Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Roger Sutton from the Gather Network

Roger and Lesley Sutton

On June 25th-27th a major conference will take place in Stoke-on-Trent with Argentinian church leader Ed Silvoso coming to the city as the main speaker at an event which will generate national level interest.

Ed Silvoso is a highly influential and respected leader with a particular emphasis and understanding on how the church can bring about transformation in society through engaging in the marketplace.

Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Roger Sutton, who runs the Gather Network with his wife Lesley and is one of the speakers at the Transformation conference about what is happening in the church in the UK.

Jonathan: Please could you begin by telling us who you are and what Gather is all about?

Roger: Yeah, thank you. I've been a Baptist minister in South Manchester for the last 25 years or so. In recent times it became a wider ministry across Greater Manchester and also nationally working with the Gather Network. Gather came out of the heart of Steve Clifford who's the General Director of the Evangelical Alliance. He sensed that churches in cities and towns were doing things differently, in terms of unity for mission. I was sent out to find out what was happening and I was amazed at what God's been doing over the last 10 or 15 years. Leaders have been coming together to pray regularly seeking God's heart for the city or the town God has placed them in and some new levels of unity are being expressed and some really creative mission is happening. People are putting down their barriers and their denominational barriers; their relational barriers and they are coming together like never before. We have found this now in 90 different places around the country. This is a move of God and it's really exciting.

Jonathan: Please could you give a few examples of that?

Roger: If you go to York on a Wednesday morning at 7.30 as I've done, you will find three quarters of the church leaders in that city praying together. They pray together every Wednesday and have done that for the last 13 years. When you do that and then you have coffee and toast for breakfast, you form friendships; you have the same heart for the city and the town; you do joint activities together; you begin to get strategic about what you are doing. In Southampton they are asking the question, where is the church? Not their denomination, but where is the church in the city? Where should it be in the city? Where are there gaps in the city? Where should we be planting? And, perhaps we could do it together. Also unity movements are relating to civic authorities in new ways, because they're not just coming over as one church, but they're coming over as all the churches in the area. The level of the friendships are just amazing, with real support and encouragement in different places around the country.

Jonathan: When we're talking about community transformation or transformation in the city or town, do you think unity is a foundational aspect?

Roger: You can't do it without it. No one church will transform a city; no one ministry will transform a city; no one network in one of the cultural spheres would transform a city. It must be the whole church being used by God and only God's blessing really comes when people stand together in unity and not in competition.

Jonathan: How would you evaluate where the church is at in the UK versus where the nation is at?

Roger: I think locally there's a lot of strength. People are focusing down on their geography now in new ways. I think before people would own adherents to a denomination or a stream, which of course would be national, but increasingly people own adherents to their locality, the place where God has put them. There are people who are very passionate about their places. The Bible speaks a lot about place. I think there's a lot of stuff happening on the ground. It doesn't necessarily get out into the national sphere because it's on the ground and part of my job is to go and find it and then highlight it.

Jonathan: You're coming to Stoke-on-Trent for the Transformation conference. One of the keynote speakers is a man called Dr Ed Silvoso. How significant do you think it is that he is coming to the UK?

Roger: It's a great opportunity. Ed has been to the UK a number of times and some of the unity movements in particular were very inspired by his vision and his dream that a city or a town could be transformed. I think his ministry is really welcomed at this moment. He'll be building on previous visits and of course books that he has written. I'm really excited about him coming actually; I think it's going to be a real shot in the arm for people.

Jonathan: What will be the focus of your session?

Roger: I'll be focusing on the unity aspect. Without a sense of building relationally together we won't really see the transformation. God is bringing everything together. Ephesians tells us that under Christ everything is coming together; everything was disparate and fragmented, but God is drawing it all together. The church of God needs to live that unity, that is already in place in the future and we need to live the unity of the kingdom. How we live together; how we treat each other; how we respect each other and how we forgive each other is crucial to living out the kingdom. To me these are essential issues about how we respect, honour, love and speak the truth to one another in love and how we hold together in our relationships. We cannot carry on just doing our own thing; building our own empires and fuelling our own egos. We must be people who have a respect for the whole church right across the city.

Jonathan: If the church is getting its act together like this, how do you see that outworking in the city in terms of what we might call a city or community transformation? What will that look like?

Roger: It's going to have to happen in the church firstly. Secondly the churches themselves have got to be places that disciple, train and release their people into the cultural spheres. A vicar is not going to be able to affect business life very much; a vicar isn't going to be able to affect the health service or the media of a particular place; but their people can because God has placed their people in those places. The churches need to see themselves very much as the springboard; the training centres and the encouragement places for those ministries. Once we can begin to get Christians together in the health service in a particular place, or Christians together in the media, then we can begin to pray together and work together. Then we also ally ourselves as the church of God to the civic authorities and we offer ourselves to serve, to connect and then the church itself plays a sort of institutional role. We are a huge service provider in any one of our cities. A recent study has shown that 40% of social action in the Borough of Wandsworth was faith based and 35% of that 40% was church based. We are a huge player in terms of the capacity and the building up of our communities and we need to realise that and we need to take our place.

Jonathan: How do you view the current economic crisis and challenges in the nation? Do you see that God's allowing that, to give the church an opportunity to re-engage in society?

Roger: Well it certainly is an opportunity. I think God's using the context because the door is now wide open, particularly about civic authority, local authorities, police and so on. They have run out of money and nothing will ever be the same again; that's all the information we're getting from now. I do a lot of work in my borough council; they have this graph of doom where they basically run out of money to provide adult social care and protection of children by 2018. The whole game is changing; therefore they are looking significantly at partnership; how they can partner with others doing stuff and the church is one of the big partners. We need to get our act together. They're not going to deal with hundreds of churches. They're not going to ring up the Methodist and the Baptists and the Anglicans; they want one phone number. That's why the church needs to get its act together, but the opportunity is like never before. I've never seen such openness from civic authorities.

You can find out more about the Transformation conference on the Saltbox website.