In the past I’ve been a bit critical of our Together on a Mission conferences but there has been a consistent high point every year. Without fail the Thursday night of prayer and giving is extraordinary.

It’s a genuine joy to watch people give exuberantly and generously as year after year close to a million pounds is given on one night. In fact it says something when there’s a slight air of disappointment if the total is only say £950,000!

It’s a thrilling thing to be among 5000 people praying for the nations and I think it’s to Terry Virgo’s enormous credit that prayer so fundamentally shapes our gatherings.

Last year I sat up in the gods watching thousands of arms stretched out in prayer as we earnestly sought God for nation after nation and I thought to myself, next year that will be me on the stage. And this year it was!

I was really grateful to have a short chance to tell the thousands that the very next morning our family was flying to Sweden and something of the desire God has given us for this country to plant a church in Stockholm. It was then profoundly moving to have those same thousands pray with great passion, vigour and faith and to have people ahead of you in the journey come to you, lay on hands and pray for you as if they were coming with you. It was a remarkable privilege.

I’m not sure what the conferences of other church networks are like, what they focus on, what sense of unity and vision they have. I’ve certainly not come across or even to be honest heard of anything remotely close to that. So while I think there are other conferences that will do many other things better I’m not sure I’d trade any of that if it meant missing out on that prayer night.

So it’s not too much of a stretch to say that we feel sent not just by a local church but also by a wider church family that is together on a mission. I hope as we grow and devolve from the centre to the regions that somehow that sense of together will not be lost.