A new initiative called Cant i Gymru has the ambitious aim of seeing 100 healthy churches planted in Wales within the next decade.
Cant i Gymru (meaning ‘100 for Wales’ in English) is ‘a collective of gospel friends’ from across the world and Wales. According to their website, they are ‘believing God for a fresh wave of missional planting in Cymru’, and aim to do this by providing pastoral support, uniting in prayer, and equipping and sending out church planters.
It’s still early days for the collective; their website went live on 25 September this year, and they officially launched with a prayer night on 21 October. However, they have five backing churches and will be supported by charity Waleswide Cymrugyfan for the next two years. Already, they are working with eight church plants and have been approached by six people interested in planting a church.
Cant i Gymru is led by three couples who have all been involved in church-planting in Wales previously – Ben and Lois Franks, Steff and Gwenno Morris, and Charlotte and Owen Cottom.
Ben Franks shared with en that the vision for Cant i Gymru came to him originally in a dream. He said, ‘I wouldn’t say I’ve had many dreams from God (maybe two in my life), but I had a dream of a website and the domain name was 100.cymru. On the banner of the website was the question ‘what would it take to see 100 churches planted in Wales in the next ten years?’… I’d love to say I’d thought of it myself, but I do really feel that it came from God.’
He continued: ‘We had many moments of being willing to put it down … But we’ve had lots of green lights and eventually felt we needed to step forward.’
Practically, by the end of the year, the collective hopes to have training pathways in place, have identified people to train up for planting, and have others willing to be part of planting teams.
On Twitter/X, church leader in Cardiff Dai Hankey shared: ‘I love [their] vision, and I trust and respect the people driving it.’
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