I’ve recently returned from a wonderful few days in Malaga, Spain with some of the team from our Relational Mission (RM) family of churches, which is part of Newfrontiers. The featured picture was our venue up in the hills overlooking the city. On the day before I was snowboarding in Stockholm (getting better, slowly) and on arrival I was running in shorts & T-shirt and seeing people sunbathing on the beach in southern Spain. Modern travel can still make my headspin!

We were served excellently by Vinu Paul from Mumbai, India & Edward Buria from Meru, Kenya as well as from our RM team. There was a collective renewal of our call to the nations and to be globally fruitful. Yet to do so, we need to, Jesus tells us, remain in him. That we are called into deeper relationship with him and as we do so he will make us fruitful. The first part of our strategy then is to nurture and nourish our relationship with God.

From Spain I travelled to the UK where I had the privilege of preaching on The Glory of God at Redeemer Church in Colchester for their Nations Sunday. It’s a great church, led by my friend Hugh Pearce and they are seeing people from many different nations join them. Great fun!

After I visited Colchester, I drove up to Oswestry to see Mum, and on the Monday we gathered in the tiny hamlet of Albrighton, just outside of Shrewsbury. It’s where my Dad grew up and some of my earliest memories are from visiting my grandparents and wandering the lanes and fields. It was a beautiful day as a few of my family gathered to bury Dad’s ashes alongside his parents. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Except we have a hope.

A couple of days later, after returning to Sweden, I headed to Göteborg (you might have heard it as Gothenburg) on the west coast which is Sweden’s 2nd biggest city. I was there for a 2 day conference, with Michael Reeves as the key speaker, but my main goal was not so much the conference but the people.

In Malaga one of the speakers, Mike Betts, said we would have experiences in places where it was like metal detecting and you’re hoping from time to time to find gold. We have a goal of seeing 20 churches in Sweden sharing the same values working together for the renewal of the church and mission here in Sweden.

Part of my time and focus is to be the metal detector and head to places like this hoping both to encourage others and to look for potential partners in this goal.

There’s something good going on at Grace Church. We’re seeing God at work in the lives of people who a year or two ago would never have dreamed of coming to church. Hopefully I’ll be able to share a few of those stories with you in the coming months but we’re encouraged, amidst the constant coming and going of a city church, people are finding us and finding Christ!

We’re also incredibly diverse. I counted up the other day and this was my list:

Italy, Albania, France, Sweden, UK, US, Colombia, Brazil, Germany, Holland, Georgia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, Nigeria, Somalia, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, South Sudan, China, Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Hungary, Romania (31!!).

I may have forgotten some as people come and go.

This diversity is beautiful because it’s evidence that what Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Go into all the world’ – they have done. And it’s evidence that what God said he wanted, a people from every tribe and nation, He is getting.

It’s also a challenge, so I’ve recently been taking part in some training about intercultural churches to think through how people from different cultures can interact and influence one another so it would be a true melting point, with all the ingredients providing flavour!

One of our team is also hard at work helping us get better at sharing our stories online so you can now find Grace Church on Youtube, Instagram and Tiktok.

Later this month we’ll be hosting a workshop, day conference on healthy discipleship with Matt Hatch from Mosaic Church, Leeds.

All in all there’s a fair bit going on. If you’re the sort of person that enjoys annual reports, here’s Grace Church 2024. It has a lot of pictures!