Stories

One Advance Group leader was recently preaching at a conference in Poland. During his talk he described the freedom that a life in Christ brings, and after he finished, he was asked to go and pray with some teenagers who had fled the devastation in Ukraine. They were crying as they wrestled with the pain of losing their country to war, but they were still able to realise that no matter what was going on in their lives, they would always have the freedom, peace and joy that can be found in Jesus – we’re in the world, but not of the world, and we can take heart, because Christ has overcome the world.

This can be one of the great strengths that accountability provides, and why accountability is so important to Advance – because sometimes we need our fellow brothers and sisters in Jesus to remind us that even when things are tough, there is freedom.

Chris* is a church planter who shared that his church has totally changed since the Advance Group started. They now have fresh focus on making sure that the ‘main thing’ remains the ‘main thing’ – the gospel.

*Name changed

During one week of mission, some of the Academy students kept bumping into a lady called Chantelle, and they spent some time chatting with her. ‘At one evening event, the gospel was being shared and I spotted Chantelle again looking a bit lost,’ Alice shared, ‘I went over to her and we started chatting again and she told me how she missed hearing the gospel message as she was distracted by a friend. I grabbed the chance to tell her about Jesus and asked her if she’d like to give her life to Jesus and she said yes! We prayed together and invited Jesus into her life and already she is so excited and hungry to find out more about God!’

‘The biggest thing I’ve learned whilst on Message Academy is about listening to God’s voice and doing what he tells me to in the quiet parts of my mind. Recently, I was helping out at an evangelistic gig in Manchester, and got to speak about Jesus and how when we step out in faith following what he says, we get to live life to the full. Then later on whilst I was in the crowd, I heard Jesus tell me to go speak to this guy that was just stood in the corner. I went over and said hi and pretty quickly he opened up to me about some of the hard decisions he’d made in his life and some of the challenges he was facing with drug use. I ended up being able to show him love and share the gospel with him, and he ended up giving his life to Jesus!

‘If I hadn’t listened to God’s voice, I might have missed out on that. We need to listen, we need to be bold, and we need to trust Jesus in those moments of faith and stepping out to do what he calls us to do!’

Why not get trained in your own evangelism through Message Academy? Find out more at message.org.uk/academy

One of the most common ways we see Advance Groups being launched is when we get to share about Advance with church leaders, who love the vision, and therefore encourage the church to start groups. However, that’s not always the case. Jessica, our Ambassador in Brazil, was just having a conversation about Advance with some of her friends one evening. As her friends heard about how the heart of Advance is to see the church better equipped and encouraged in evangelism, they knew they wanted to get involved.
Since that conversation, her friends have taken the group mentoring guide and have started their own group in their church!

‘As a pastor I always dreamed of seeing the whole church take evangelism seriously. However, often I only really saw a small number of people who were willing to share the gospel with the last, the least and the lost.

With Advance, the dream to involve the whole church in evangelism was happening very organically, and we began to see a lot of ordinary men and women from the church discovering the joy of sharing the gospel and the joy of being used by the Lord to do it – something that they’d never experienced before.

It’s really amazing to see what God is doing through Advance. We continue to dream of what will happen when the whole church is involved in sharing the gospel.’ – Hugo*, church leader in Portugal.

*Name changed.

When one Message Academy student Lily was on mission in Larbert in Scotland to grow in her evangelism, she got chatting with some young people as part of an outreach project.
She said, ‘We ran a bunch of challenges and games in the streets and in the park to connect with the young people that we met. During the week, there was one group of students who we really bonded and who came back everyday to chat with us. We invited them to the youth group on the Friday and they ended up all coming and bringing loads of their friends, so there were 19 new young people to the youth group that night! We shared some testimonies with them and I got to preach the gospel. 12 of those young people said yes to Jesus which was amazing! I felt like I really messed up my talk and I was not very prepared but I was so encouraged to see all those hands go up in the response and it showed me how it’s not about my own abilities or how prepared I am but that the Holy Spirit can touch people’s lives through my weakness.’

Mary*, whilst at an Advance conference, shared that during the conference she had her heart healed from past traumas, ‘I feel like I can now share the gospel with freedom!’
*Name changed

As part of the Message Academy School Of Evangelism, where young people get the chance to grow in mission and evangelism, Dave was recently in a school leading a gospel-packed session.
‘The lesson we taught focused on identity and how God can fill the value we seek in things like social media or grades. We also got to invite the kids to an evangelistic gig we were hosting where I got to share the gospel. And three of the kids who came accepted Jesus into their lives and two other girls were prayed for for healing and their knees were healed!’

Amelia, from Campinas (Brazil), started helping to serve soup at the local homeless shelter because to her fresh approach to evangelism and how it can look, ‘this only happened because of my Advance Group journey.’

In Chile, Martha* has led her boss to the Lord sharing with him the 3 important questions which are explored in Advance Group session 3 (Who am I? Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ?)
*Name changed

As we encourage and equip young people in their evangelism on our Message Academy gap year programme, student Caitlin and some of her team were in Scotland, helping out with Revive Scotland (a team who long to see the gospel shared across the nation).
She said, ‘We got to go on the street and share the gospel, sharing our testimonies of Jesus and worship. At one time my friend Lily and I ended up speaking to a guy and his son in a park and invited them to a family event happening at the local church. The dad asked so many questions about Christianity and faith and Jesus and we ended up sharing our testimonies with him. Whilst we were chatting, he got really emotional and was clearly impacted by what we were saying. We were able to pray with him and share the gospel and are praying he comes along to the church.’

Ana is part of an Advance Group in Brazil. She felt encouraged to go out and share with others about Jesus and has now started sharing the gospel with people in her local hospital, something she would never have done had it not been for Advance. 

We recently heard a story from a pastor in Portugal who explained that when he first heard about Advance, he questioned how he could use it in his church. He didn’t have small groups that he could deliver it to, and the church was very traditional, so he wondered how he could meet this challenge.

Even so, he knew that the church needed to refocus on evangelism, because for many years they hadn’t seen anyone accepting Jesus in their congregation and they didn’t really know what to do about that!

This pastor felt Jesus encourage him to use the Advance materials in their weekly bible study slot. In the beginning nothing much really happened, however over time some awesome things started to occur. People began to be more open about their lives and their evangelism, and the group started to see people sharing their faith more and more.

The church started to be more open and reflective about itself, thinking about how they’d approached evangelism and how it had been many years since they’d seen any salvation there. This started a movement where everyone began to evangelise in their own personal circles and circumstances. Since then, there have been a lot of new stories and testimonies of people praying for those who didn’t know Jesus yet, and of people starting to go out and share the gospel.

The pastor said, ‘We were stuck, but Advance helped us get back to the journey of evangelism and to put it back in the forefront of our minds.’

One evening, some of the Academy students helped out at a community BBQ and whilst there, Max felt led to chat to Gareth*. As they spoke he told them that he was a Catholic and they got to ask him if he wanted to experience more of Jesus. He was really excited to find out more so Max shared the gospel with him and Gareth prayed a prayer of salvation right there and then!

Victor, in Angola, says that the churches in his community are experiencing a revival of unity and evangelism through the Advance Groups in the area. Let’s pray for more of this!

‘I was recently helping out at a youth group session all about Roman’s 3. As we shared about the hope and love of Jesus with the young people there, three of them ended up giving their lives to Jesus that night! How amazing!’

An Advance group of teenagers in Brazil started to go out to pray and share the gospel with people after every session. In July alone, they had 23 decisions for Christ.

Luke*, who is in year two of the Advance journey, shared that for the first time ever he is experiencing the fruit of the Spirit in his life and in his evangelism. Let’s pray for more people to grow in word and deed.
*Name changed

‘I’ve always wanted to inspire people and share with them about Jesus. I was recently helping out at a group for people experiencing homelessness in Wales and started chatting with a guy called Harry. He’d just been released from prison that week and didn’t know what to do with his life. I started to chat to him about Jesus, shared my testimony and prayed with him, and as I shared the gospel, Harry accepted Jesus into his life there and then!’ – Joel, Academy 2021-22.