Proclaiming publicly

As I travel I find myself preaching in many very public venues – places where the church is so much on view that it cannot possibly be missed. In November, as I was working with churches in the UK, I was encouraged to see British churches giving serious thought to their public involvement.

In many parts of England such involvement is now a necessity as all purchasable space is being used for church plants, leaving schools and community centres as the only option for new church gatherings. Whilst congregations decline in many traditional church buildings (and that is often the only story from Britain that spreads around the world) the reality of church growth on the ground is very, very different.

Month-by-month I bring positive reports from Africa and Asia, here is a positive report from the UK.

Churches in Communities

	Noel Robinson leads worship at the CiC AMM

I’ll begin my positive report by mentioning Churches in Communities International, the network for independent churches, ministries and networks which I set up in 1997. For some time growth of CiC in parts of Africa, and more recently even of Asia, has outstripped growth of CiC in the UK. In the UK the pattern has been that churches and ministries have joined CiC one at a time, whilst in other countries many have signed up all at once. Furthermore, in Britain the inter-church structures that engage with government are longstanding and complex, so gaining ground for independent churches within such structures (which is part of CiC’s vision) is not the relatively straightforward exercise that it has proved to be in some nations where such infra-structure is less entrenched. Nonetheless CiC in the UK has remained the pioneering body for CiC worldwide, testing the practices and procedures that are now adopted elsewhere. It has deserved to see the burgeoning growth that has characterised CiC elsewhere, but in Britain foundations have taken longer to lay.

In November, as we held our CiC Annual Members’ Meeting in a hotel in central London, I was convinced that our foundation is now secure enough (and our public recognition strong enough) to cope with burgeoning UK growth. The new churches that are springing up in warehouses, schools and community halls around Britain can all, if they wish, by joining CiC become part of an accreditation and accountability body that will give them thorough-going representation and recognition within Britain’s inter-church structures and in so doing change the public perception of church life in the UK. Furthermore they can from within CiC draw real support and encouragement from one another at a time when Britain is proving itself to be just like so many other parts of the world where growth in the independent church sector is the main driving force for national church expansion.

In an encouraging report from the UK, CiC is something about which we can be greatly encouraged.

Trevor presents the annual report		Speaking at the AMM

Essex again
Having written of independent church growth being increasingly widespread throughout Britain, I find myself holding up Essex again as an example. Church planting is spreading out from all our major British cities and the eastward spread from London is having a considerable impact on Kent and Essex. In November I was back in Essex to speak at a church plant in a Leisure Centre in Basildon. This work began in a school, moved to a community hall and has now found a much-more prominent town-centre venue. It is good to take a moment in this report to congratulate Bread of Life Ministries International on its boldness.

Berkhamsted and Bromley
Berkhamsted is a small attractive town in a county to the North-West of London. I visited it in November to speak again for a church, which, despite having its own building, has deliberately sought to increase its public impact by first meeting in a school and now re-locating to the main Civic building in the centre of the town. I love the boldness of King’s Road Church in making this move and would love you join me in praying for their success in this venture.

Speaking at Kings Road Church, Berkhamsted

	At Cornerstone's celebration service

On the same day that I was in the Civic Centre in Berkhamsted, I was in the Civic Centre in Bromley – a much larger venue as befits London’s largest borough. The Bromley Civic Centre had been taken by my own church, Cornerstone Christian Centre, which was planted out in 1991 as an extension of a previous church-plant (my first, in fact, in 1974 when Marion and I were still in our twenties!). Cornerstone has seen some major breakthroughs in its almost twenty-one years of existence and this was not our first time to take the Civic Centre but the significance of taking it this Sunday in November was to celebrate publicly two major healings we had recently witnessed (one of which had already been celebrated on prime-time national television and in the national press) and to use these two accounts as an opportunity to publicly proclaim the gospel. The pictures below give a flavour of the event.

Teaching and recording
Central to my ministry in the UK during November was the Teaching Conference on Honouring God the Father. This was a really encouraging event which received some great reports at the time from people who were inspired by the teaching. I know it will continue to have an impact for much longer as it goes out on radio and television. Being around in the UK for November gave me the opportunity to fit in some much needed studio time. Maintaining weekly output on radio and TV can be challenging. It is not just the recording of the teaching content that we have to consider, it is also the recording of the interviews and intros and outros that we have to build into the programmes. I am grateful that such recording is made easier through my longstanding relationship with Premier Christian Radio and Revelation TV (relationships that go right back to the early 1990s when Cornerstone was pioneering Christian Channel Europe, the fore-runner of GOD TV). If you are in a part of the world that cannot at the moment receive my television and radio-output, do join us in praying for wider exposure and continue to make the most of my website where much of the teaching content is available as down-loads, audio-streams and video-streams as well as CD and DVD sets to buy.

Having a question and answer time after one of the teaching sessions		The cover design for the CD and DVD box set

Waverley Abbey House and High Leigh
As we near the end of 2012 my thoughts turn to the UK Charismatic and Pentecostal Leaders’ Conference that I co-chair. I am enclosing a photograph of our conference venue to remind you to pray for this event which takes place on 7th and 8th of December. Alongside the picture of High Leigh I have placed a picture of Waverley Abbey House, the venue for another senior leaders gathering I attend from time-to-time in the UK and which most recently met in November. I hope that mentioning such gatherings may give you further reassurance that there is health within the church in the UK – a health that we want to celebrate and spread. I think there are grounds for applying Romans 8:11 to the body of the church as well as to our physical bodies… ‘But if the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life [to your mortal bodies] through His Spirit who dwells in you’.

High Leigh		Waverly Abbey

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