One of the churches which is part of the Kx Midlands hub, Westwood Church, is recruiting for a full-time student worker and Form Discipleship year leader.
Could it be you?
Click the image for more info.
When we move past the theory, what does it look like to live out the great commission wherever we are?
Nic writes on the Great Commission website about growing a city-reaching movement.
Reaching a whole town or city with the gospel. Saturating a place with good news. Completing the great commission where I live. If any of these thoughts excite you then you’ll be pleased to know that a number of places are beginning to ask the questions ‘what might that look like round here?’
As I’ve had the opportunity to explore and experiment with some of these ideas in the Liverpool city region in recent years, I’ve been asked to input to a number of other places – specifically Chester, Ipswich, Newcastle and Basingstoke this term.
What would it look like if in 10 years in your place everyone knew someone whose life had been transformed by Jesus? What if every neighbourhood had a small group of Christians living out life together, praying for their streets, practically blessing their neighbours, finding the people of peace, creating pathways to faith, and producing disciple-makers?
What if we did this so that everyone knew where to get spiritual bread, to get practical help, and to find Jesus? What if we multiplied these groups so that there was one missional expression of church (an MC in our language) for every 1000 people (#1in1000)?
This is our dream for seeing people and places transformed by the gospel.
Here’s a bunch of 15+ of those kind of Christians in Liverpool who are praying and plotting to do just that for their neighbourhood. Current plans for the next couple of months include:
What could it look like round your way?
Nic Harding has just released an expanded and updated version of his book ‘Living on the Frontline: A Beginners Guide to Spiritual Warfare.’ It’s a must read for anyone wanting to learn both the defensive ways of warfare prayer, but also how to pray to see God’s Kingdom advance in our nation. Listen to him talk about the book with Ben Askew.
Part of our vision as Kx is to see 1 missional expression of church planted for every 1000 people in England and Wales. That’s over 56,000 missional households, communities or churches in every neighbourhood across our villages, towns and cities. Now, we’re not going to be able to do this on our own – God is doing exciting things across our nation with lots of different churches, networks and organisations. But we want to plant our flag in the ground to say this is one of the key things we are focusing on over the next few years and hope you will join us in praying for and seek to plant #1in1000 in your area.
Here is a #1in1000 story from one of HBC Chester’s Missional Communities, called “Welcome” Missional Community.
‘As part of ou
r missional community, we have operated a group called ‘International Forum, Chester’ for about a year. This group aims to welcome and engage with internationals in the Chester area. The IF group meets monthly in a neutral hired venue and has a talk for 20-30 minutes on a topic of international interest. Our numbers of attendees vary between a handful and 20. We have several Muslims from different countries who really enjoy the group and have become good friends.
In the summer we put on an additional event in conjunction with our broader Missional Community and wider people of peace. We had a BBQ in the local park and played ‘croccer’, a camp game based on cricket using a football. Our Muslim friends loved this event, and one of our Ugandan friends went to town bringing his BBQ and lots of food to share. Meanwhile friendships deepened and conversations went to a new level.
Our friends are asking questions about Christian faith and we have been able to share discussions in a natural and respectful way.’
“One of the great things about the Tunbridge Wells LC is that it has been the vehicle for Frontier Leader Training. We are clearly modelling to all the participants on the LC the taking of LC leaders around the discipleship square (see diagram). We deliberately point out to the participants on the LC that, for example, ‘Andy Strajnic is now doing L3 as a LC leader on this third immersion. Please encourage and support him.’
spoke to Paul Maconochie (Director of 3DM USA) recently and he reminded me that getting a movement going requires doing the same things, in the same way, over and over, until people ‘get it’ and begin to run with it themselves. The guys we are training are leaders on the frontier of making that happen in our nation and that is no overstatement. There are still thousands of churches in our nation that have not even begun to ask the right questions about what is wrong with the church, let alone begun to search for the answers. There is still massive scope for Learning Communities.
FORM is an intensive year-long discipleship internship for young adults, currently running in 4 locations in the UK and also in the USA. Here are a few stories from this years trainees at Form Fort Wayne, Indiana about what God has done with them over the past year.
Here is a short testimony from HBC Chester:
Recently at HBC Chester we held an evening with a couple of baptisms – one of the people being baptised was Penny. Penny is a member of the Core Team for one of our Missional Communities – Welcome MC. Penny’s decision to be baptised is a result of the growth in her own personal discipleship journey and a significant part of this have been the commitment Penny has made to be involved in our regular IPODs (Intentional Places of Discipleship – our version of a huddle).
The Welcome MC has developed a strong focus on the People of Peace that a number of the Core team have and they have held regular gatherings where these people have been involved along and they have also started up an “International Forum” This takes place once a month and includes the people of peace telling their stories of living in the UK and what life was like in the country of birth. As a result of the developing and strengthening relationships within the MC Penny was able to invite these People of Peace to come and witness her baptism and to be involved in the evening gathering that it was a part of. At the baptism, 12 people of peace came along, heard Penny’s testimony and began to see the wider context of church and community that the Welcome MC belongs too.
Mark and Anna Burgess lead Oikos Peru, a movement planting extended families on mission in cities and villages. They’ve recently been in the UK and have visited some Kx Churches. Here is a short update about what God is doing with them.
At the last Launch Learning Community we asked Kx family members Rupert and Sally Martin to tell us what they had gained from joining Kx. You can find out more about becoming a member church here.
