FIEC‘s family of over five hundred Churches is broken down into areas and clusters which are divisions of those areas. Our area, the south west, comprises seventeen Churches spread from Swindon, to Bath, to Chippenham with situations like ours at North Bradley in between. Given the geographical spread the cluster group we are in is where our most direct contact takes place, but it is good to meet as we did last Thursday, as an area.
The meeting was well attended on a really rough wintery night, and John Stephens FIEC’s national director came down from the midlands to speak.
The challenge was to think beyond the immediate situations we all face, and see in what way we can address the larger national issues together. If I had to focus on one thing that was coming out from this as being the highlighted way to do this, Church planting was the main solution being proffered. Saying that, behind any such initiative was an emphasis on robust training.
In John’s exposition of Philippians 1, John illustrated these points by showing how Paul planted what were small Churches, but each were impregnated with a big Church vision which cared not only for themselves but for others, were committed to gospel proclamation not just in their situations but everywhere, and recognised that all Christian advance is God’s doing and needs to be celebrated.
It was clear FIEC’s new day is attracting new Church partnerships, is beginning to resource new training and fellowship developments, and is revising the ‘home mission’ agenda to address the current concerns over national decline.
Guy Davies has also written up the event on his blog which you can read here: FIEC 90. This article also includes a link to an interview Guy did with John recently.
