The Next Step

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Dear friends at the Mission,

Over the last four years, the Church leaders in this northern corridor of Perth have been meeting on a regular basis to pray, encourage each other and to discover what God is saying to our churches.  Together we have been on a four year journey in which God has been unfolding an understanding of the incredible purposes he has for this area of Perth and the churches within it.  We believe that this northern corridor stands as one of the gateways to our city, and that what is established here will be released to enrich our entire city.  One way to picture it is to think of a river that flows down from a mountain and down to a city; it is vital then that what is established in the source of the river is good and pure so that the people of the city are refreshed and healthy.  One of the keys that God has given us in all of this is to pursue a true expression of unity in our region.

At the beginning of this year, God began to speak to a core group of the leaders about some specific next steps that we are to take in our journey together.  Although we believe that God’s ultimate aim is to build a network of strong and deep relationships between leaders and churches all over our region, we also understand that God is joining the leaders and ministries of a number of us in a far more significant way.

Specifically, we believe that the next step that God would have us take is the joining together of two separate ministries to form one new ministry.  The first is our church, The Mission, whose senior leader, Richard Stals, is strongly prophetic.  The second is Dreamlife Church in Merriwa, led by Paul Botha who is strongly apostolic.  We believe that this joining is the first step to establishing a new paradigm of Church that is truly built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets and includes a strong expression of all of the five-fold offices at its core (the five-fold ministry includes the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, see Ephesians 4:11-16).

We believe that God has shown us that our churches are to begin to walk closer together so that over the next three months we can get to know and trust each other and so that each of you can have time to adjust to this new direction in our churches, so that you can ask questions and to seek God’s will for yourselves.

Although we don’t have all the details of exactly what this new ministry will look like, the important thing to note is that there will be single local church that will be based and focused in Merriwa.  The question of do we continue to run meetings of some form here in Carramar remains a big issue that we are very focussed in getting God’s direction on.

Please keep your leaders in prayer,

Richard Stals
Senior Leader, The Mission Carramar