In September 1980 Terry Virgo and his first apostolic team met in Hove. Bryn Jones, who lead the Harvestime team later to become Covenant Ministries, had been a speaker at the recently held Downs Bible Week held at Plumpton Racecourse in Sussex – the second one – and he advised Terry on that occasion to form a team to share the increasingly demanding role he was playing as he travelled to help churches from his base on the south coast. Bryn also suggested that Terry needed to complement his apostolic ministry with the other Ephesians 4 gifts of prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher, not that ‘apostolic’ was a commonly used term in those days as people misunderstood the role of this gift to the church and accused those who might adopt it of arrogantly equating themselves with the first apostles.
The first meeting took place at Terry’s home. Six joined him:
- Henry Tyler, former Baptist pastor, was one of the founding leaders of Clarendon Church (started as the Brighton and Hove Christian Fellowship in late 1978), which later became Church of Christ the King (CCK) and is now Emmanuel Church.
- Alan Vincent, recently returned missionary from India who was leading a group of churches near Hemel Hempstead, just outside London.
- David Holden who was leading the Barnabas Christian Fellowship in Sidcup, in south-east London, now New Community Church.
- Ray Lowe, leader of Biggin Hill Christian Fellowship in Kent, now New Life Church.
- Richard Haydon-Knowell, leader of Allerford Chapel in Catford, South London, now Kings Church London.
- Myself, at that time working for the National Health Service but also serving as administrator in the Mid-Sussex Christian Fellowship (now The King’s Church) which Terry had planted out of our home in 1977 and as one of the administrators of the Downs Bible Week.
Subsequently other men were invited to join the team which, throughout the life of Coastlands/Newfrontiers has never been seen as a static concept but has flexed to respond to what the Holy Spirit was saying at any particular moment.
A Name
From the start we were very clear that we were not setting up an organisation. Nevertheless, a name was needed, if only for a bank account, so Coastlands seemed to be appropriate as Isaiah used it prophetically as a term to describe the ends of the earth. It was always our vision to be part of the fulfilment of the Great Commission. Subsequently this term was misinterpreted by many since Terry was located on the south coast of England and so we changed to New Frontiers in 1986.
What were we there for?
When we first met we did three main things.
1. Pray!
2. Review what contacts the team members had with other churches
3. Decide what our purpose was. This was summarised in:
- Conferences (eg Downs Bible Week)
- Celebrations (evening gatherings in various towns and cities to bring ‘prophetic declaration’ of the word)
- Cassettes to make available teaching to the wider body of Christ
Over the next few weeks I will give some personal reminiscences of the past 40 years and seek to honour God in so doing as I trace some of the history from my perspective that has taken Newfrontiers to becoming a family of over 20 apostolic spheres representing perhaps 2000 churches in nearly 100 nations.