New
Wine sees encouraging growth in England
New
Wine saw its largest ever gathering of Christians and Church leaders at the
Royal Bath & Wells Showground at Shepton Mallett in August this year. Over
18,000 delegates came there to two gatherings in successive weeks, and nearly
20,000 came there to the three follow-on gatherings of Soul Survivor, New
Wine’s sister organisation for young people.
New
Wine was started by Bishop David Pytches and his wife Mary in 1989. David had
been a missionary Bishop in Chile with the South American Missionary Society,
and returned to the UK to become Vicar of St.Andrews Church in Chorleywood, near
London. St.Andrews soon entered a period of significant renewal and growth, and
many people started visiting St.Andrews to learn from what was happening there.
It soon became clear to David and Mary that they should start up an
annual event at which St.Andrews could pass on to others something of what the
Lord had been giving them, and this is how New Wine came into existence.
New
Wine seeks to “equip Churches to see Jesus’ Kingdom grow”, and all its
events and activities are designed to enable Churches and their members to
reproduce Jesus’ ministry and His focus on living and revealing the Kingdom of
God in the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit – in their own local community.
In
March 1990 leaders’ retreats were started at Chorleywood to enable more and
more leaders to catch the vision for renewal of their Churches, and to equip
them to be able to lead their Churches into this reality. More than 1000 UK
leaders have now been on one of these retreats.
But
it became clear that leaders were going to need a great deal more personal
support, training and encouragement if they were going to be able to persevere
in seeing their Churches thoroughly renewed. In 1996 the Lord started speaking
to David and others in the New Wine leadership team about the need for a support
network for leaders around England. The New Wine Network was launched in the
summer of 1998, and it has already grown to a membership of over 700 Church
leaders around England. John and Anne Coles, who have taken over the overall
leadership of New Wine from David and Mary Pytches, now lead this network.
In
addition to encouraging local groups of like-minded leaders to network together
for mutual support and encouragement, New Wine now holds an annual National
Leaders Conference for Church leaders, and many regional training events all
around England. These activities have had a marked impact on numbers coming to
the New Wine summer gatherings at Shepton Mallett, which have nearly trebled in
size since the network was launched!
More
and more Church leaders from other parts of the British Isles and other
countries have
shown interest
in the work of
New Wine, and there are now regular New Wine events in Scotland, Ireland,
the Isle of Man, and in countries all over Scandinavia, western Europe, Kenya,
Uganda and South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the USA and Canada.
Many UK leaders in the NW network are now taking faith-sharing teams out to
these other countries, and it has also been heartening to see growth in the
number of teams now going out from other countries in the network to faith-share
in the UK or yet other countries.
New
Wine’s vision and longing is to see the development of a truly international
network of Churches and their leaders who share a similar vision of the Lord
Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, and who want to encourage and support one another
in propagating ministry as Jesus taught and modelled it.
This
is why we are also thrilled to see how “Flames of Fire” has taken root and
grown in Wales. May you flourish and prosper in the years to come!
Bruce Collins Overseer – New Wine International Networks