Mick Woodhead, the pastor of Crookes, said something that really stood out to me: “Growing a church is really easy. It really is. It’s making disciples that’s the hard part. If you can make disciples, the church will grow. It’s just the way it works.”

Perhaps the biggest thing my friend and I took home for our community was the utter dependence on God we saw in these communities. These churches simply could not succeed like they have without God guiding them, walking in his Spirit. They desperately seek the voice of God and obey it in ways that I just have never seen. Each church have staff teams that gather each day; they pray, read scripture, worship, every single day. And the thing I took from observing was that they weren’t doing it because they thought it was something they were supposed to do. Their very survival depended on it. Attractional church basically doesn’t work at all in Sheffield, so if the Kingdom is going to advance, well…only God can do that. Our efforts mean nothing, there are simply too many hurdles and landmines.

We walked away humbled by some of our arrogance about “good ideas” and our ability to make things work in our own strength.