KingfisherNetwork

Newsletter

November 2011

Welcome

Welcome to the relaunch of the Kingfisher Network Newsletter. This Quarterly newsletter will aim to keep us informed as to what is happening across the Kingfisher Network and will hopefully inspire us with what God is doing, and enable us to pray for everything that is happening across the globe.

If you would like to be notified when the next newsletter comes out, please go to www.kingfisherresources.org.uk and enter your email address so we can keep you up to date with news.

In order for this newsletter to grow and develop, we need your help! If you go to any Kingfisher event and have taken a great photo, then please email it to: newsletter@kingfisherresources.org.uk

Or if you would like to get involved in the production of the next newsletter then email us with your particular area of interest.

Hope you enjoy hearing all that is happening across the Kingfisher Network!

Network News Page 4

Kingfisher Brockworth Page 6

Kingfisher Kingsway Page 8

Kingfisher Tredworth Page 10

International News - Malawi Page 12

International News - India Page 14

Resources Page 16

Special offers Page 17

Contents

Network News

2011 is the year that the Network has really begun to take off. Not just because of the launch of the third Kingfisher church in Gloucester, but because this is God's kairos time for seeing it rise up with it's own identity and sense of mission. Katie Tucker was recently appointed as Network Coordinator, responsible for growing the identity and presence of the Network. In the light of this, we have launched a new website, www.kingfisherresources.org.uk, which is the place to go to keep up with the growing number of resources the Network offers...from books to courses to merchandise. We already have over a hundred visits each week to this site from around the world, and it is a resource that is going to be growing and becoming more central over the coming months.

The Network is expanding around the world. We now offer not just audio podcasts of our Sunday talks, but video as well, for our Sunday evening talks. This was at the request of a number of people from overseas, who would like to feel they are more a part of the 'Kingfisher experience', and in some cases, there are plans to get people together to watch the talks and use them as part of a joint worship experience.

Senior Pastor James Burn

Next July sees an important 'first' for the Network in the UK - a Day of Celebration, as all three of the Gloucester churches come together to praise and worship Jesus Christ, celebrating all that he is doing and is intending to do among us, as well as praying together for our city, our nation and this world. We are hoping that we will have Simon Haqq from India with us, to give us a first-hand account of what the Lord is currently doing there...it's going to be a great day! We will give you the exact date as soon as we have been able to book a venue for the event.

There is a sense that we are on the very edge of something major. With three growing churches in Gloucester, each seeing new, spiritually seeking people coming along each week, with an increasing international presence and the faith target of a new building to house the Network in, we believe that the are significant times ahead!

Simon Haqq from India

Kingfisher Brockworth

This October saw the beginning of a new Kingfisher Church in the UK. Based in Brockworth Community Centre in Gloucester, Kingfisher Brockworth has been launched on the same core values and principals as Kingfisher Network has been built upon.

The team have spent several months preparing to launch, and as part of their preparations delivered thousands of leaflets to the Brockworth area.

October 9th was their first service, and was enjoyed by all, including adults in the service, pre-school children in Sunshine Club, school aged

children in Action Pack and teenagers in one-eighty .

In the run up to Christmas, Kingfisher Brockworth will be looking at the foundations of the Christian faith in their morning services, all followed by cake!

You can read more about Kingfisher Brockworth’s journey so far in comic form on their Facebook page.

Join with Kingfisher Brockworth in praying for this newly launched Church, for it’s growth and health and for the Brockworth area - that many may come to hear about Jesus.

Kingfisher Church Kingsway has had a really busy summer which started back in July with a ‘Once Upon a Time’ Guest Service. All the children came dressed in their favourite fairy story costumes and many adults joined in as well. The White Rabbit led the worship and Shrek joined with Little Red Riding Hood in leading the fun and games.

After the Sunday Service throughout the summer holidays, Action Pack took church into the local community. There were themed events and activities including basketball and ‘pirate’ football in the park, even the odd picnic or two for anyone who wanted to join in. The children in the local community came and joined in with us.

Our community pre-school group Little Fishes, which meets in The Beacon Children’s Centre, started the new term in a new time slot. It now meets weekly, during term time, on a Friday morning. Despite the change of time 19 children came to the first session and the group continues to go from strength to strength.

Family Matters in partnership with Kingsway Primary School launched its first 21st Century parenting course in June and following the success of that, the team are now running Care for

Kingfisher Kingsway

the Family’s How to Drug Proof Your Kids course. The courses offer a chance for parents to gain new skills, share hints and tips and support each other and there are plans to continue courses throughout the school year.

180 Kingsway has seen an increase in youth coming to church on a Sunday morning with Sunday breakfast and Krispy Kreme Doughnut Sunday’s being particularly popular. The increase in youth has also meant that we have increased our 180 Small Groups from one to three along with three new apprentice leaders.

Many of our youth joined the rest of the network for an inspiring and fun week at Soul Survivor during August and then they joined in the fun of the Circus by helping and leading groups at the Big Top Rock Holiday Club. Everyone was invited to roll up and join in with the circus fun and more than 70 children came each day to meet the clowns and lion, and to help their teams win points and prizes. Brilliant Brazil were the Big Top Rock overall winners but everyone learnt how special they are to God.

So what is God saying to Kingfisher Kingsway for the future? We feel that God is calling to be praying for more adults to be regularly attending, so please join with us in praying for 10 more adults to be regularly attending by the end of the year.

This has been an incredible year for Kingfisher Tredworth! New and existing outreach ministries are flourishing, with around 1200 people coming through our doors each week, in addition to around 320 each Sunday. At the start of the year, we had three faith targets:

We have, to date, seen 88 new people start to attend Tredworth on Sundays, we have seen 15 key serving positions filled and October 9th saw the launch of Kingfisher Brockworth, an exciting new addition to the Network.

We have, over this year, been visited by a huge array of people who head up regional and national organisations, from the CEO of Gloucester County Council and the Deputy Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, to the Head of the Care Quality Commission, Cynthia Bowers. They have been amazed at what they have seen and experienced at Kingfisher and have all expressed a desire to come back for more. Many have taken back reports of what they have experienced to Westminster. All of this is an outworking of a vision God gave us a few years ago of

Kingfisher Tredworth

• to see an additional 100 people start attending our Sunday morning services

• to see serving positions in the church all filled as people come to understand that service and worship go together

• to plant another Kingfisher church

becoming a church of influence. He has given us a unique opportunity to influence those who are forming health-related policies for this nation.

What is Jesus Christ currently saying to Kingfisher Tredworth? As the Elders were praying about this recently, they all felt the Holy Spirit was challenging us all to return to the passion we once felt to grow as fully devoted followers of Christ. Are we still passionate about reading our Bibles? Praying for others? Seeking opportunities to grow in our faith? Do you remember the excitement and passion you had when you first became a Christian? The Lord is challenging us to reconnect with that and become passionate disciples once again.

To coincide with sending 40 people out to start Kingfisher Brockworth, we amalgamated our two morning services into one. This was a temporary measure, to help us to regroup and to replace those who were in key serving roles who are now at Brockworth. We need to pray that those roles get filled quickly, because, on the day of the launch, with 40 people across town in Brockworth, Tredworth had MORE people at the one morning service than it was previously getting at BOTH its morning services combined!

“The harvest is so great, but the workers are so few. Pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest, and ask him to send out more workers for his fields.” (Luke 10:2, NLT)

International News - Malawi

Who is Charles Mithowa and How Did Kingfisher Start in Malawi?

Today, Charles is Kingfisher National Director in Malawi. He oversees 13 Kingfisher’s in Malawi and is, right now, also overseeing the startup of Kingfisher in Mozambique. But what is his background?

Charles has lived in Malawi all his life and became a Christian in the mid 1980's. Charles became pastor of a small house church in the Limbe area of Blantyre. He met Kingfisher in 2001 when a team of us visited his region. Charles joined with leaders from various local Church Denominations to learn Kingfisher leadership principles. Once the Kingfisher UK team returned home, Charles felt called by God to start a Kingfisher Church in Malawi and so – very simply, the first Kingfisher Church began in Malawi in 2001. Quickly, the church grew and multiplied and today Kingfisher has grown from 1 to 34 churches in Malawi and Mozambique.

So when did Kingfisher Church Start in Mozambique?

In 2007 a team of 3 church pastors from Mozambique attended a church leader’s conference, hosted by Charles at Kingfisher in Malawi. As the conference unfolded, these pastors felt God was calling them to learn how Kingfisher church works so that they could plant a Kingfisher Church in Mozambique also. They attended the Kingfisher Leadership School in Malawi for 3 months before returning to Mozambique and planting the first Kingfisher Church in the Maputo region.

By 2010, the number of Kingfisher’s had grown to three. Further, a group of 14 students began to learn about Christian leadership and theology at a new training college in Mozambique - supported by Charles himself.In 2011, 18 existing churches in Mozambique asked to join with Kingfisher and come under the authority of Kingfisher Network.

The Mozambique government requires that an established church have a permanent address. Today, the Kingfisher Churches do not meet in a building at all and so have no address. Plans are afoot to purchase some land for this purpose and to build a Kingfisher Church.

Charles’ wife and children

BREAKING NEWS - Malawi / Mozambique Kingfisher Leaders Conference 2011:

At the end of October 2011, Charles will be running a Kingfisher Africa International Leaders Conference for Kingfisher leaders from Malawi and Mozambique. Together - they will meet to worship God and become better equipped to move the church of Jesus Christ forward in their towns and villages.

What are Kingfisher's top 3 challenges in Africa

1 Pray for protection for Charles and his team as they travel thru Malawi and Mozambique. Travel is difficult in Africa - the roads are often treacherous and the distances long. Pray for safety.

2 Pray that we are able to appoint God's person into the role of Kingfisher National Director in Mozambique - and that this would unleash a new wave of God's blessing in the network

3 Pray for favour from the Mozambique Government to Kingfisher church network

What are the top 3 things to thank God for in Kingfisher Africa? 1 God is using Kingfisher to reach people of many faith backgrounds with the gospel of Jesus Christ

2 The growing team of leaders who self sacrificially serve in the Kingfisher Churches

3 The growing number of churches coming to Kingfisher and asking to become part of all that God is doing in and through us.

How can I get involved?Please pray for Charles and his team of leaders

If you would like to meet them face to face - Kingfisher Church in the UK will be returning to Malawi in 2013 for a mission trip. This will be a wonderful opportunity to experience what Christianity looks like in a completely different culture!

With a growing work in Malawi and Mozambique, I (James) have been asking the Lord recently about the next steps for the Network in terms of our international outreach. I was standing recently in Baggage Reclaim just a few months ago as Jan and I were returning from a short break and asking Him that very question, when I got the distinct impression of the Holy Spirit speaking the word 'India' to me. That sounded interesting but unlikely, so I responded with 'that sounds ok to me, Lord, but you'll have to open the doors and bring it about!' My very next action was to turn my phone back on, and as I did so, my email alert 'pinged'. I checked the email, only to find that it was from a man called Simon Haqq in India! I had met Simon 15 years ago, during a previous trip to that country where I had been speaking at some seminars. Simon was a young man who was hoping to plant a church, and the Holy Spirit spoke to him during those seminars, particularly about the Setting The Captives Free teaching I was delivering. After that meeting he went away and launched his first church, passing on that teaching. The church grew, Simon planted others, and now he was emailing me to ask that I come out to India again to teach more on this subject, and on how we do church at Kingfisher in general. He would gather together the pastors under his oversight and others he was connected with and could I talk about the possibility of launching Kingfisher in India? How amazing is God's timing!

So, in September, Dave Woodwards and I set out for a week of teaching in Delhi. Over 200 pastors and leaders, mainly of independent house churches gathered over two days as I had the privilege of teaching about leadership, discipleship and the spiritual battle. It was wonderful to see this being

International News - India

soaked up by such spiritually open and hungry people, and to see the Holy Spirit doing some wonderful things in people's lives as they were prayed for...physical healing, deliverance, and so on.

On the second day, during a time specifically for new leaders, I was asked to 'ordain' twenty new pastors. These were all young men who were either already leading churches, or hoping to soon, often in challenging and difficult circumstances and facing great opposition. It was such a privilege to be able to support them and encourage them in this way.

How might all this develop? That is all in God's hands, but while we were out there, we began a discussion with Simon Haqq about establishing a training school, firstly in Delhi, where many of our courses could be taught. We would have input into this and give opportunity for teams of people to visit and teach and pray for people, but it would be headed up by Simon himself. As this develops, it will, hopefully, be possible to launch Kingfisher churches...much like the model we are already using in Malawi and Mozambique.

It is such an encouraging start, but please be praying for this new work as it begins to develop over the coming months!

August this year saw the launch of Kingfisher Resources. With over 1000 visits in 4 weeks this website which aims to equip and resource the local church has got off to a flying start! Long

term the site will not only sell clothing and books, but also various teaching resources, music and multimedia. Any

profit made will then enable the production of higher quality resources for use within the Kingfisher Network and beyond!

Kingfisher Resources

OUT NOW: The Exodus...the epic, 40 year journey that took the Hebrews from being slaves in Egypt to entry into their own land as free people with a glorious future awaiting them. The Exodus...more than just a journey, this was a transformational experience that would forever define the identity of that nation. Why did it take them 40 years, and what were the lessons they learned along the way? This was the journey that not only took the people out of slavery, but, more importantly, took slavery out of the people. What were the lessons they learned along the way and how does God take us on a similar journey today, as he transforms us from being slaves to sin, to being ready to enter the ‘promised land’ of heaven?

Available from www.kingfisherresources.org.uk or as a Kindle download from www.amazon.co.uk

10% off all bags with the coupon

code - BG10NOV11

Simply use the coupon code the

‘summary’ section of checkout to receive

your discount!

AVAILABLE UNTIL 31st JANUARY 2012

Special OffersIn each upcoming newsletter there will be exclusive

special offers from www.kingfisherresources