Steve Chalke

In 1985 Steve Chalke set up the Oasis Trust to open a hostel for homeless young people. Oasis now has over 300 staff, students and volunteers, pioneering educational, healthcare and housing initiatives in the UK and across the globe. Oasis demonstrates that Christian faith works by
delivering practical solutions to the breadth of people’s needs wherever they are encountered. Oasis focuses on community, youth, church and global issues through its initiatives.

In 1996 Steve started Oasis Media, which has developed into an integrated communications agency providing PR and internet solutions to clients in the charity/social responsibility sector, as well as values-based television programmes for the major television companies, including ITV and BBC.

In 2001 Steve laid the foundations for the Faithworks Movement. Faithworks exists to empower and inspire individual Christians and every local church to develop their role at the hub of the community. It also seeks to challenge and change the public perception of the Church by engaging both media and the government. The Faithworks Movement goal is to build the most effective social action network in the UK. Faithworks exists to connect: Government to Churches, Churches to Resources, Media to Churches and Christian organisations, projects and Churches to each other.

In 2003 Steve became the minister of Christ Church & Upton, the church.co.uk centre, based in London Waterloo. The centre aims to become a physical hub for a global physical and virtual community, which models spiritual and
social well being, support and inspiration to all. Its goal is to become 24/7, always open, never shut, where everyone is welcome, whatever time of night or day.

In 2004, in the New Years Honours, Steve was awarded the MBE, ‘For services to Social Exclusion through the work of Oasis Trust and Parentalk’.

Steve has regularly presented television programmes for both ITV and BBC, including ‘Songs of Praise’. He is also a regular contributor on BBC Radio 1, 2, 4 and 5 Live. In 2002 Steve was appointed as the new presenter of ‘Changing Places’, a Radio 4 programme reporting on ordinary people who have worked to transform their community.

Steve also contributes regularly to a number of national newspapers and is the author of 29 books, his most recent being the Lost Message of Jesus.

He is 48 years old and lives in London with his wife Cornelia and their four children: Emily, Daniel, Abigail and Joshua.