Newfrontiers news!

Trinity Central is part of Newfrontiers, a worldwide family of churches on mission together.
Over the past couple of years our church family has been going through an exciting transition. Terry Virgo founded and fathered Newfrontiers, led the apostolic team, and has had such a deep and lasting impact on many around the world. As many churches have been planted and others have joined the family so the family has grown, many have grown into leadership, many stepped out into planting churches, and some beginning to carry responsibility for serving churches more broadly.
Over the past year a number of men have been recognised as apostles among the churches and have been released to build apostolic teams to further mission and church planting, to strengthen churches and to raise up leaders. The result of this will hopefully be a continued multiplication of mission, raising up leaders and making disciples. You might say that the sons are beginning to have families of their own!
One of these ‘sons’ is Jeremy Simpkins, who with his wife Ann, recently spent a week with us here in Vancouver. Jeremy and his team is now serving some 80 churches across a number of nations, including Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Sweden and Zambia.
Recently about 2,500 people from those churches gathered together for four days in Yorkshire, England, where we worshipped, spent time together, saw God moving in breathtaking healing power and had some outstanding teaching.
As part of the conference it was announced that the churches served by Jeremy’s team are now being identified as ChristCentral Churches, part of the Newfrontiers family.
It’s a really exciting transition that’s taking place, and we’re delighted to be part of this family. Churches are being planted, people are being reached in diverse nations, the mission of God continues among us.  We are living in exciting days!
A website for ChristCentral Churches is in development, and you can follow developments on Twitter at @cc_curches
Feel free to chat with me if you’d like to hear more about what’s happening!
PS: The word ‘apostle’ has been a controversial term among believers, among many evangelicals the term understood as only applying to those who saw Christ personally and wrote scripture. While I don’t have time now to fully engage with this, let me comment that there are difficulties with this view in as much as Barnabas, Adronicus and Junius were recognised within the New Testament as apostles, men who did not write scripture, nor is there specific evidence of their witnessing the life of Jesus. Furthermore, only a few of the apostles actually did write scripture, and Luke (who was not recognized as an apostle) wrote two of the books of the New Testament.
In Eph 4 Paul tells us that the ascended Christ has given apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers and evangelists to build up the church until it reaches maturity and unity. I’m sure we would all agree that this has not yet fully happened, so our view would be that these important gifts are still necessary to the church today. The role of apostles would be to lay doctrinal foundations upon which healthy churches can be built, to strengthen churches, to raise up leaders and to motivate mission. If you would like to read more about this David Devenish’s outstanding book “Fathering Leaders, Motivating Mission” is a very helpful resource. Terry Virgo’s book ‘The Spirit Filled Church’ also has a short chapter on this subject.