they'd like to pray into. Find the prayer wall at kingdomconnect.uk/community/prayer.
⛪ Community Voice on Church Pages
Church pages on Kingdom Connect are no longer just information listings. They're now shaped, in part, by the community that attends, follows, and cares about each church. We've introduced three new features that bring the congregation's voice into the platform.
Church Testimonies
Members can share a short testimony of what God has done through a particular church — not a TripAdvisor-style rating, but a genuine account of spiritual experience. Testimonies are moderated before they appear, and only approved testimonies are shown publicly. It's a small but meaningful way for a church's life to speak for itself.
"I Attend Here"
Users can now simply mark that they attend a church. No approval needed — it's a soft, self-managed declaration. The church page shows how many members of the Kingdom Connect community attend, giving a gentle sense of who's connected to each congregation. This isn't meant to be an official membership roll — it's just a way of showing up and being counted.
Follow a Church
You can now follow churches you care about — whether you attend, used to attend, or are just keeping an eye on what they're up to. Following a church keeps you informed about their upcoming events and activity on the platform.
🗳️ Feature Voting — Have Your Say
We've launched a public Feature Roadmap where members of the Kingdom Connect community can suggest features and vote on what gets built next. This isn't just for show. The Ministry Directory — one of the biggest features in this very update — was suggested and upvoted by a user, and we built it.
You can suggest anything, vote on existing suggestions, and track the status of ideas as they move from suggested through to in progress and done. Admins add notes to keep things transparent about what's being considered and why.
Head to kingdomconnect.uk/community/roadmap to see what's in the pipeline — and to have your say.
👤 Improved User Profiles
Your Kingdom Connect profile has had a meaningful upgrade. Two notable changes:
Avatar uploads
You can now upload a profile photo directly from your device, rather than pasting in an external URL. Images are automatically resized and converted to a lightweight WebP format. There's a simple toggle in the profile editor between uploading a file and linking a URL. We do ask that photos be clear and genuine — inappropriate images will result in account review.
Trusted users, smoother saves
New users still go through a manual review when they first submit their profile — that keeps things safe and genuine. But once your trust level has been raised by our team, profile changes are approved automatically, straight away. Your dashboard will confirm clearly when this applies to you.
🤖 Better Discoverability for AI Search
More and more people now find information through AI assistants. We've taken steps to make Kingdom Connect properly represented in those results.
We've published a /llms.txt file following the emerging llmstxt.org standard, giving AI systems a clear description of what Kingdom Connect is, how our content is curated, and the kinds of questions we can help people answer — such as finding a Bible-teaching church near a given postcode, or locating a Christian food bank in a specific area.
We've also updated robots.txt to explicitly welcome responsible AI crawlers, and church, event, and ministry pages now include richer structured data. An Events RSS feed at /feed/events.xml makes it easy for other platforms to stay in sync with what's happening.
🌱 The Vision: Shaped by the Community
We want to be honest about something, because we think it matters.
Kingdom Connect is not built by a large team with a fixed roadmap decided in boardrooms. It's built carefully, incrementally, and — increasingly — in response to what the community actually asks for. The Ministry Directory is the clearest example of that so far: a platform member suggested it, others backed it, and we built it.
Going forward, the shape of Kingdom Connect will be guided by the community — the body of Christ. Not by what we think the church needs, but by what the church itself says it needs. The prayer wall, the roadmap board, the community voice on church pages — all of these are expressions of that conviction. This platform belongs to the people who use it, and we intend to keep building it that way.
If there's something missing, something frustrating, or something you'd love to see — please suggest it on the roadmap. We're listening.
Thank you, as always, for being part of Kingdom Connect.