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Gateway International Church, Dubai
 By David Holden
Sidcup, UK
Liz and I have just returned from an excellent week spent with Gateway International church in Dubai. Since a great deal of our time over the last four years has been spent in Southern Africa, our last visit to Dubai was back in 2004.
Dubai is an amazing experience. Fast, furious, always changing and almost unrecognisable every time you return as so much building work goes on. There are new sky scrapers, towers, shopping malls and even ‘new worlds’ built on reclaimed land out to sea. Nothing is over 40 years old and the whole atmosphere is charged with new opportunities. It is as if Dubai wants to be the centre of the world, and in so many ways that is exactly what it has become.
Gateway International church reflects this sense of being strategically placed. I preached at the Friday meeting to the most international local church I have ever attended. I met Filipinos, South Africans, Brits, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, a Mexican, Malaysians, Indians, Americans and Iranians – and they were only the ones I spoke to at the meeting. There are many more different nationalities and languages represented in the church.
You can imagine my joy and privilege to then preach on Worship, and talk about the nations being one in Christ as we glorify him together. Also, it was great to have my friend Evan Rogers leading the worship, now based in Dubai as a teacher. We packed over 280 people into a hotel room. Clive Cernik (from the UK) has been leading the church for four years now and has done an outstanding job. He and his wife, Heather, have built a wonderful sense of family, whilst retaining the call to be together on mission. Part of that mission is to instil the vision of local church life in people who typically may only be contracted to work in Dubai for three years. If people can catch that vision then we can plant churches with them as they return to their own nations.
Gateway church also has a vision to build a large vibrant church and so we need people who will stay to see that become a reality. I believe Gateway will also represent a major apostolic centre from which we can literally impact all the nations of the world.
As an international team we believe that Newfrontiers has a wonderful opportunity in Dubai. We would love to encourage people with work opportunities to really consider Dubai as a key part of the world where they could invest time and energy.
We are planning many visits in the near future and are looking to God to see genuine progress in every way in the days ahead.
Please pray for Gateway International church and for Dubai that it will continue to be an open door to the world. |
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