Leaders of our Regions Beyond church family are currently gathered for a celebration event in Marathon, Greece.
From Emmanuel, those attending include: Alan and Sandra, Ian, Ali and Richard.
The Regions Beyond team has been sending us updates from the conference. You can read them below. Enjoy!
Update 7 (April 11)
Update 6 (April 10)
Update 5 (April 9)
Update 4 (April 8)
Update 3 (April 7)
Update 2 (April 6)
Update 1 (April 5)
Also, Ali has sent us updates, below:
April 11: “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. Several leaders, including myself, received a powerful fresh revelation of the Father's heart last night, and then again tonight many people were completely undone in God's presence as he did a work of healing from past hurts and fears in their lives. Tonight Jaz Potter preached from Ruth about overcoming fear. She was outstanding! 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!
We have one more morning tomorrow and then we fly home tomorrow night.
April 10: Dear church family, Greetings from Marathon in Greece. 8 of us from Emmanuel are here at the Regions Beyond worldwide conference. There are around 300 leaders here from all over the world. The weather has been wet, cloudy and windy but the Spirit has been powerfully present.
The first day yesterday involved a 2 hour prayer meeting in the morning, a choice of seminar training tracks and a 3.5 hour meeting. We have been praying into a prophetic word given by a guy from Australia about 'a promise of a new era' - ie not just a new season but new era signifies that things will be completely different to how they have been before. The prophetic sense through the prayer meeting was that this new era will be marked by the awesome power of the Holy Spirit....we can't rely on strategies that have worked in the past but as God is doing a new thing we need to be totally reliant on and led by the Spirit.
In the afternoon session, 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.
We also hear from a couple in India who have a powerful testimony of setting up a preschool business in partnership with a businessman in another part of the RB world. It was beautiful to see gospel partnership in action across our family of churches.
Please do pray for us, that God would do a deep work in us that will influence the church on our return. I will update again tomorrow!