The North West Gospel Partnership (NWGP) exists to help churches work together to reach the North West with the gospel. The region has a population of over 7 million people and so the task is great and complex. In recent months the Trustees have been revisiting and reviewing the Partnership’s purpose, aims and strategy. Mark Pickles tells us more:
To reach even 10% of the population (700,000 people) we would need 7,000 churches (assuming an average membership of 100); at present we have about 100. Put like that, the sheer size of the task is overwhelming. We are committed to the three-fold task of church planting, church revitalising and church strengthening.
• The urgent need of the hour is the planting of many more Bible-believing, gospel-centred churches
• There are many existing churches in need of renewal and revitalising
• Just as we see the need for planting new churches, we are also committed to ensuring that we do not ‘lose churches’. Faithful, fruitful, persevering gospel ministry is not easy and so we need to encourage and support one another to keep on keeping on.
‘Aim at nothing and you’re sure to hit it’ is an old adage, but contains much truth. To help provide focus in our praying, planning and strategising we have set intermediate ‘short-term’ goals. If our ‘long-term’ intermediate goal is reaching 10% of the population, our short-term goal over the next five years is to increase our membership to 250 churches. We have broken down our area into eight different regions to provide more intentional, informed and focused gospel partnership at a local level. Each region (which now has an appointed regional rep) has the goal of planning and praying for eight new church plants, eight church revitalisations, and eight existing churches to join the Partnership. Of course, we are well aware that ‘in their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps’ (Prov.16:9), but these goals help to remind us of the great task before us.
(We are also aware that there are other gospel churches in our area that, for whatever reason, might not choose to join the Partnership but still seek to proclaim Christ, and in that too we rejoice).
Jesus tells us in Matthew 9 that the primary problem we face is not the size of the harvest, but insufficient workers. To that end, our training courses undergird all that we do. Since NWGP started, nearly 2,000 people have attended these courses. Although lockdown has meant that this year’s courses are currently all online, it has enabled people from all over the region to participate without the restrictions placed upon us by having to travel large distances (we even have attendees from the Isle of Man – which would not have been possible if lockdown had not forced us to go online).
To further support our goals, we have tailored our Leaders’ Meetings to be more intentionally focused. Our region is vast, varied and complex, so after Easter we have lined up Leaders’ Meetings on church planting, church revitalisation, ministry in rural areas, and ministry amongst Muslims. The centre of it all is the ministry and mission of the local church, and the NWGP exists to help support that.
