Sarah Winbow is a bible teacher and serial disciple-maker with an evangelist’s heart to reach the un-churched. Sarah has spent her whole life living and working in rural areas and alongside village churches, largely in Gloucestershire and Cumbria. In 1987 she married Trevor. They have two sons, Matthew & Eddie, daughter-in-laws Kayleigh and Hannah; all of whom love and serve the Lord. They have three grandchildren.

Having been brought up under the influence of the occult world Sarah was personally set free from years of occultic oppression in 1991. As a result of this life-changing encounter Sarah has worked ever since to see God’s Kingdom restored in individuals through the application of Christian discipleship and healing principles. For seven years (2001-2008) Sarah worked with Freedom in Christ Ministries (UK), a discipleship counselling ministry, as an itinerant member of their national teaching team.

Sarah and Trevor founded New Beginnings Discipleship in 2008, working together as a team to write the materials. Trevor went to be with the Lord in 2023.

Alison Brown has been involved with New Beginnings since 2020. Responding to a prompt from the Holy Spirit to ‘wake up’ Alison completed the Baggage Checklist through a series of prayer appointments with Sarah. Alison has a hunger to learn from and teach the truth in God’s Word. She joined the Prayer House core group in 2022; completed the Discipleship Training School (DTS) in 2023 and became a member of the teaching team in 2026.

Brought up in a non Christian family, Alison has been following Jesus since the age of 20. Supported by her first church to study Theology, Alison led group studies and services in churches in Sussex before moving to Cumbria in 1999.

Married to Glen since 1992, with 3 children, Alison has recently retired from 36 years in the NHS and is now actively supporting Sarah in providing training as part of the New Beginnings teaching team.

More About Our Story

In 1993 Sarah & Trevor joined The Fellowship for Evangelising Britain’s Villages (now re-named Village Hope) working in Gloucestershire. In 1998, after training at Bristol Baptist College they took up the challenge to work as missionaries in the Eden Valley area of Cumbria.

Initially the Winbows planted HOPE Community Church; a church for the un-churched in Brough, Upper Eden. The work was blessed but after two years all those involved moved out of the area one-by-one. Sarah & Trevor were faced with either starting over again or doing something completely different.

At that time the Lord spoke to Sarah and gave a choice either:

1. To go on building in the same way, which would be blessed and see a certain level of fruitfulness or
2. To go on a journey with Him which, provided they were obedient, would mean that ultimately they would see a whole different level of fruitfulness.

So they went on the journey…

In 1999 a small group of twelve people dedicated themselves to praying for God’s Kingdom to come & His will to be done in the Upper Eden Valley. This core group became a faithful obedient band of disciples of Jesus who were willing to seek healing for their own previously unresolved personal issues. In 2001 this group became the backbone of a Prayer House ministry team where Father God taught them together about the ways of His Kingdom: holiness, righteousness, justice, prayer, worship and obedience. The team learned to listen to God’s voice corporately and implement His strategy for prayer: day by day, week by week, year by year together in community. This involved applying freedom principles to a whole region through the intercessory work of the Prayer House for more than a decade. These principles are recorded in Sarah’s book Restoring Eden and in the companion manual Steps to Setting your Community Free.

By September 2008 the group had been together for nine years and had matured into a team who were not afraid to live counter to the prevailing culture. God had brought a tangible level of spiritual freedom in the Eden Valley. It was at this point that the Lord spoke to Sarah again and said two things: 1) ‘The Word must go out’ and 2) ‘It’s time to build’. The Origins page gives the background to the rest of this story out of which New Beginnings, a wine skin to disciple God’s people in the simple and uncomplicated ways of His Kingdom, has grown and developed.