Developing Focus

Over the last two weeks of July, Alan was in the United Kingdom at the invitation of the Revitalisation Trust and the Holy Trinity Brompton Network to attend the annual 'Focus' conference and camp run just outside of Lincoln.

Focus is a collection of all of the Church of England churches that have a relationship with Holy Trinity Brompton, either as plants of that church or as communities adopted into the network with similar values and vision. The conference had over 10,000 people in attendance and gave an opportunity for their network to speak on the things that they believed all of their churches needed to work toward in the coming year. A key message of this was the place that we all have in service to the kingdom of God as the Spirit of God brings revival and renewal to our communities. We all have something to give and something to share, and by not participating in what God is doing we lose out and other people lose out as well. A particular highlight of the time was the commissioning of 14 church planters who were either starting new or revitalising struggling churches. The diversity of people being sent, from reformed drug dealers and people born in Colombian prisons, to mothers of young children and singles daring to step out into what God is calling them to do.

A key part of Alan's attendance was a wider piece of work being undertaken by the Revitalisation Trust to bring their work, training and leadership development expertise to bear on the wider Anglican church globally. This has already initiated with church plants in South Africa, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Malaysia and the support of a plant in Auckland, the leader of which Alan travelled with. The desire is to help the wider Anglican Church develop the kind of structures, leaders and vision that has helped the HTB network to flourish. Plans are already underway to offer alternative education pathways, stronger formational processes for those training for ministry which could include international experience and practice, and new governance structures within diocese to help leverage the strengths we do have for revitalisation.

There is still a lot of work to be done in developing these initiatives and programmes, and still many words to be written and people convinced, but the general direction and possibility is very exciting and exactly what the church in our area needs at this time.