Visionary plans to plant 30 new gospel churches in Greater Manchester by 2030 are getting underway.
The project is the brainchild of a fresh initiative called the Northern Gospel Project.
Ralph Cunnington, planter and Senior Pastor of City Church Manchester, writes: Greater Manchester is a rapidly growing city of 2.8 million people. Simply to keep up with population growth, 60 new churches of 100 people each would need to be planted by 2030. And church attendance would still remain at just 3.8%! That’s less than half the rate of London. The task is huge!
We wanted to play our part in tackling that task. So, back in 2014, we planted City Church Manchester in the heart of Manchester, to be a church accessible for the whole city. We’ve grown from 27 adults to nearly 400 regular adults, helped plant three churches and directly planted Trinity Church Prestwich – sending out 32 adults and children to North Manchester.
As wonderful as that is, it’s barely scratching the surface. We’re increasingly convinced of two things. First, on our own we can only reach some, but together with other churches we can do more. Second, we need to be generous and open-handed, working with like-minded brothers and sisters in Christ across denominations and tribes for the sake of the lost.
Four years ago, these twin convictions led us to conversations with Christ Church Manchester, a church from the Newfrontiers family and deeply committed to church planting. In fact, they’ve planted five congregations in the past ten years and set up Broadcast Church Planting, an online training platform for planters and plant teams.
Out of these discussions, the Planters Collective was born. This is a joint care system for church planters in Manchester. Currently, nine planters (Anglican, Free, Presbyterian and charismatic) meet monthly to share, pray and provide peerto-peer training.
But the conversations didn’t stop there. We realised more was needed to help church plants get off the ground. We couldn’t just care for current planters: potential planters and their teams needed more help all round. Real brass tacks help.
Out of this, the vision for the Northern Gospel Project was formed. The Northern Gospel Project is an ambitious initiative. By providing training, funding and care, we want to see 30 gospel churches planted in Greater Manchester by 2030.
Our Breaking Ground Conference towards the end of last year officially marked the launch of the Northern Gospel Project, when 55 pastors and church staff and 100 church members from Leeds, Sheffield, Wakefield, Cheshire and Liverpool attended to hear Femi Osunnuyi from City to City Africa, Neil Powell from the London Project and Jonathan Bell from the Birmingham Collective (formerly 2020 Birmingham) and more.
