Sharing the wealth of our Relational Mission values
The team included individuals from churches in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and the UK. Despite many of us meeting one another for the first time, by the time we left we were all great friends.
For several years, the organisers of the European Leadership Forum have invited Relational Mission to deliver teaching around our values at their annual conference in Wisła (Poland), a gathering of almost 800 Christian leaders from Europe and beyond.
Maurice Nightingale was interviewed during one of the main sessions and encouraged to share how the high value we place on relationship guides our church planting and strengthening activity
Alongside morning and evening sessions are networks; seminar streams where smaller groups of delegates receive biblical teaching, training, and resources addressing a specific topic or need. Last May, a team of men and women from Relational Mission church families across Europe ran a network where we were able to encourage many pastors, church planters and leaders with the rich biblical values that we as a sphere of Newfrontiers have inherited and put into practise for many years.
Over the course of the conference we not only taught but we prayed, ate and formed relationships with these delegates and invited them to stay connected with us. It was my first time, but one I would never forget.
One night hundreds of delegates were on our knees, weeping and crying out to God for the youth after a powerful sermon. It was like meeting hundreds of other spiritual relatives outside of our RM family. A Christian doctor from Cambridge, a journalist from an evangelical broadcaster in Spain, an evangelist from Poland, a Pentecostal pastor in Kiev... All with the same goal: that everyone should get to know their Saviour, Jesus. It was so encouraging!
Following positive feedback from the previous conference, we were invited to run another ‘ENOUGH’-style prayer concert.
Alongside the network, organisers asked us to run workshops on topics very dear to us: "Be Fruitful and Multiply: Raising Spiritual Sons and Daughters” and grace.
Beyond this encouragement, I have realised as never before how rich our RM values are. So many pastors, wives of pastors, evangelists and church planters walk alone, work alone, struggle alone, pray alone, cry alone...If you live for years in the most beautiful villa with the best food, perhaps you get used to this. But that isn’t what we are called to! Being at ELF opened my eyes to the treasure we have in our values.
And in the image of a weeping church planter who has struggled alone for years I realised as never before that we should not keep this wealth to ourselves, but have to share it…
Together with husband Arjan, Cornelly van Belle is a part of Christengemeente Elim in Reeuwijk, the Netherlands where amongst other things she helps to organise Kinderdienst, a ‘children’s church’ which sees upwards of 20 children and their parents hear the gospel, sometimes for the first time!