Mission

The Goal

In our pursuit of God’s call upon us to be an ‘Antioch’ style church we want to increasingly become a ‘Mission-Minded, Church-Based Resource Centre’.

Mission-Minded – in that we each understand that our lives are lived out within the bigger picture of God’s own mission to glorify Himself through reaching, redeeming and restoring people from every people group.

Church-Based – in that our approach to mission acknowledges and reflects the centrality of the local church in God’s plan to fulfil His mission upon the earth.  This means that we give priority to initiatives which contribute to the planting and establishing of local churches. 

 
Resource Centre – in that we seek to equip, release and support people who will themselves be caught up in God’s mission and engage in that mission at home and abroad.  We also look to release financial and other resources to serve the progress of God’s mission.

The Challenge

There are currently about 42% of the worlds’ people groups yet to be reached. This represents about 6,800 ethnic groups and about 2.72 billion individuals.  Most of these are located within what has become known as the 10/40 window. The challenge before us is to be personally engaged in contributing to God’s revealed plan to reach each one of these peoples.  More information on unreached people groups can be found at  www.joshuaproject.net.

Our Involvement

We have historically had an ongoing involvement in the work of Des and Grace Derbyshire as they worked for over 30 years to reach the Hixkaryana tribe, deep in the Amazon rain forest.  This involvement ended as Des went to be with the Lord in December 2007, having completed the translation of the bible into their language and a number of revisions of the text.  Des leaves behind him a thriving church among the Hixkaryana and the bible in their indigenous language.  His life and commitment to reaching the unreached continues to be a challenge to us.

Since 1996 we have had an ongoing involvement with a local church in Shillong, N E India.   Dave and Amber Lockyer spent 5 years living in Shillong to be involved in the life of the church there.  Over the years we have seen other churches within the region enter into partnership with us and a new church planted in Pokhara, Nepal.   Dave regularly visits these friends and we also send out short-term cross-cultural teams to visit these churches.

In 2007 we sent out Noyuri Kuramoto to Nagoya, Japan, where she has joined the Newfrontiers church planting team led by Tom Eaton.  Nagoya is a large city of around 2 million and Japan is still a largely unreached nation.  Noyuri, originally from Sendai in Japan, lived in Winchester for 7 years and served the church by leading our outreach to international students.  She is now back in her home country and is currently part of a church planting team led by Tom Eaton.  The team consists of 12 adults, 5 children and 2 babies with a mixture of Japanese and English.  They are in the early stages of planting ‘Grace City Church’ with a vision to ‘Gather, Grow and Go!’ in the city of Nagoya, Japan.  This city of 2.2 million is located in the centre of the main Japanese island, halfway between Tokyo and Osaka. It is the birthplace of Tokugawa shogun and also of Toyota motors!   It is a strong commercial centre with the highest employment rate in Japan.  Click for updates from Noyuri.

Along with these longer-term links, we regularly have people going on short-term missions teams to broaden their experience of what God is doing among the nations and to serve the church in other cultures.  In recent years we have sent teams to Russia, South Africa and Portugal in this capacity.  We also encourage as many as possible to sign up for the various ‘Life Change’ teams that Newfrontiers runs.  For the latest updates from those serving on a short-term basis click here.