Blog

It was great to hold another successful Catalyst Festival at Stoneleigh Park, where around 4000 people came together to worship and hear from God, be together as a community and be commissioned to go into our towns and neighbourhoods and the world. It’s been great to hear encouraging feedback from people both on site and afterwards and to see the effect the Festival has had on our churches as we’ve returned.

One of the many highlights was the amazing sense of the presence of God bringing healing and words of knowledge in the main sessions. We were led so well by our two bands, there was an amazing sense of the presence of God, and it was so good to see healing and words of knowledge being brought throughout. However, this wasn’t just in the main meetings and it was great to hear stories of healings happening in kids’ work around the Festival as well. There was also a number of prophetic words brought about favour upon Catalyst for fresh apostolic breakthrough in many nations, and I am looking forward to seeing how that progresses!

We had a fantastic range of speakers at this Festival, and it was particularly great to have Terry Virgo and Andy McCullough with us. I must also thank Andrew Wilson for stepping in so brilliantly at the last minute to speak to us on how to live the kingdom in ‘ordinary’ life. Within the Catalyst network it was good to welcome Julian Adams as well as have Martyn Dunsford speaking.

However, the Festival was about so much more than just the main sessions and there was a great celebration of creativity in all sorts of things around the event. It was a moving experience to be around the zones and see the variety that was on offer, as part of building the kingdom.

The arts was also a prominent feature of the Festival, and I very much enjoyed looking around the Sputnik exhibition, as well as hearing some of the artists that were performing.

Overall, the Catalyst Festival is an amazing time of celebrating God’s rule in the whole of life, as is a great display of what we do together as a family of churches. As part of this, it was great to raise £187,408 for the work of international mission, as well as see people commit to working for God’s kingdom not only in their communities and cities, but around the world. Bring on next year’s Festival!

In September, I had the privilege to visit Moscow for a Pastors Conference with Duncan Podbury and Al Gregory. In previous years during the summer, I have spoken at a Moscow region Bible Week but this time we decided to have a pastors’ conference instead. I received requests to speak into some of the tough issues that Christian leaders in Russia are facing at the moment. I covered three major topics: How to Reach Post-Moderns, Reaching Muslims and Confronting Prejudices.

How to reach Post-Moderns is a big concern for Russian pastors, as the culture of younger people is changing at a rapid pace. Most of the Russian leaders there would have been converted post-1990, after Perestroika, and so for many this was a new experience for them to understand people who think differently. Reaching Muslims, was also an important topic as there was a tendency to see Muslims as the enemy, rather than the people who need Jesus. These issues, among others, were important when talking about Confronting Prejudices as I addressed how not to compromise on your beliefs and yet reach more people. This was explored as we discussed how to contextualise the gospel, as seen by Jesus, in the difference between his interactions with Jews and Samaritans. As well as this, the example of Paul in Athens, Ephesus and Lystra clearly show how we need to adapt the style of our message, whilst retaining the message itself, for many who are being reached in Russia today.

As well as this, Duncan preached on raising up the next generation of leaders  which was a real challenge to many of the leaders who themselves were saved and took on leadership responsibility in their 20’s, yet had not given sufficient thought to releasing  those in their 20’s in churches today and raising them up into leadership. As well as this, Al Gregory gave a great message from the story of the Good Samaritan which really got participants to challenge their own often prejudiced thinking .

On the Saturday, we also held a general conference in which I spoke about Jesus and the Woman from Samaria in the context of cross-cultural evangelism, raising a number of issues to challenge those present. Duncan also led another two sessions equipping people in evangelism and thus demonstrating how an equipping evangelist according to Ephesians 4 should function in the church.

It was a very good weekend and there was a great response to the talks.

Mongolia, although perhaps not too well known outside stories of Ghengis Khan, is one of the biggest, yet most sparsely populated countries in the world today. Placed between Russia and China, it sits in a great location. The capital, Ulan Bator, houses around 40%  of the population, with many others in the countryside, often living in traditional Mongolian gers. In September, I had the opportunity to go visit this country for the first time, spending a week there with Malcolm Kayes and Tim Brown from the Coign Church, Woking.

One of the main reasons for my visit was to share the Ephesians 4 Ministries model with pastors  in Mongolia. They had previously built to a "Pastor Model",  but hadn't stressed the importance of Apostles, Prophets and Evangelists. They had had a visitor who suggested an Apostolic Model to them; however, it was regarded with some suspicion  as the teaching  seemed to imply an hierarchical rather than relationship-based model. However my teaching seemed to be well-received by the pastors I met and some certainly saw the need for all 5-fold ministries to function. We also took a leaders' conference on apostolic foundations and an open conference for in which I gave a big picture preach on the mission of God from Genesis right through to Revelation, and it only took three and a half hours! Malcolm Kayes taught on Hearing God's voice today.

Although it was a pretty packed schedule, we did manage to make it into the countryside for a day, visiting a ger. They have stayed the pretty much the same for centuries, except now they have one solar panel to work the satellite TV! It was in the ger that one of the highlights of the trip happened, as I was given a solid lump of clotted cream to eat straight off, and had a large bowl of fermented mare's milk to wash it down with, which I actually really enjoyed. We also went out to a Nature Reserve and saw the rare Pzewalski's Horses, which are still on the WWF's Red List, but has been reintroduced into the wild successfully.

Overall, it was a great trip, and I look forward to connecting more with Mongolia, and hopefully seeing an Apostolic Movement raised up there.