Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
NEW GENERATION
wards was mainly from small apostolic teams. Ian believed
this missionary model was the way ahead for his region.
When we’d first commissioned Ian to lead the new house
God’s word to him was to ‘multiply’. Ian envisaged Sheffield
not just as a satellite of ‘Jerusalem’ but as a new centre of
missionary activity. He’d experienced church-building on the
Bugbrooke estate and in Warwickshire. Now Sheffield was
prospering and Andrzej was all set to lead a second house
there. Ian had set his sights on the regions beyond.
At the present rate, planting in new territory was taking at
least three years. At that rate Ian might plant six households
before he was 70. But that was using the community house
model. We had already begun to shift the focus away from
community houses to congregations. The old mindset was hard
to change, but the shape of the future was going to be a church
with a minority of community members.
Ian realised that the dynamic of church planting was not in
shipping in ready made communities but in the outworking
of the kingdom word. God’s messengers weren’t called to
transplant; but to sow seed which would spring up, ‘first the
stalk, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear’ (Mk 4:28).
At Bugbrooke the steps into community had been slow and
steady. Noel had steered the Northampton base through a
long and, at times, turbulent history. Ian could hardly do that
in each new location. Sheffield would have to function as a
mother church sending out small church-planting teams.
These would produce a body of people whose future would
be mainly in the hands of local leaders.
By 1994 things were taking shape. In Preston five single
brothers made an attempt at community living. The experi-
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