Flippin unity in Croydon

At Stoneleigh Bible week in 1997 we met the church in Croydon we now belong to and began the process of testing to see if this was the place for us. At the prayer evening held after I preached at the church to see if God was calling me to Croydon, one of the prophetic guys came up to me and said that he saw 7 horses tethered together thrashing at each other and pulling in all directions trying to go their own way. They were in a lather and were achieving nothing, only wearing themselves out. Along came a man in an RAF uniform, he took the reigns and the horses ran purposefully together. He took this to mean that a number of churches would come together in some kind of unity as a result of my leadership. Thanks a lot! Actually, when I arrived in Croydon I tried to ignore the prophesy, but I did decide that I should visit the ministers of the churches which were in our local area and say hello.  Within a couple of weeks I received two invitations. The first was from the 133 group of Croydon Church Leaders who met once a month for a prayer breakfast. They turned out to be about 15 evangelical, charismatic church leaders who generally agreed on the way church should be. The second invitation came from the very local Selsdon and Addington Church Council, asking me to join them at their next committee meeting to represent our church.

The 133 breakfast was pleasant and I met a lot of guys who wanted to do mission together, several of whom were working on a youth project with OASIS Trust to open a hostel for homeless youth. I could cope with this kind of unity and it was largely a joy to be involved. 

The Church Council meeting was an entirely different animal. 

If 133 was a chimpanzee, the Church Council was a sloth - a dead one. 

To be fair to all there, they knew this too and the meeting voted to bring the council to an end and begin a new venture called ‘Churches Together in Selsdon and Addington’ and they voted me to be the first year’s chair person (Which actually lasted 3 years). How on earth I got into that place I’ll never know, but suddenly I was mister unity in Selsdon. As Chair I was also invited to be on the new Churches Together in the Borough of Croydon (CTBC) executive which gave a central committee to all of the smaller area groups like Selsdon’s. The total number of churches in Croydon was over 240 but only about half were part of CTBC. The parts of the church that seemed to do a lot didn't want to be part of CTBC (some even mused that most of the members weren't Christians) and the part that loved CTBC seemed to be what I came to call ‘ecumaniacs’ - people who loved the processes, committees, minutes and reports, but were largely not engaged in local church life. I really didn't want to be part of any unity, but I couldn't ignore four things - first the prophesy, second the scriptures like Jesus’ prayer in John 17 and Ephesians 4:3, third the circumstances around me and fourth that niggling feeling that ‘Sneaky’ had got me again and that unity was hot on his agenda. 

Its funny, but a year ago I preached and led the service at a local Methodist church and we sang a chorus I haven't sung for nearly 20 years, ‘An army of ordinary people’. As we sang it, a line hit me much like Mohammed Ali used to hit his opponents. It went “A truth long neglected, but the time has now come, when the children of promise shall flow together as one”. I think I managed to hide my tears as I tried to sing that song.

The main reason that I got involved in church unity as a chaplain in the RAF was reading Ed Silvoso’s book “That None Should Perish”. 

After reading the book I got hold of George Otis Junior’s ‘Transformation” videos. These gave me a sense of the possibility of unity of the church in a city where Christians of all kinds come together to pray for their area to see the Kingdom of God come in their location. And both confirmed in me that the church needed leadership so that it could take the lead in the world. I was ready to rally behind a leader who would gather other leaders in unity and spent some time looking at movements and their leaders like Colin Urqhuart, Gerald Coates, and Terry Virgo. 

When, a few years later, I became part of a church belonging to New Frontiers International (NFI), at one level I felt that I had found this kind of leadership. Although I didn't really know him, Terry Virgo seemed to me to be that kind of leader. What was more, locally, we followed Ray Lowe’s apostolic leadership and he knew Terry very well as a friend and so we felt connected. Many of the other Church leaders in our region also knew Terry well, so we all felt that we were following a true servant hearted man of vision. The problem for me was that our NFI region wasn't just Croydon it was much wider. In my gut I knew that we needed an ekklesia for our city.