Wellington

We got to NZ and found the mission really well set up by a dedicated team, with 15 churches taking part - itself a breakthrough in a city that had little real unity amongst the churches.  A ready-made team was raised by the Lord to take things forward, based on a great administrator and three pastors, one of whom is the team leader, another the evangelist and a third the 'nuts and bolts' logistics guy - and all four were in their element doing what God has gifted them to do!  Anyway, On the Move New Zealand is born and they are determined to take the mission not only to other parts of Wellington in the next 12 months, but also if possible to other towns and cities across NZ.  We are thrilled with this.

One of the leaders said that the mission challenged him to rethink how far he had to just accept the onslaught of the prevailing culture (New Age, etc) and how far it was time to say 'thus far and nor further!'.  The background to this was the extraordinary experience of seeing this 'anything-goes' city being transformed into a place which felt like it was the Lord's.  The worship filling the air for several days does this, but in Wellington the impact of this was greater than normal, perhaps because the previous sense of spiritual darkness was itself greater than normal.  We certainly had a sense of the Lord's dominion there and the dozen or so conversions that we recorded were only the tip of the iceberg of what the Lord was actually doing.  (Maybe five times as many will have prayed the prayer than we ever got to speak to - but who knows?)  We fed about 2,700 people over the three days, with about 150 team members taking part, and there was great excitement at what the Lord was doing.  This was also a genuinely city centre mission, with Civic Square and then the main shopping street taken over by the Lord's people.  And we were received by the populace and experienced real favour! 

M.G. March 05