In March 2017, we invited church and ministry leaders from across the city to come and hear from Lloyd Cooke, a church unity movement leader in Stoke-on-Trent, and to discern what God was saying to us as a church in Nottingham. Over 120 leaders from around 90 different churches and ministries attended, representing a breadth of denominations and traditions, resulting in the largest gathering of church leaders in Nottingham in living memory. It truly was a joyous occasion to be together!
There was a profound sense of God speaking to us, not only through hearing what God had done in Stoke, but also prophetically.
The story was shared from Judges 7 of Gideon’s army surrounding the Midianite’s camp, breaking their jars, exposing their lamps in the jars and then taking the camp. The interpretation was that the jars were churches, and that there were many good churches in the city that were carrying the light of Christ, but that it was too small a thing for each church to grow to a few thousand each. The city would still not have been taken. The call was for us to work together to impact the city, but that this would need us to crack a few jars. There was a clear sense that we were being called to have a united concern for seeing the kingdom of God coming in our city as a priority over simply seeing the kingdom come through building our own churches.
The sense of unity that resulted from this gathering was tangible and this prophetic word, and our united response to it, remains a key moment in this unity movement.
It was a joy to be able to carry out the prophetic act of smashing a jar at the city wide Thy Kingdom Come event in May 2018.
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