Derek Purnell and Paul Keeble met up some years back when Paul was invited to become a member of the Executive of E.C.M.A. (= The Evangelical Council Manchester Area) - now known as "Network". Derek was already on the Exec. and had recently finished working full-time for E.C.M.A. and the Evangelical Alliance to begin a course of study at the Nazarene Theological College looking at Christian ministry in the urban context. Both were already involved in inner-city communities and churches, and discovered they had very similar ideas about the need to support Christian ministry in such areas, and the need to make the wider church aware of the urban situation.
After Derek finished his course he looked for an organisation to work with to implement these ideas, but found none that fitted; Paul meantime was feeling it was time to move on from working with Youth for Christ as most of what he was doing was no longer directly to do with their main area of ministry. So, in 1995 after seeking advice from several respected Christian leaders, whose response was uniformly positive, they formed 'Urban Presence'.

They soon discovered that there was as much work for them as they could cope with... and more. So the organisation of 'Urban Presence' itself took a back seat for the first year. It has now become a U.K. registered trust (no. 1069404) with a group of five Trustees drawn from local churches and is also a member organisation of Network and of the Evangelical Alliance. In January 1999 Urban Presence was officially 'launched' during a Prayer Network meeting, with Sir Fred Catherwood leading some 500 Christians in prayer for Derek, Paul and the trustees.