As you may have seen on our website over the last couple of weeks, a number of members from our Durham and Chester-le-Street congregations recently attended the Regions Beyond worldwide conference in Marathon, Greece.
Below, Ali Scott provides some great insight into what took place at the conference, including some of the prophetic words that were shared there…
Around 8 of us from Emmanuel attended the Regions Beyond worldwide conference in Marathon, Greece, from 8-12 April 2019. Regions Beyond is our worldwide family of churches with whom God has called us to partner in the gospel. We are led by Steve Oliver and his global team and we are joined together by 11 core values. At this gathering, there were around 300 leaders from all over the world. The weather was for the most part wet, cloudy and windy but the Spirit was powerfully present.
Each day consisted of a 2 hour prayer meeting, a choice of seminar tracks and a 3 hour celebration with worship, teaching and prayer ministry. There were three major prophetic words that came before and during the conference that shaped much of the praying. These were as follows:
I believe God is taking us into a new era. It’s not a change of season as it is not something we have experienced before. New eras present a total change of landscape, which brings about such a significant change in the mode of operation. Seasons are recognisable by those who’ve experienced them before and one can find yourself back at the same point - a new era is something totally new.
We can live on the memory of yesterday’s fires at which we warmed our hands at the expense of the re-ignition of fresh fire today. Yesterday’s fuel has become today’s ash - let the history books record those great days, however, it is detrimental to the future if we dwell at a pile of ash because it was once a raging fire. It is time to shake the ash from the grate so that breath of the Spirit for a new era can touch and ignite the Apostolic embers. The fire of a new era is for the purpose of sending out sparks to ignite many around and to which many will come and take burning embers so as to cause the same fire to burn in other regions and nations.
As we were worshipping, I looked out of one window and saw the sea and land beyond. When I looked out of the other window, I just saw the sea; no land, only open ocean. I felt God speak to me about that difference! I sense that as a movement we have worked where we have been able to navigate. When we see a landmark or mountain or coastline, we are able to navigate according to that point. It’s almost like we are a business. We are ferrying people along the coast. We are dropping people off, planting churches and building communities. Everything is navigated along the coastline and is governed by the size of the ship we have. The boat is like a ferry that takes people along. That’s how we have operated. I feel God would say; Look to the bigger thing! Look at the open ocean. There is a whole land and people group on the other side of the sea, that I want you to reach. I see them beyond the horizon. I believe God is saying in the 2020’s, we won’t stop the ferrying, but we do need to invest in a bigger boat. In my mind I’ve got the discovery of the Americas; the boats that had traded around Europe and England were not sufficient to reach the Americas. The new, larger ships were captained by pioneers and, although the crew was made up of ordinary people, they made landfall and built colonies and a nation. I feel God say it’s time to build a different kind of boat; time to restructure in the movement, maybe? There are things on the horizon you have not yet seen. God is saying I am going to open it. It’s time to invest in a bigger boat and start to navigate to the open sea.
In one of the main sessions, Steve Oliver preached to us from Nehemiah 1 about weeping over the lostness of our city/town/village. If we are going to be used by God to see great things for his kingdom, this is the starting point. We were asked to put a flag in the ground for the town, city, region, nation God has put on our heart (see picture). Personally, God really challenged me to weep again for County Durham, to not just walk on by people in pain and see as God sees.
In another session, Marc Dupont preached on the Father heart of God and many leaders, including myself, received a powerful fresh revelation of the Father's love last. We also heard heard from the book of Ruth about overcoming fear and past hurts. The big point coming through has been that if we are going to give ourselves fully to the mission of God, we need to be secure in God's love so we are not hindered by inadequacy or fear. Just in case you needed reminding, church leaders are on the lifelong journey to find complete wholeness in Christ, just as a much as anyone else! To be in the place where that is happening in such humility is beautiful to see and bodes well for our churches around the world.
Another highlight were the interview times in which we heard of various wonderful works of the Kingdom happening all over the world, including the church in Rio and its bridge into the community through English language classes. We also heard of a new training base for Africa that is going to be built on a farm just outside Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. This is going to be a residential base for training church planters. There are plans for other such training bases in other key regions around the world. We listened to stories of pioneers in troubled nations around the world who are real heroes of the faith. Finally, a couple in India shared their powerful testimony of setting up a preschool business in partnership with a businessman in another part of the Regions Beyond world. It was beautiful to see gospel partnership in action across our family of churches.
I think I can honestly say I have never experienced a conference quite like this. The sense of God's presence is so powerful, combined with the humility of the leaders of our movement, the diversity of nations and languages being expressed, and the sense of family and togetherness is very moving!