Firstline

By Terry Virgo

It will take me a long time to forget the image of thousands of young people worshipping God at Notts County Football Stadium. It really was magnificent!

But Newday is more than an evangelistic outreach. It is a training ground for thousands of our young people. Morning sessions are charged with urgency, zeal and passion. The worship is breathtaking, the preaching is of the highest standard and the young people are responding with all their hearts. Gasps went up when it was announced that 4–5,000 teenagers had raised an offering of £95,000. What kind of commitment is this? Or, as I was asked, ‘Where do they get their money from?’

I am not sure where they get their money from but I am very thrilled with where they are willing to put it; namely, along with their hearts, in commitment to the kingdom of God.

A shouting, dancing generation
I was thrilled to see crowds of red-T-shirted teenagers flooding through the streets of Nottingham. ‘Flooding’ is not a bad word to use, especially when one remembers some of the weather they experienced, but their spirits did not seem in the least bit dampened!

We have young people to be proud of! When they spilled down from the massive Notts County stand onto the pitch, declaring that they are a ‘shouting and dancing generation’, it was very hard to keep ones emotions in check. A few years ago, the church knew nothing of this kind of zeal and passion, especially amongst its young people. Teenagers were regarded as a problem. How can you keep them in church? How can you keep them happy? How can you keep them entertained?

I thank God for the leaders of Newday who have made no attempt to water down their message or aim at some cheap and easy ‘keep them happy’ programme. They have gone for an all-out vision of zealous discipleship and commitment to the gospel. Our young people love it! They are rising to it full of enthusiasm and zeal.

At Newday they watched hundreds pouring forward to the gospel invitation, witnessed thrilling healings, with guys and girls running and jumping around the stage to show that they had been healed, and celebrating the reality that God is good, present and powerful!

Nor are they satisfied simply to be ‘happy clappies’. In the afternoons, sometimes in pouring rain, they went out to the town to do hard work in ugly situations, bringing the love of God and the light of the gospel into all kinds of difficult locations, sometimes at the same time being mocked by gangs of their contemporaries. But happily it didn’t seem to bother them.

Mobilise and Leadership 2005
At Mobilise over 800 students and 20s were similarly ignited by outstanding preaching, magnificent worship and, as they shared in our Leadership Conference, exposure to our global vision expressed by 54 nations packed into the vast Brighton Centre, which on the Wednesday night was literally filled.

I have only once before seen the Brighton Centre absolutely filled and that was at the height of John Wimber’s popularity. What a joy to fill it again! How magnificent to know that we have problems for next year’s conference. Maybe no more day visitors.

When God told us to close Stoneleigh Bible Week it was a real enigma. We prayed a lot and tried to listen very hard and felt clearly that God said that it was right to close. Now, as we see thousands packing into our Brighton leadership/world mission conference, hundreds pouring in to Mobilise and thousands pouring in to Newday, we begin to see what God was after. God has called us to world mission and leaders from around the world are coming to taste and see what we are up to. For example, it was great to welcome 30 pastors from Brazil to the Brighton Centre. I wouldn’t have expected 30 pastors to fly that distance, hire a tent and come to a field at Stoneleigh’s agricultural showground.

A new era
At a recent prayer and fasting gathering of 600+ of our UK pastors and leaders, God spoke to us prophetically about our entering a new ‘era’. It would not be like a new day, when the familiar bird sounds and light of the dawn prepare us for the predictable. It would not be like a new season with its recognisable transitions from heat to cold or from buds to leaves. An era is less recognisable. One man begins to recognise that steam lifts the lid of the kettle and begins to ponder the possibility of steam power. Within a few years steam power has changed our world. Sailing becomes only a sport or hobby. Steam ships encircle the globe and an industrial revolution breaks out. A new era has come. The world is changed.

God has said to us that we are entering a new era. Our experience of seeing people healed has been growing in a very marked way. We have already been in two stadiums, Notts County and Bournemouth, and our eyes are now on the magnificent Pride Park, Derby. Successful Newfrontiers Family Camps have taken place this summer in Romania, Russia, France and the USA. Prophetic words are coming to pass. God is multiplying blessing.

Heir of the world
As we go on world mission we believe we are the fulfilment of promises made to Abraham that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3) and that he was heir of the world (Rom. 4:13). If we belong to the Messiah then we are automatically Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:29).

More preoccupied with the New Testament vision of ‘Jerusalem above’ than on the earthly Jerusalem, we share the apostle Paul’s perspective, who clearly did not see himself as abandoning his Jewish roots and replacing them with Christian values; rather he saw the coming of the Messiah and preaching Him to the nations as the fulfilment of all his Jewish hopes and longings. As he went on his international apostolic mission ‘testifying about the kingdom of God and trying to persuade them about Jesus’ (Acts 28:23), he regarded himself as in chains because of ‘the hope of Israel’ (Acts 28:20).

Believing Him to be the authentic and only God, we abandon our national gods and submit exclusively to Israel’s God, obeying His Messiah’s command to go with good news of His kingdom to all the nations of the earth.

I hope you will find the articles in this magazine helpful, inspiring and clarifying of some of the issues that face our generation.

Firstline

By Terry Virgo

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