World Horizons

Recently I went on a World Horizon Step week-end. www.worldhorizons.co.uk

World Horizons exists on behalf of places and people not yet prayed for, churches not yet planted and cross-cultural workers not yet sent. We are a praying, prophetic, pioneering, pastoral mission movement.

Look at the website. There are loads of different ways you can get involved. It’s not all full feet missionary stuff.

It rocked my boat. WH came and spoke at my church and a lady stepped forward and offered me a brochure. It had been languishing on my desk for about 9 months. To be honest a drive down to Llanelli is a bit of a haul, especially as I had been a few weeks earlier to visit my rare sheep raising brother on his farm. I wasn’t going to go and then everything conspired to make it easy and effortless and I was there.

It is a shed. Downstairs in particular is a cold shed. I went with no expectations. It grew on me. I was charmed. My faith was challenged. I think this might be the start of another VSO type journey, but we don’t know at this stage.

What did I like so much? The people were lovely. They were culturally diverse. There were a lot of happy, old, fulfilled people there as well as young ones. We are talking second even third generation WH which was interesting. I had not been face to face with convinced teenage missionaries before. They were not having boring lives. I noticed and appreciated the closeness and easy bond the WH staff have together. They are team. This could be because part of the process is a 6 month in house training programme. That means a 6 month in shed training programme where you sleep in dorms and live communally. If you have any rough edges before you go in they get sorted.

After VSO I could totally see the value of this. VSO volunteers are individualistic. We were encouraged to see ourselves as ‘consultants’. Team work was rare. There is nurture in and the safety of the group in the WH approach.

Some of the presentations were rambling, but you could not fault people’s willingness to talk and share. Their interventions were inspiring. I was challenged.

The food was awesome.

I’ll keep you posted if there are developments.