Church planting in Berlin
At the end of 2009, Nigel and Clare Dutton and their four children moved to Berlin to start a new church plant in the centre of the city. Having lived in Hastings for 16 years where Nigel was leading King's Church, it was a big challenge to leave a place in which they felt so settled. Now, almost two years later, the Duttons have got to grips with the language and are excited about what the Lord has in store for God First, Berlin. Here, Nigel updates us on the last eighteen months…
The church plant currently meets once a week on Wednesdays and on every other Sunday. In recent weeks, we feel God has been speaking to us about three key characteristics for our church plant. These are the importance of the grace of God, of being a thoroughly charismatic community and an international community.
When we meet on Sundays there are usually between eight and ten adults, though on one Sunday in March there were 26 of us and we had 70 guests turn up to a 'Celebrate Asia' evening that we organised. I guess we suddenly got an unexpected and exciting taste of what it would be like if God were suddenly to bring us faster growth.
Apart from this, I have been meeting with other Christian leaders in the city and in January I was invited to speak at a student Alpha course. I was able to share my passion for the church and I think God touched the hearts of the students through my talk. I'm hoping to stay in touch with these students now and build relationships.
Over Easter, we welcomed a team predominantly from Mosaic Church, Leeds and went out into the community for a whole week to raise the profile of the church plant. Much of the outreach took place in Breitscheidplatz, a major public square in the inner city of Berlin. We invited those that we had good conversations with to a pre-Alpha launch meal, which will hopefully have helped to raise numbers for our Alpha course, which we are starting soon.
Nigel and Claire are part of the Newfrontiers family of churches. Every year Newfrontiers host a training weekend called Base Camp aimed at equipping potential church planters for the starting of new churches. If you'd like to learn more about Base Camp or church planting in general, please visit the Newfrontiers planting website.
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