The Drive for the Kingdom

During the "Drive for the Kingdom", a team of four people from the Teal Trust prayed at a church in every one of the 42 mainland English Dioceses of the Church of England.  The team started at noon on Thursday 5th June at the Pennine market town of Alston in the Diocese of Newcastle, and ended at Launceston in the Cornish Diocese of Truro at 11:30am the following day. (The route)

The team also passed through, and pray in each of the 20 English Dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church; every one of the 10 Regional Baptist Association areas, all of the 11 English URC Synods, and cover all but four of the mainland English Methodist Districts.

We believe that the churches in England are coming to a critical period; when strategic decisions taken over the next ten years will have a major influence on the shape, size and ministry of the churches during the first half of this century.

We had two aims for this drive :

1. First and foremost, this was a prayer initiative.  We wanted to pray for the church across the nation, and encourage others to pray for :
a common vision for the church, and for how the church will change
for good strategic decisions to be taken at national and local level on structural, staffing and ministry issues.

2. To launch a new training tool to help develop local leadership teams, "Livewires for Leadership", and encourage them to think strategically. This will be featured at a series of local conferences we are hosting later in the autumn at a series of venues around the UK.

The team for the "Drive for the Kingdom" was left to right
David Pierce, John Preston, Lisa and Nigel West.

Drive for the Kingdom - the Statistics

The Drive for the Kingdom stopped to pray at a church in every one of the 42 mainland dioceses of the Church of England.  These churches included a cross-section of the church : two cathedrals, inner city churches, rural village churches, a Saxon chapel from the 10th Century, and churches about 10 years old. We will also drove through and prayed in every one of the 20 English Roman Catholic Dioceses, each of the 10 Baptist Association areas, and every one of the 11 English mainland URC Synods.

The Drive took just 23.5 hours, and covered 1005 miles. We believe that it is the first time that this has been attempted. Success came not from speed, but rather from careful route planning which ensured we were able to minimise the distance travelled.

Still smiling as we prepare to pray at St James',
Kidbrooke in Southwark Diocese at 2am