Equipped to help people find and follow Jesus
Insights and inspiration from the Elim Network One Conference
How can we help people find and follow Jesus? This was the question addressed at this year’s Network One conference, writes Tom Skelton.
When the Elim Network met for its second conference at New Springs Loughborough in March, it spent the day equipping its churches, chaplains, church leaders and ministries to help people “Find and Follow Jesus”.
“We facilitated a warm spiritual environment, with excellent worship led by Ellen Lockwood and prophetic space for Helen Yousaf to contribute through her art,” says Tom Skelton, one of the event’s organisers.
“With this backdrop set, Stuart Blount reminded people of our call to follow the command of Jesus to ‘Go’, setting the scene for the day’s theme.
To equip the 80-plus Elim Network partners in attendance, various speakers took up the baton, providing insight, wisdom and guidance for those serving and seeking to see people come to faith.
“The day built to an incredible time of ministry in which God spoke profoundly through prophetic moments of encouragement. Hope was sown in the lives of many,” says Tom.
The highlights
Tim Alford explained how different generations who are assumed to be disconnected from church are actually very much engaged in faith. He outlined how and where this is happening and how the overwhelming majority of people who come to faith do so when they are young. He also looked at how we as Christians might be equipped, encouraged and enabled to help these generations engage with the Christian faith. Roundtable discussions and a Q&A session helped attendees work out how they might apply these ideas in their local areas.
Mark Greenwood explored how the Bible agrees with many modern voices talking about their “journeys”. People come to Jesus through a journey, too, he said. We don’t, therefore, try to force them to one point of decision. Instead, we should accompany them throughout the process of coming to faith; sharing our lives, stories and friendship along the way. This way, we become more effective at understanding our role in evangelism and stop feeling guilty for not being Billy Graham when actually, God needs us to be ourselves!
Mark Pugh brought the day to a powerful conclusion, speaking about offering “the right sort of fire” based on Leviticus 10. Outlining how we can be prone to getting this wrong, he provided practical insights into what this actually looks like in modern Christian Pentecostal ministry. He then led the conference in sung worship toward a moment of consecration in which Helen Yousaf also ministered.
This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.