How I See It

By Guy Miller

My wife likes to say about me that my life is one of passion; passion for Jesus, for her, the family, the church, sport, entomology, the gospel and the nations. Let me give you a number of windows into my life.

I became a Christian at the age of fifteen and was baptised with the Holy Spirit, and a passion was birthed to share the gospel and build the church. Within a year another passion was birthed for a girl called Heather Bailey, the only girlfriend I have ever kissed! We married at 21 and by the age of 25 had met Greg Haslam, a man who discipled me in a passion for the Word, for reading and the local church. A few years ago I found myself alongside others leading Winchester Family Church.

A turning point came in my life in 1994 in the move of the Holy Spirit where God spoke in a prayer meeting asking me to go to Africa. Within weeks I was away in Guinea Bissau and became seriously ill. In the midst of the illness we journeyed inland to a Bible college in the depths of a hot, sweaty jungle. On arrival the principle of the college on seeing me started to gesticulate wildly, pointing at me and telling the translator that she had seen me in a dream (nightmare?) more than once with gloved hands before a world map moving little pin flags of nations across the map. ‘This man will release many across the globe to plant churches and advance the kingdom.’ In my sick dehydrated state, my only thought was that she had had one too many fermented bananas and this was my first and last time of going to the nations.

Returning back to the UK and our marvellous National Health Service I filed this trip under ‘miscellaneous’ and threw myself into the excitement of a growing Wintonian (Winchester) world. It was a few years after this that I went to a conference of leaders where the speaker picked me out from a crowd and prophesied, ‘You will go in an out of many nations, not to stay but to release an army of people into God’s global harvest.’ The Holy Spirit came powerfully on me and reminded me of my trip to Guinea Bissau.

In the early year of the new millennium I was invited to travel with Mike Frisby to Portugal. It was there that I met Mike and Jessica Shore, and one of the most beautiful Newfrontiers churches I have ever visited. Hearts were knitted and from those first few meetings we are now working with six churches in the Iberian Peninsula including just releasing my dear friends Kevin and Vanessa Bartlett to plant a church in Madrid.

In 2003 I was invited by Terry to go to India and help our dear friends through a serious derailment they had encountered. Hand-picking an incredible group of UK leaders I put my tentative big toe in the boiling hot waters of Mumbai and began a passionate love affair with the mighty nation of India (1.1 billion people) and the wonderful churches there. I have to say in all honesty that after a few trips I wanted ‘out’ and had a God-encounter where I was shown the scale of the harvest yet to come, a blood-washed India.

Throughout all our comings and goings (Heather usually comes with me) Citygate Church, Bournemouth has been a rock beneath our feet; a church of amazing grace and freedom in the Spirit, a church which loves the poor and is generous in every aspect including releasing us to the nations.

More recently, however, Guy and his team have also worked into India. India has been one of our most long-standing overseas fields of labour, starting originally in Mumbai in 1980 and subsequently stretching down to Goa and Kerala, up into the north-east and now to Delhi and many other parts of the country.

On an annual basis Guy gathers many hundreds of Indian leaders for conferences and training, and members of his team visit many local churches where pastors are growing in strength and churches are becoming increasingly outward-looking and in church planting mode.

His summer camps have included speakers from both India and Portugal, reflecting the international nature of Guy’s ministry as well as his commitment to the development of churches in the UK.

I must confess that I love Guy’s final reference to his local church – a church of amazing grace, freedom in the Spirit, loving the poor and releasing him to the nations. These values so reflect something of our passion, namely healthy local churches wholeheartedly embracing our call to shine locally and reach the nations with the Good News of Jesus.

Let me end with two quotes:-

John Piper
‘When Paul says “Praise the Lord all nations. Let all the nations praise Him” (Rom. 15:11), he is saying that there is something about God that is so universally praiseworthy and so profoundly beautiful and so comprehensively worthy and so deeply satisfying that God will find passionate admirers in every diverse people group in the world. His true greatness will be manifest in the breadth of the diversity of those who perceive and cherish His beauty. Thus the diversity of the source of admiration will testify to His incomparable glory.’

Christopher J H Wright
‘Mission then may be compared to building the dwelling place of God and inviting the nations to come on home.’

These massive Biblical themes resonate in my heart. It has been a huge privilege to see the growth of Newfrontiers across the nations, having begun with tiny house churches in Sussex. May God encourage and empower us to keep going with multiplied apostolic teams planting churches and bringing the gospel to the nations, joining hands with others with similar goals, and seeing the church fully restored to its New Testament glory and fulfilling the Great Commission.

How I See It

By Guy Miller

Previous issues

Printed copies