A Family Gathering at Together on a Mission

Andy Cottingham, from Honiton Community Church reports from Newfrontiers’ annual leadership conference which gathered over 4500 delegates in Brighton in July.

One of the great privileges of attending Together on a Mission is taking someone who has never been before. Amongst our crowd this year was a young man, one of our worship leaders, new to our church and new to Newfrontiers. It’s always good to see the familiar through someone else’s eyes.

We were a bit late into the opening session so by the time we had registered and climbed the stairs the worship was in full flow. Our young friend’s reaction was to stand rooted to the spot staring around the packed auditorium and say the only thing that seemed appropriate… ‘Wow!’ As the week progressed there was no lessening of the ‘wow!’

For some, headlines are enough to induce this kind of reaction:

• 50 nations represented
• £1.25 million given in the Thursday evening offering
• A family, on a mission
• multiple world cities in our sights for church plants
• dear friends from across the globe
• world class exegesis
• the power of God continually in evidence
• Preaching New Testament doctrine and living out the early church example of planting churches and ministering in the Spirit
• being lead in prayer in many languages for revival
• people grasping, for the first time, a vision for church planting and the extension of God’s Kingdom to the ends of the earth.

There are many excellent conferences on the Christian calendar. This, if you’ll forgive my obvious bias, is different. ‘Together on a Mission’ is no tag line or catchphrase to pedal a particular flavour of Christianity. It is what is really happening in and out of this conference.


Together on a Mission 07 was in reality a family gathering. It really feels like doing something great with your friends. Having been part of all this for some time now and served in various nations, the thrill of being with so many genuine friends working hard for the vision of a glorious church and to see the ends of the earth reached is truly wonderful.

There are many prophetic words over us as a family of churches. One that shapes my thinking and is so evident at the conference is that ‘we can do more together than we can apart’. For those who are worried about the state of the church, the evidence from this conference is that the church in the UK and overseas is alive, well and aggressively advancing with the gospel.

For a detailed report of each session and several interviews with speakers at Together on a Mission, Adrian Warnock’s blog was updated during the week. Andy Cottingham’s blog also summarised the event.

For free downloads of all the talks, or to subscribe to the Together on a Mission Podcast, please follow this link.

Talks from Together on a Mission 2006 will be shown on God TV on the following dates:
Monday 3 September: 12:00 & 19:00 - Steve Van Rhyn
Tuesday 4 September: 12:00 - David Stroud
Wednesday 5 September: 13:00 & 19:00 - Terry Virgo
Thursday 6 September: 15:00 & 23:30 - Rob Rufus