Reaching the Unreached

Published. 20/02/2012
Author. David Devenish

Photo credits: Globes and Maps By Caruba

Over the last ten years or so, my ministry has primarily involved serving in other parts of the world.

Previously I had been involved in church planting and serving churches in the Midlands regions of the UK, but at the end of the year 2000, I felt that God was calling me on to serve churches in the Russian speaking world and the Muslim world and was released to serve internationally. Part of the vision for the Midlands was that churches would be planted which would also be involved in world mission.
 
Since 2000 I have worked in a number of regions of the world, particularly having in mind the apostle Paul’s calling to “preach the gospel where Christ was not known” i.e. to reach unreached people groups. Within the sphere I lead, a number of regions and teams have developed to serve churches and enable those churches to reach the unreached. In this I have worked very closely with Martyn Dunsford from Kings Community Church, Southampton who also has a real passion to see the gospel go to the unreached regions of the world. We have formed teams which have supported us in this mission.
 
We are now working with seven potential apostolic teams in the Russian speaking world, supporting around 140 churches and church plants. These include churches in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Armenia. Some of those teams are now actively planting churches among unreached people groups in their regions.
 
I have also been leading a team which serves into Muslim majority countries ranging from North Africa through the Middle East and Central Asia to Pakistan. God has been with us in this and we have seen a number of churches planted and growing.
 
Martyn Dunsford has been leading a team that is serving churches within the Balkans region, in Albania, Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria with plans to plant churches elsewhere in the Balkans.
 
We recently agreed as a team of apostles that it would be good for me to again build relationships with many of the churches in the Midlands, in order to serve them with apostolic fathering and involve those churches in the apostolic mission to which we are called.
 
During this past autumn term, I have also been inviting a number of churches who are not connected elsewhere to join with my team. A number of the churches in the regions I used to work in have joined with me again, where they had not already got connections with other apostolic spheres. I have also renewed relationships with churches in the Peak District, Manchester and Newcastle, as well as Kings Community Church, Southampton which Martyn leads.
 
Among the purposes of apostolic ministry is to provide a fathering relationship to churches and to involve those churches in our wider mission. This is what the team have been seeking to rebuild during these last few months and will continue to do in 2012. I am very excited about the possibilities.
 
We will be seeking to gather leaders and churches together in different contexts during the course of this next year. The churches that I am working with south of London will be gathering for “Together at Plumpton” in June. This was an initiative already taken by the Sussex churches with whom I will be working and I look forward to being part of this “Together” event. We are also planning to have a “Together” event in May 2013 where we will be seeking to gather the churches from the entire sphere for which we as a team are responsible.
 
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Reproduced from Connect Magazine, Spring 2012.

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• connect: spring 2012
• mission
• unreached