Newsletter - QIV 2021 - MOVEMENT.ORG

QIV 2021 Newsletter:

Global Impact Update

WELCOME FROM MOVEMENT.ORG’s CEO

From Craig Sider

Movement Meeting

“I pray also for those who will believe in me that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. ... Then the world will know.” Jesus

In this season of disruption and division, you are answering Jesus’ prayer. In cities all around the world, men and women connected with Movement Day are fostering unity in their cities in efforts to bring a unified Church to address the challenges, division, and brokenness in our cities.

Recently the Global Hub Leader team identified 500 city movements that are forming, connecting, and maturing across 6 continents. God is calling the Church to express her unity in fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer. Together we prayed, discussed, and discerned God’s vision for our movement over these last six months. We are of one mind: we see God raising up 2000 city leadership teams to spiritually and socially impact their cities together with Jesus Christ. It is a breathtaking vision and is firmly rooted In Jesus’ prayer for unity … so that the world will know.

Thank you for answering Jesus’ prayer!

FOUNDER’S UPDATE

From Dr. Mac Pier

Planting Movement Day Expressions Globally

I am investing my time in three primary arenas: coaching regions of the world to birth/accelerate Movement Day expressions, training scholars, and creating intellectual content.

Planting Movement Day Expressions

I am coaching leaders in Southeast Asia, Balkans Europe, and the Virginia Cities area. Singapore is having its second Movement Day on September 25. We had our fist MDE in Jakarta last year.

The Balkans leaders had their second gathering virtually last June 2021 after an initial event in Athens in 2019. I meet monthly with this leadership team for coaching and encouragement. We are seeing early stages of engagement across the region. Click below to continue reading.

Virginia Cities – we have had 2 MDE’s and we have met by zoom every Saturday for the past 80 weeks. This bi-racial community averages 40 people every Saturday and has incubated/accelerated 15 initiatives in the past two years

I am also working with Mark Visvasam to create an India Advisory Team to resource 7 regions in India

2. Movement Day Scholars

We have had our first 2 cohorts launch with 275 leaders in the 2 day zoom training. Seventy percent of the students are from South Asia and Africa. We have 5 seminaries that are offering graduate credit for leaders with an initial 20 students that have started grad work. We will have Year 2 course work November 12-13, 2021 for the initial leadership cohort.

The outcome of the training is to have leaders create a decadal plan for their city upon completion of the three years.

3. Intellectual Content

Required: God’s call to Justice, Mercy, and Humility in overcoming racial division

Claude Alexander and I have co-authored Required, being released in October 2021. We have received 40 institutional endorsements. We have a 5 city book tour in early November and are working on a series of national zoom forums for university students, Christian colleges, seminaries, marketplace networks, Trinity Forum, and denominational groups.

LATIN AMERICA

From Jose Duran

Snapshots from Across Latin America

Brazil: Leader: Leandro Virginio

We are very excited for a training happening on October 16 with Brazilian leaders. We are expecting 400 leaders from different cities.

Panama: Leader: Jose Pimentel

We are in the process of convening and collaborating in Panama City. We have around 10 leaders praying, researching the city challenges and finding who is serving in those areas in the city.

3. Guatemala: Leader: Alex Gudiel

After convening leaders and finding ways of collaboration, they are in the process of catalyzing 200 school teachers about the important of teaching financial health. They are around 400 teachers waiting to be trained. They believe that educating school teachers is key to start changing the mindset of the future city leaders.

4. Puerto Rico: Leader: Yanira Ocasio

Every Thursday, the team gets together to pray for the island, consisting of three teams across three cities: Dorado, Trujillo Alto and Ponce.
Leaders met with Nicky Cruz to talk about issues in Puerto Rico and finding ways to serve the island better.

5. Venezuela:

We have two teams convening and collaborating and the team in Barquisimeto has begun catalyzing.
Covid-19 had made the process very slow over these cities. Please pray for the re-convening of those leaders again.

6. Haiti:

Our main leader, Bernard Luciene, just went to be with our Lord a week ago. Please pray for his wife and three children. He was their only support.
We are connected with Cynthia Petterson with Share-Hope and she is building a team to serve in the cities the earthquake damaged the most. We are also in the process to connect with a pastor from Haiti in Brooklyn to build collaboration between Hope for Haiti, Share-Hope (Cynthia) and pastors that we can trust in those cities. Please pray for this important work.

7. Other Countries:

We also are convening leaders from Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Argentina and others countries. Please pray for the right leaders.
So far, we have verbal confirmation from around 10 cities that will be participating during Movement Day Together. Please pray for Movement Day Together.
Also, we are inviting Latin city leaders in the US to convene leaders to participate in MD Together October 22. Please pray as we reach out to a community we have had limited connection with.

AFRICA

From Peter Watt

Africa

A Year of Creative Advance for MDA

Africa is a continent bustling with challenges, opportunities, and hope.

Africa is the second-largest continent by geographic area and the second-most populous continent globally, with 1,36bn people in 54 countries. There are currently more than 50 cities with more than 1 million people, and two mega-cities with close to 15 million people each - ie Lagos and Kinshasa.

Sub Saharan Africa has a rate of urbanization double the global average, as well as being the youngest and fastest growing region. It is projected that by 2050 Africa will be home to 2.5 billion people, which will comprise 26% of the global population.

These astounding statistics and trends provide a door of opportunity for the Movement Day approach of effective city gospel movements.

The vision of MDA to facilitate a movement of City Gospel Movements for the spiritual and social flourishing of African cities, requires a massive collaborative effort around the 3 main missions – _1) United prayer and evangelism; 2) Discipleship and values; 3) Flourishing and revival/ renewal.

With the demographic reality in mind and the above MDA vision and mission in place, MDA has an Advisory Team which comprises leaders from various spheres across the continent. The continent has also been divided into 5 strategic regions, with each region having a facilitator who in turn works with a team of City Gospel practitioners from the various regional cities.

Some of the key activities in 2021 have been

A qualitative research process from the regions focused on the unrighteousness which prevails in our African cities. This is now being undergirded by quantitative research on 11 strategic African cities, being conducted by a research team from Johannesburg. This will assist in the identification of key issues, as well as a sense of what redemptive work is already being done for the sake of partnerships.
Esther Chengo has been appointed to facilitate the MDA East region while Emmanuel Kwizera studies further for a period in the USA.
We have also recently made connection with Prof Tharwat Wabha in Cairo who will start to co-ordinate the MDA process in the vital North African region.
One of the very exciting programs during 2021 has been the Proclaim Congress, which is being facilitated by Africa Enterprise, one of our key MDA partners. This provides a focus on building an evangelistic ecosystem across the continent, including a focus on the next generation of evangelists, which was recently expressed in a Proclaim Young Evangelists Congress in September, hosting more than 1000 young evangelists online from across the continent.
The Movement Day Scholars Program has gained traction across Africa, with a total of 93 students (15 different nations) registering in the first two intakes. A number of these African students have also registered to study further in overseas seminaries.

We believe and trust that these strategies and initiatives will help to advance the Kingdom of God and His righteousness in the cities and nations of Africa.

SOUTH PACIFIC

From Ian Shelton

The Spreading Word

I love the scriptures in Acts that speak of the word spreading everywhere. That is happening in the South Pacific.

Before I bring the years highlights to you let me hasten to add, that though encouraged, this part of the world stands desperately in the need of prayer for further Kingdom advancement.

But COVID has not restrained God’s word. Though we have been unable to stage events, growth has continued. City and town teams are forming and maturing across the region. These teams are active in nearly all our state capitals and most of the key larger cities.

Auckland New Zealand is that nations largest city with an exciting team developing that will impact not only the city, but in time, the nation. In a few weeks key NZ city leaders are gathering for several days of prayer. They already gather weekly across the nation by zoom to pray. The father and other of unity in NZ is Ps Col Shaw and his wife Grace. They have faithfully and sacrificially travelled from city to city for 25 years encouraging city leaders.

The miraculous work of community transformation continues in Fiji. A special interview with a key leader there, Ps Savenaca Nakauyaca will be posted soon. This tells the story of supernatural miracles as whole communities are transformed by the power of God. Papua New Guinea is also seeing their team, lead by Ps Walo Ani, rise to bring unity and hope. Many conversions are being reported.

The work of city women under Letitia Shelton is impacting cities across the South Pacific. She has published a book entitled Disruptive Voices of Fijian Women. This book is being supported by women in parliament in Fiji plus many influential Fijian woman in cities across Australia, NZ and even in the UK. Women from other small island nations identify with these stories. Letitia has been travelling extensively with a message of hope for women. Recently she spoke on a movement day zoom event for Indian women.

Movement.org.au is producing material posting it on FB, the website and on Kinder. For FB see Movement Australia. A small studio produces story interviews, city theology content and written material.

It’s been a particular joy to interview key city leaders from a round the world during this COVID year. Their break through stories encourage us here in the South Pacific.

An exciting new development is the forming of partnerships across the nation with key Christian organizations to promote gospel movements in every town and city.

Many more cities and towns have growing testimonies in comparison to this time last year. We are thankful for His spreading word.

One of the great joys is just being on a team from around the nation who actually do the work. We meet every two weeks by zoom with each contributing from a diverse range of gifting. We connect regularly with our South Pacific partners in the other nations to cheer them on.

We are very thankful to Movement.org for their prayerful and financial support over many years. We especially want to thank Mac and Craig for all they do for us.

UNITED KINGDOM

From Roger Sutton

Movement of Recovery

Despite the pandemic Europe continues to see city wide unity for transformation develop and grow. We estimate that there are well over 200 movements across Europe. A number of these have started during the pandemic in response to the crisis. There is now a growing respect in the UK for the work unified churches have done to keep people fed and looked after. This has now created a significant opportunity to respond to the recovery process. In the UK over 20 cities are now part of Movement of Recovery which is endorsed by the most prominent city Mayors. The vision is to create a unified engagement and delivery vehicle that responds to the priorities of the city. There is now an incredible opportunity to change how the church is viewed by society from indifference and irrelevance to “the people get things done and care for us”

SOUTH ASIA

From Mark V

Witnessing God's Expansion

Movement South Asia saw a promising start of the year 2021, with many encouraging engagements in various cities of South Asia. God enabled us to connect with more than 30 cities in the region and to share the vision of a City Transformative Gospel Movement. By His grace, almost all these cities have grasped the vision. MDLC played a pivotal role, by serving as the entry point to a mode of change in many cities. Every month, more than 70 leaders from different cities participated and experienced God’s work in cities across the world.

A key strategic leap during the year was the coalition with City to City India. Movement South Asia and City to City India started working together to launch “National Catalyst Training” exclusively for developing catalysts, who envision, strategize, and execute change in the cities.

“Youth are the leaders today, not tomorrow”, a statement that everyone will agree on. The Movement Day Chennai, 2020 concentrated on developing young leaders. A set of youth mentors were trained and challenged to further train youth in their areas of influence.

This vision was also carried out in the cities of Ranchi, Jharkhand and Bareli, Uttar Pradesh. In these cities, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, a strong youth movement has been initiated and is steadily growing.

The north star of Kolkata is to reach all the pin codes of the city, with the Gospel. Research from the Movement team showed that out of 249 pin codes in this huge city, about 103 pin codes did not even have one church. This was the focus of Kolkata Movement Day, 2020. We praise God for enabling us to witness at least 22 pin codes being adopted by different players of the city network, immediately after the Movement Day and growing every day.

One of the major milestones this year was the launch of Disruptive Women India. More than 350 women and men from various parts of the world participated in the launch. The last couple of years have been tough for our communities and we saw many people becoming mentally weak. DW India facilitated four sessions on mental health and the feedback was amazing.

Amidst the huge second wave of pandemic and lockdown in all the regions of South Asia, we witnessed the great work of God in our communities. We are looking forward for God to use us more and more.

CANADA

From Tim Day

Unity Growing out of Division

The Church of Canada, like most nations, continues to confront challenges related to COVID-19, especially in our cities. In most cities, churches are struggling with polarization and division related to differing opinions about mandatory requirements for the vaccine and mask-wearing. They are also experiencing low attendance at their worship services due to the fourth wave of COVID moving through Canada.

These challenges are leading more and more national ministries to rally together to support the Church at this time. Although we are facing division right now, we believe God will strengthen and further unify the Church because of these challenges. We are excited for the early signs of God moving. Daria Nardozza leads our growing City Network Team. This team now meets monthly and includes City Movement leaders from 12 major cities. We are rallying other City Movement leaders for Movement Day Together for North America. Our hope is to grow our City Network Team of committed leaders to at least 15 cities. Our vision is to see effective teams serving in the 30 top cities in Canada. A key city we are investing additional energy in is Toronto, Canada’s largest city. We are hoping to hire a full-time leader to build and grow the Toronto team. We continue the roll out of WayBase and the Engage app to support city movements across Canada. We are identifying causes and initiatives that Christians and churches can support to impact cities and communities. We are moving towards movement events in most of our major cities this coming Spring. As a part of our national strategy, we are also providing support for the formation of a national association for domestic poverty-focused ministries. Another priority is establishing a unified national prayer event in early 2022 for pastors and Christian leaders in cities across Canada. Although this season feels challenging, we are excited to see how God will move in our nation in this coming year!

NYC & Lead.NYC

From Adam Durso

Join us in accelerating the flourishing of our city for the next 10 years and beyond.

God is continuing to move powerfully through New York city in 2021 accelerating the flourishing of the city. Here are snapshots of God’s work from Advance, the 10 Zip Codes Project and the new Hope Restored initiative in partnership with the American Bible Society.

Advance

We have many Advance Leadership Development Opportunities beginning soon that will continue into 2022. We have opened registration for our next cohort of our Advance Leadership Intensive Course, including our first cohort in Spanish, which will start in November. ALI exists to empower leaders to accelerate the gospel in NYC and beyond. (Contact becky@lead.nyc for more information).

We are also offering our Advance Internship Experience which aims to cultivate the next generation of leaders. Each intern (ages 18-28) receives meaningful mentorship and life-changing discipleship lessons while contributing uniquely to the work of LEAD.NYC and Movement.Org. We’re looking for new interns to start at the end of September. (Contact lenmarie@lead.nyc for more information).

Additionally, we are hosting quarterly events for our Youth Pastors & Emerging Leaders Fellowship (YPELF) in order to continue our mission to foster valuable connections among our next generation of leaders, allowing them to collaborate and join forces to impact their cities. Our next event, “STRENGTH FOR THE JOURNEY,” will be on October 14, 2021.

10 Zip Codes Project

We have seen God moving in the last year and are excited to watch Him continue that movement. Our 10 Zip Codes Project is growing, and we are excited to begin the Asset Mapping phase of our two new zip codes: East Harlem and Staten Island. Our team is working hard to ensure they have strong data that encapsulates the impact faith-based nonprofits and churches have had on our communities over the last 16 months. We are excited to hear from churches and faith-based nonprofits that serves in East Harlem, Washington Heights, Staten Island, or East New York at our upcoming “Coffee and Change” Virtual Town Halls happening in September and October.

Even though God has been moving, we recognize that these last 18 months have been hard for the ministry leaders in our city. Pastors are often the last people to have a space to just be themselves, enjoy a meal, laugh and not have to be "on" as a leader. To express our love for Pastors here at LEAD.NYC, we are hosting two Pastor’s Connection Hangouts in October to serve the shepherds of our city. Join us for a time of connection, refreshment, and prayer. (Contact mark@lead.nyc for more information.)

LEAD.NYC, in partnership with the American Bible Society, has launched a new initiative called Hope Restored which facilitates the American Bible Society’s Trauma Healing training with local pastors and leaders. Local pastors and leaders who are trained in Trauma Healing will be more equipped to serve their congregants and constituents. LEAD.NYC is excited to welcome David Ramos to the team to take point on this initiative as the Director of Pastor/Leader care.

1st Thursday Prayer, which aims to serve pastors and local leaders, is coming under David Ramos’ leadership within this initiative. 1st Thursday Prayer had a strong first gathering of the 2021-2022 ministry season on September 9th and looks forward to continued growth as Trauma Healing is incorporated into the prayer gatherings. (Contact david@lead.nyc for more information.)

UNITED STATES

From Jim Liske

Movement Day TOGETHER - Becoming ONE in divisive times

At a time when we are experiencing division in every sector of our society, Movement.org is on the threshold of a gathering of unity centered on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

On October 22, 2021, Movement.org will host City Movements from across Canada, the USA, and throughout Latin America. This gathering is the culmination of two years worth of effort to unite eleven city movement networks and ministries in the USA, the initiation of city movements across Latin America, including Brazil and Chile, and to gain a stronger partnership with the highly effective movements in Canadian cities. The goal is to have 100 cities together, in unity, around the work and words of Jesus so that as God’s Kingdom is revealed in cities, the spiritual and social flourishing of the city’s residence will result.

Mac Pier and Tom White, two leaders who have pioneered the unified movement of the church, commerce, civic government, and community not-for-profits in cities, have said, “there has never been a unification of followers of Jesus at one event like this in history.”

All of these leaders will, through technology, “attend” Movement Day New York City in the morning and in the afternoon be able to more deeply understand how to convene leaders, build collaboration among like-minded partners, catalyze the best and most impactful activity in their city, and celebrate God’s activity while deepening unity in their city through prayer and relationships.

At the end of October 22, 100 cities will better understand, from God’s Word, how to partner with Him in order to bring hope and peace through the Gospel of Jesus to the city where He has called them to serve. Please pray to that end. Attend in your city or virtually. Generously give to the mission of Movement.org so that we can continue to lead boldly in this space and in your city.

May God cause the Church of Jesus to be a beacon of oneness around the Gospel in times where division around all other issues is causing such pain.

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that You have sent me.” (Jesus in John 17:20-21, NIV)

Career Opportunity

From MOVEMENT.ORG

Interested in working with the MOVEMENT.ORG team?

We have open positions available and are looking for an IT Manager, Senior Communications Architect, and Vice President of Development. Check below for more details.