Stepping forward in worship
In this article by Dan Nightingale, he shares what took place at a Worship Training Day hosted by Hope Church Ipswich this year. Training and equipping is something we value as a family of churches, freely sharing what God has taught us with others. You can access audio recordings here, audio and slides here and Mike Betts’ session video here.
I hope you know, if you are a member of the Relational Mission family, that you are blessed with a team that is eager and hungry to see the good news of Jesus shared, and are constantly striving to grow in how we do this with love, with skill and with joy.
This was evidenced in the recent Worship Training Day we hosted at Hope Church Ipswich in May, where over a hundred leaders came together to be equipped in leading our times of worship at our church gatherings, both practically and in cultural and missional values.
Throughout the day we were blessed by the wisdom of many wonderful and anointed leaders, ranging from teaching that was instrument-specific to digging into what it means to allow the Holy Spirit to be welcomed into our times of worship. The feedback from those I spoke to, as well as the applications I’ve already seen during our times of worship at Hope Church in Ipswich since the event, has been so encouraging.
How wonderful that we have a God that continues to speak to us and guide us in the ways to best enjoy relationship with Him and allow Him to move in our lives! We were also blessed to have an incredible team of prophetic leaders with us too, who helped stir us as they brought revelations and pictures they felt God putting on their hearts, as well as hosting individual sessions to prophesy over our leaders, which I have no doubt were incredibly encouraging to those who took part.
We had over one hundred leaders join us, including a handful who had travelled all the way from the Netherlands! It’s so exciting to imagine what the impact of this conference will look like, as these leaders bring what they learned back to their teams, and those teams feed it into their ministry in their churches and gatherings.
God is moving in wonderful and kind ways in our times of worship, and I hope you are seeing this in your churches. I pray that God continues to move and that we continue to open ourselves to His will and not ours in our worship, and that we would never cease in seeking more from Him!
It’s my prayer - and I would ask that you join me - that what God spoke to our leaders at this conference would continue to grow and develop over the weeks and months to come. I trust that it will do so until - and beyond, of course - the next time we gather. Following much positive feedback and requests for us to do this again in the future, we hope to host the next one at a similar time next year!
It was so encouraging to see so many join us on the day, but for those who couldn’t make it we are releasing recordings from the whole event, including all seminars. The media files are listed to below:
by Daniel Nightingale
Originally from Norwich, as a teen Daniel was ‘forced’ by his parents to move to the hometown of the ‘inferior East Anglian football side’ (or at least they were at the time…) - Ipswich - where he now lives with his wife Lydia and two boys. They are a part of Hope Church where he serves as the Worship Coordinator.
Daniel and Lydia have both been in Relational Mission churches since the beginning and are passionate about the mission and values of this family of churches. They hope to plant a church outside of the UK one day in the future.