A new movement to multiply gospel workers

In May 2024, an important event was held at Yarnton Manor in Oxford. Organised and hosted by 9:38 (which exists to resource and train up church leaders), it brought together training stakeholders – networks, churches, training providers – to reflect on the crisis in ministry recruitment. This was reported in en (July 24) under the headline “Major consultation event addresses ‘recruitment crisis’.”

As training stakeholders, we left convinced that ministry is a noble task, convicted to pray to the Lord for workers, and committed to working together. Lydia Houghton’s en feature article “Is there really a ministry recruitment crisis?” – is an encouraging read. There are hopeful signs.

Since the start of 2025, a group of leaders, many of whom were at the Yarnton event, has been working together to build the foundations of a movement to multiply gospel workers across England and Wales. This work is in parallel with similar movements in other parts of the UK and Ireland, and in a number of countries across the world.

The constituency of the group is conservative evangelical, committed to the Bible’s clear and positive teaching on a complementarian pattern of ministry. The group includes Anglicans – in the Church of England and AMiE – and Independents, convinced we can achieve more together than apart.

A movement is where there is consensus between stakeholders on vision, culture and strategy, and a commitment to work together.

The vision is to multiply workers in response to the need. As we have worked together, there have been sobering lessons to learn, like coming to terms with how small we are as conservative evangelicals. Across the whole of the UK there are approximately 150,000 people in conservative evangelical churches, 0.21% of the population. What would it take in terms of training workers to reach 750,000, 1% of the population? It would mean doubling within 5 years, and tripling within 10 years, the number of people training. Can we afford to do that? Can we afford not to? There are dangers with numbers and targets, though is it really wrong to aspire to grow to 1%? Will we trust that the Lord Jesus who is bringing people back to the churches, or into churches for the first time, will also be raising up and sending out workers in answer to prayer? Are we ready, willing to respond to what the Lord is doing?

Houghton’s article focused on training providers. Alongside training providers, local churches have a vital role in training gospel workers. For some churches it will be praying for workers. For others it will identifying and training workers in partnership with training providers or supporting people through residential training. If every local church prays that the Lord would raise up and send out one worker from that church, what an impact that would have.

Local churches embracing training as their responsibility may require a culture change, the kind of culture change described in books like The Trellis and the Vine and The Vine Project. Culture change is difficult. As part of its work, the group is engaged in a research project to understand and describe what a healthy training culture looks like in a diverse range of local churches across the country, and at different stages of developing a training culture. This work will be completed by March 2026.

The group is working on a strategy for training, focused on matters like pathways and programmes. An important line of strategy is financial investment to enable people to train. A training fund will make grants to individuals based on matched funding from the training church, network or denomination, and personal support. This is a funding model that maximizes the overall investment in training. It is hoped that the first grants can be made for 2026-27.

As the vision, culture and strategy is communicated more widely in the coming months, we pray it will develop into a movement through the engagement and collaboration of many.