Getting out of the fold into the flock
From a podcast by Transform Our World
Ken Gott is senior pastor of Bethshan Church in Sunderland, England and founder of House of Prayer Europe. He was interviewed by Ed Silvoso recently and shares his experience of how God is using him to grow the church outside the four walls of the church in the North East of England.
For many years, I was known as a revivalist preacher going around the world, preaching in many many conferences. You get comfortable in what you're doing and you get really good at it because practice makes perfect, but if the revival doesn't change the city, it has fallen a step short.
The Lord spoke to me and said. "You're entering a new season. I have something more for you, something different." There was a real cost to that and a real laying down but I have to say I was ready for it. I really didn't just want to be a vehicle of blessing people within the four walls of a building, as great as that was and as powerful as it was at times.
I wanted to move out of the fold into the flock and see the same anointing in the flock that I'd seen in the fold.
In our 24/7 prayer room, we were praying on how to relate to influential people in the city, "Lord send some people of influence that we can connect with." You know you just get closeted in the church and you don't really know very many people outside of it.
One memorable day, we're praying and I'm called outside to the corridor. My wife is talking to someone and she said, "Ken you need to talk to this man right now and you will know him." So I walked up to him and knew him straight away - a football legend of Sunderland Football Club.
We became friends from that moment on. He found out what we wanted to do - I said I would really like to meet a politician. He said that his friend was becoming the lady mayoress of the city. A few days later, she walked into the 24/7 prayer room. These two people became so influential in linking us with the city of Sunderland.
She said she needed a chaplain and asked me to be her chaplain. She asked for prayer for her, her cabinet, city leaders as well as opening sessions in prayer. In serving her as chaplain, I met so many people in the city of Sunderland and those relationships remain. My wife is very influential in providing special education and care for high school kids.
God has opened the doors for the city to be discipled. We took a really radical step. We asked the question , "Can we be the church without a Sunday morning congregation?" So we closed all of our programs, we closed Sunday morning.
We handed the building, an ex-working men's club, over to the community. Here's the thing - we were a church of about 500 on a Sunday. As well as the 500 becoming church out in the town, we now have 400 other families coming through the building every single week which is 400 families. It's growing every week.
So now we are ministering to the community in a much wider scale. Those 500 people have become an Ekklesia. We said, "We don't want you to come Sunday morning and attend. We want you to be now Ekklesia where you're at, all over the city, where you're influential." We continue to pastor, teach and encourage them. Our dream is cover the North-East and further.
I became a full-time Minister when I was 30 years old and am now 67. I love the church - I mean my sphere of influence is the church. For others, it's education or business or health or whatever. I desire to see the church fulfil its total purpose that which God called it to be and to reach its ultimate destiny.
I never ever tell a pastor you need to shut this down, shut that down. I just bring them in and teach them, train them about Ekklesia and how to train their people to be Ekklesia so that we go from church attendance to a much more active participation in being the church.
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From a podcast by Transform Our World, 31/10/2023