Blog:
An update on our wider international family

Posted by Chris Mason
on 29th April 2020

Psalm 96:1-3

Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.  Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.  Declare his glory among the nations, his marvellous deeds among all peoples.

God loves the whole world.  Not a small part, an individual nation, but the whole world.  He created it all and he will restore it all in the end – God’s heart for the nations – every tribe and tongue – is huge.  And guess what?  He loves it when we get caught up with what gives Him such joy so He calls us to “go and make disciples of all nations”!  

This is a snapshot of a few of the connections we have as The Oak church family in the nations, and our part to play in being family together.  We will be contributing to these offerings from our general church budget but would like to ask you to consider giving in addition to your regular giving to any or all of these as God leads you.  Please see the bottom of the blog for more details.

OUR BIGGER CATALYST FAMILY

We have the joy of being part of a family of churches that takes the mandate ‘to go’ seriously.  Catalyst, the family of churches The Oak is a part of, is a global one – a family of tribes and tongues in many nations.  Whilst the Catalyst festival may have been postponed to next year, together as one big family we are being asked to contribute to a fund, similar to our own Care Fund but on a bigger scale – to bring relief to those parts of our wider international family where food and resources are scarce.  Please see an update from Simon Holley here.

OUR UKRAINIAN FAMILY

Andrey Bondarenko, Kiev Ukraine, is a dear friend of The Oak.  He leads a family of churches in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, India and Nepal, and was speaking at The Oak just a couple of weeks’ back.  We have been working with Andrey and his team to plant churches all across the world over the past 10 years.  He mentioned different ways we can pray and give to support our wider family in the nations.  We are in contact with the team in Ukraine and are offering support.  Please see the interview we did last week with Andrey here.

OUR CATALYST HUB

Our Hub, the smaller part of Catalyst we have regular support and encouragement from (Led by Matt Hatch and the team at Mosaic Church, Leeds), is also reaching out to some new churches.  Ashish, from Amritsa in India, leads a group of churches that were just starting to connect with us as a group of churches when the pandemic hit.  We’d love to support Ashish and the churches he is helping to lead as we work out how to support one another in church planting in the nations in the future.  You can see a short video from Ashish here. 

OUR OAK CHURCH FAMILY

As well as connecting with our wider church family, some of our Oak family are serving God in the nations.  

Ellen Wood is working for Agape, a charity working with women and children being rescued from sex-trafficking in Cambodia.  Please keep praying for Ellen and the charity as they respond to the government restrictions imposed due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.  

Will, Lucy, Olivia and Jack landed safely back in the UK last week.  They have been serving Love The One in Odisha over the past 8 months but needed to return due to lockdown.  Love The One, with the help of Lucy and Will’s leadership, has been feeding thousands of families over the past few weeks.  Please see their update below.  

Please continue to pray for the nations on our doorsteps, the nations in our cities and the nations of the world.  Join us at 7:7 Prayer each weekday morning at 7am to pray and seek God.  

Much love and blessing

Chris

On behalf of the Senior Leadership Team at The Oak

 

If you’d like to give

If you would like to give, please give by BACS to The Oak Church – details can be found here.

To help us administer our accounts, please fill in this form and use the following references on your BACS transfer:

 

For our ‘Bigger Catalyst family’ fund, use reference: ‘*YourName* - Catalyst’
For our ‘Ukrainian Family’ fund, use reference: ‘*YourName* - Ukraine’
For our ‘Catalyst Hub’ fund, use reference: ‘*YourName* - Amritsa’

To give to Agape International or Love The One, please head to their websites. 

Please see our regular and special offering giving form here.

Share this blog: