Planting hope in Wales

An exciting Welsh church planting academy project was unveiled at the recent NLT prayer meeting in Wales. Here, John Bullock discusses the plan

John, you’re preparing to launch a church planting academy in Wales. Tell us about it.

It’s total pioneer work with Elim! We’ve actually known for years that there’s a great need for church planting in Wales, but until now we didn’t have a concrete plan. Then things really came together this year.

The background is that while lots of people are doing great work in Wales already, there are also vast areas of the country without an Elim witness. Our churches are centred in the south-east and the Valleys but we don’t go further than Llanelli West and we only have three in north Wales.

So my wife Debbie and I are moving to Wales where we’ll likely pioneer a church ourselves, then launch an academy to train others to plant too.

You’ve been pastoring in Newcastle for six years so it’s a big change. How did you sense the call to Wales?

We’ve always known we’d return to Wales eventually because we have a big heart for the country. It started when we pastored Porth Elim and I did a diploma in Welsh in the 90s, and even while we’ve worked in Africa and other places over the years that’s remained.

We have big links to Wales too, with our children born there, and now they and our grandchildren living there. Towards the end of last year we began sensing it might be time to move on from Newcastle and that became clear earlier this year. I’ll be honest, we tried to push it away for a while, but God was confirming it.

Your passion for planting in Wales has become a pioneering project with Elim. How did that happen?

We had church planting on our hearts but weren’t sure if Elim would want to be involved. Then Mark and Nita Pugh visited us in January and we chatted things through.

It became obvious that what’s been going on in the Church Planting Academy in Exeter means it’s a good time for Elim to start something similar in Wales.

What are your long-term aims?

I’d like to work on a long-term plan for reaching the north, west, south and east of Wales.

Another thing I’d love to see is Elim’s first Welsh-speaking church. We’ve got Welsh speakers in our existing churches, and Aberystwyth is moving things in that direction, but I’m talking about a first-language Welsh church where the services are completely in Welsh.

Where are you and Debbie up to on this adventure so far?

We’re house-hunting and looking into what the churches are already doing in Wales and what’s needed. We have a new situation too. Debbie has just been ordained and has been asked to pastor Kidderminster Elim for a year. That means we’ll be splitting the week between Kidderminster and Wales for a while. That’s fine though – we had a similar set-up when we were leading in Porth and helping in Blackpool at the same time. God equips you for the ministry he’s got for you, and Debbie and I were made for this!

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.