Although the Stoneleigh Bible Week took much energy in the 90s this decade also saw consolidation and expansion both in numbers of churches and our geographical spread. This was greatly helped by the eleven years of the Stoneleigh Bible Week. But this event was never seen as an end in itself; it was primarily a vehicle to help growth – for individuals and churches. It provided a context for sharing enlarged vision, for equipping people and for helping them embrace a worldview that crossed cultural and geographical boundaries.
Threefold increase
Records show that in 1990 there were 76 churches worldwide in the Newfrontiers family in only seven nations. 64 of these were in the UK. By the end of the decade there were 240 churches in 22 nations. It was on the back of this growth that we felt God say ‘GO’, the prophetic impulse that caused us to close Stoneleigh, much to the surprise of many people both in the Newfrontiers family and beyond.
Arguably Stoneleigh was one of the most successful events in the Christian calendar in the UK at that time and many asked why we were closing at a time of such success. But, as a ‘vehicle’, it had done its job; we were not commissioned to put on events for their own sake. Others were called to do that. And so, 2001 was our last year at Stoneleigh. This may have been good for practical reasons too. With 28,000 attending that final year we had outgrown the showground, even by meeting on two successive weeks, and three weeks were not available. And there was nowhere obvious to move to for a larger Bible Week, even if we had wanted to continue.
Where did the growth take place?
Sadly, records are incomplete about which nations opened up to us and exactly when. But by the end of the decade we were active in many countries on the European continent, as well as in Africa (Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea, South Africa, Lesotho, Kenya, Zimbabwe and possibly others), in several nations from the former Soviet bloc, in North America, in the Middle East and South East Asia, including India, and in Australia and New Zealand.
The energy released out of the Bible Week was remarkable and the commission to ‘GO’ has been abundantly fruitful and continues to this day where there are now thought to be over 2000 churches across more than 80 nations. Precise counting is no longer possible with so many apostolic spheres and with churches that exist in sensitive parts of the world.
How did we realise this further expansion?
There could be many answers to this question and we will consider some of these in future blogs. The first will be to show how, as we moved into the new millennium, we became a family of churches who loved the poor and how many churches actively and intentionally took on fresh ministries to reach those who were poor in their communities. This has resulted in growth as fruit of the prophecy in Isaiah 61 that the gospel is good news to the poor.