The Congregation Generally our congregation comes from the town of Barry, although some travel in from outlying hamlets. When people make their spiritual home at Bethel they generally stay, we have therefore a wide cross section of age groups. This is reflected as can be seen later in our wide range of activities.1 Peter 2 4-10 describes the church as being made up of living stones being built into a spiritual house; the loyalty and devotion of settled and long-term church members helps to nurture, build and develop the spiritual house at Bethel. The Leadership - Elders Pastor Revd. Mervyn Neal Mervyn is married to Kim.He is from Northamptonshire and she is from Cross Keys in Gwent. They met while at Cardiff University in the 1980's. Mervyn was studying Business Economics and Kim was working for the Medical Research Council as a research bio-chemist/epedemiologist. They have two teenage daughters; Rachel and Hannah. Mervyn and Kim both became christians while living in Lincolnshire and felt the call to full time ministry very early on in their christian lives. They both studied theology at The Evangelical Theological College of Wales in Bridgend. Mervyn was pastor of Gendros Congregational church in Swansea from 1995-1998. Since then he served as the Evangelist in Bethel for 8 years before becoming the Pastor in 2006. Assistant Pastor Matt Emerton is our Assistant Pastor his many ministries include schools work, children's meeting and preaching. Matt can be seen above with his wife Becca and Bethan and Matthew , they joined us from Mount Pleasant Church in Swansea.   Elder - Revd. Robin Trollope Robin and his wife Hilary both come from Christian homes; Robin grew up in Bethel and Hilary came from Mount Pleasant Cadoxton as a teenager. We were baptised in Bethel and studied at Cardiff University , Robin in Microbiology and Hilary trained as a teacher of Domestic Science which she taught in Bristol and London . After our marriage we lived in London (Robin as a research student for 3 years) then in Swansea . There they profited from a very formative 32 years as members of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church . Robin was a lecturer in Microbiology at Swansea University until early retirement followed by study at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales in Bridgend from 1998-1990. Following 7 years as Pastor of Ebenezer Evangelical Baptist Church in the village of Machen near Caerphilly they retired to Barry in 2002. They continue to be very blessed by having Christian fellowship with their daughter Rachel, her husband Nick, also their son David and Pippa his wife and the 6 grandchildren. Robin has been an elder at Bethel since 2003.   Deacons The Deacons who serve the church are Mostyn Davies, Ray Close, Steve Potts, Jenny Wales, John Thomas, Martin Harris and Graham Dent.