2. Nic Writes: #1in1000

    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:

    • helping a neighbour with an overgrown garden.
    • continuing to befriend the night-time security guard who watches a particular footballer’s mum’s house in our street.
    • serving and blessing the local catholic primary school in our street (flapjacks for the receptionist so far).
    • taking round bunches of daffodils for the women in our street over the mother’s day weekend and inviting their families to the Easter service.

    What could it look like round your way? 

  3. A warm welcome in Chester!

    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 our 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.’

     

     

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