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. |
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Why did you do this? 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.
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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.
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