The EMW wants to help churches in any way it can to reach out to its local community – especially the 95% or more who never go anywhere near a church. Wales needs to be re-evangelised. Evangelist, Roger Carswell says, ‘There has been a famine in our land not of food or drink but of the word of God’. One experienced pastor told me recently, ‘Pagan Wales needs a gospel mission flood.’
We have a uniquely wonderful message of truly amazing grace, forgiveness and hope in a hopeless world. So few people know or understand, yet we have the words of Life!
Who is Mission Wales?
We are an EMW Task Group who are actively involved in reaching out with the gospel across Wales in English and Welsh. At the moment J.P. Earnest (Open-Air Mission) is the secretary, with Mike Leaves (West Cross), John Williams (Gorseinon), Roger Thomas (Aberystwyth), Wyn and Angela Evans (Cardiff), Meirion Thomas (Newport), John Perry (UCCF, Bangor), Malcolm MacDonald (Llanelli) and myself.
So what does Mission Wales do?
Mission Wales is more about ‘cottage industry’ of local, bespoke church activities than centralised ‘big’ gatherings.
We long to:
- encourage persistent and tenacious prayer for churches and people involved in evangelistic endeavours across Wales;
- help churches – we have helped over 40 churches in different ways in recent years. This has ranged from supporting individual churches to groups of up to 12 churches reaching out together (having a mixture of joint and individual events, as the churches wanted). Some churches have wanted short mini-missions, others week-long missions;
- explore new opportunities to reach out across Wales.
- help with graphic design of bespoke local newspapers, flyers and mission-linked websites;
- contact a wide range of preachers and those who have testimonies which God has used to bless others and link them to churches;
- keep costs down and find help in obtaining grants to support at least a little;
- encourage courageous and winsome sharing of the gospel;
- recognize that we all need one another to engage in gospel partnership;
How can we all get involved?
Individuals:
They can pray – which is an essential part of the work!
They may be able to support a church by helping in the mission – being servants to the church in helping with simple jobs and more complex ones.
Churches:
A church could be a resource church for others, or a church could be one we can help – no church is too small, or too big!
Let us know what God is using to bring lost folk into his Kingdom. We would love to share your good news and encourage others by hearing of your blessings.
What can we pray about?
- Churches currently planning for missions and following up on recent ones.
- UCCF involvement in partnership through its Wales leader Owen Brown. Gwent is the first place that we hope to target. God-willing, both UCCF and EMW shall begin working alongside local churches together in November 2015!
- Future towns or cities where churches will work together in partnering in mission, possibly with UCCF again, especially in North Wales.
- The Mission Wales Task Group as we seek to contribute to re-evangelising Wales.
- We all exercise faith in taking courageous initiatives for which God himself alone can provide the resources and whose blessing is essential.
