How I See It

By David Devenish

For many years, even before I was involved in Christian leadership, I had the passion to reach the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ on my heart. In my secular career I was involved with international relationships, first in international trade negotiations and then in banking, financing large capital projects in many nations.

Scilla and I were brought up in an extremely legalistic church background and were therefore thirsty for an understanding and experience of the grace of God which we began to understand clearly when we heard Terry’s preaching on it. We also developed a passion for a glorious church as a result of amazing revelation that came to us through preaching from Bryn Jones.

I now believe God has called me to help our family of churches play our part, amongst many others, in reaching every nation in our generation. I believe we are called to preach Christ and establish churches in completely and largely unreached regions of the world, and to see the gospel and New Testament church life contextualised appropriately into many different cultures without compromising the truth.

I am committed to seeing genuine apostolic and prophetic foundations being laid in local churches so that they understand the part they are called to play in the unfolding drama of God’s purposes in the earth. I was first involved in planting churches across the Midlands region of the UK, following a remarkable prophetic call to plant a whole region of churches like Paul did from Ephesus. This then became the foundation for ongoing ministry into other nations.

I am now leading two teams, one is caring for churches and motivating church planting in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Moldova, the other serving churches and sending church planting teams into the 10/40 window.

Several of the situations in which we, as a team, are privileged to work were opened up to us by Martyn Dunsford (right) with whom I work particularly closely in bringing apostolic oversight to a number of these situations. Martyn particularly has responsibility as part of the team I lead in serving the churches in Armenia, the Crimea and the Balkans where we have flourishing churches as part of our family in Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia, and are planting into Macedonia.

We now work with over 100 churches and church plants in the Russian-speaking world and my current objective is to see apostolic teams based in various centres in that part of the world, serving and planting churches in their own regions and into other regions beyond. Already several of these teams are working cross-culturally as they seek to reach minority people groups in the former Soviet Union.

In the 10/40 window we have teams and churches working in outwardly difficult circumstances, showing great perseverance; in other situations we are now beginning to see breakthrough in conversions and our goal is to see indigenous leaders raised up who can multiply church planting amongst their people groups.

I believe I am called to continue to pioneer into new areas and support others doing the same. I am very interested in how different cultures and languages can be used for the glory of God, worshipping and expressing church life in a form unique to their particular culture.

I first met David Devenish when he had recently left an international banking job and was leading a comparatively young church in Bedford. He had taken a courageous step, trusting God to supply for him, his wife and young family.

Over the years it has been wonderful to see him grow into the international leader that he has become in and through Newfrontiers. Woodside, his local church, has grown and flourished, and he has become increasingly released to serve very broadly but primarily in Eastern Europe and the Muslim-majority world.

David is multi-gifted, having great teaching skill, a powerful prophetic voice and very insightful writing ability, having made an extraordinary contribution through his books Demolishing Strongholds, What on Earth is the Church For? and most recently his excellent book on apostolic ministry entitled Fathering Leaders, Motivating Mission. Each of these books has been Biblically rooted, thoroughly researched and hugely relevant to the work to which God has called us.

In our Apostolic Forum David has played a very significant part through his insightful teaching, always expounding Scripture with urgency and relevance while at the same time illustrating hands-on application from the many churches with which he works.

In the UK he helped thrust our church planting developments into the Midlands with his Midlands Initiative, and now his international travels continue to penetrate new areas, frequently into unpronounceable locations.

At our Team meetings David has proved excellent in helping to prepare our agendas, guiding us through our programmes with great skill. His capacity for hard work seems unending.

How I See It

By David Devenish

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