Stories

In India, a group of churches are using the Advance materials as they meet together in groups to pray regularly and to press into God. Recently, the churches decided to put on a big event together for the first time ever, with a focus on sharing the gospel in their city. The churches found that Advance promoted unity amongst the Christians in that region and inspired them to work together in a new way.

Desperate to see God bring fresh hope and breakthrough, Victor, our Ambassador in Angola, decided to start a new Advance Group in his church. Since then, Victor has seen the church become more passionate about mission and evangelism and has started to see the Holy Spirit move in amazing ways. ‘Advance was the Key that God used to change their hearts’ – Victor, Advance Ambassador in Angola.

As well as sharing about what Jesus has done for her, Massy felt really challenged off the back of her Advance Group session to go one step further with her friends and actually invite them to give their lives together. ‘I’d never have taken that step without Advance, and I can’t wait to see how God will use me next!’

After an Advance Group meeting where the group prayed for boldness to share the gospel, one of the members, Pedro, felt really prompted to share about Jesus again with his dad who wasn’t a Christian. So, he drove 600km to share the gospel and his dad responded there and then!

One Advance Group of young adults in Cornwall has been running for almost a whole year – and since joining the group, every member has seen a friend accept Jesus!

Even though he wasn’t a Christian, when he was invited, Alex came along with his friend to an evangelism training event. During the session Alex heard all about Jesus and what it means to have faith in him. After the event he was able to talk it over with his Christian friend, and later made the decision to give his life to Jesus!

Junior leads an Advance group with professional football players in Portugal. Since starting the group, several of these footballers have been inspired and equipped to share their faith with other teammates and friends, and many of these have since given their lives to Jesus!

Luiz is another Advance Group leader who’s seeing first-hand the impact of God through Advance. During his last group session, he and the members were all chatting and sharing testimonies of how God had been using them and the whole group soon realised that every single member had shared the gospel with someone and had seen them respond to it over the 10 months since the group launched!

Carol started her Advance Group feeling really nervous and insecure about her ability to share her faith because she always thought that you had to be an amazing communicator or confident preacher.

Over time, as she met with her group, she discovered that she didn’t need to be any of those things, she just needed a willingness to step out, trusting that God would use her every-day conversations. As she grew in boldness, Carol received the courage to chat with her best friend about her faith and her friend was so moved by her testimony that she decided to accept Jesus into her life!

Some of our Advance Team in the UK recently led ‘Friendship Evangelism’ training sessions as part of a region-wide Christian festival called Festival Manchester. Gregory* had been full of doubts about his faith and was increasingly unsure about what he believed, but even so, had found himself going along to the training. During the session, his passion for the gospel message and the love of Jesus was reignited. He recommitted his life to God there and then, leaving the training with a desire to share Jesus which outshone his previous doubts and questions.

Wesley, one of our Ambassadors in Brazil, met with a local bishop to share about Advance and about how Advance groups work. On the back of this meeting, Wesley was invited to share with a group of pastors in Uberlandia and the response was amazing! The pastors were excited to take Advance into their churches and are hoping to start multiple groups across Brazil in the coming months.

‘I love hearing all the encouraging stories that come out of my Advance Group about how God is using ordinary people like us to share the gospel, despite all our struggles and anxieties.’

Adriel, who lives in Brazil, recently went to an Advance conference, hoping mainly to improve his English as he listened; however, God had something far better in store for him.Whilst he was there he had an amazing experience with Jesus and his heart was broken for people who don’t know the gospel. Since then, he has reignited his relationship with Jesus and is now back serving in his local church.

When Darren, who is part of an Advance Group in Manchester, UK, was having his flat decorated he began chatting to the decorator about some of the challenging news they’d been hearing over the war in Ukraine and the devastation that was being caused there.
Later that evening, Darren realised that he’d missed a great opportunity to share about Jesus in the conversation they’d had. As he next met with his Advance Group, he shared that he was disappointed with what had happened. The group prayed with Darren for more opportunities and that he’d feel encouraged to take them when they came.
Being in an Advance group is not only making Darren more aware of the opportunities he has to share the gospel but is also encouraging him to take them more often.

Recently, the Message Trust Hub in Germany were asked about whether they could support a network of youth groups in an afternoon of outreach they had planned in the city centre. Kilian, our Advance Ambassador, took the lead in exploring what Advance could do to help make this event as successful as possible.
He thought how great it would be if before the outreach they could do some simple training on evangelism with one youth group, and so they arranged to work with them at one of their meeting nights, using one session of the Group Mentoring Guide.
The response was great and one of the youth members, who’d never seen himself as much of an evangelist, shared how excited he now felt for the coming outreach event.
At the event, he ended up having some amazing conversations with people, and even saw someone give their life to Jesus! Killian is now having some exciting conversations with a network of youth groups who want to grow in their evangelism, about how it might be possible to launch some Advance Groups with them!’ Kilian, Advance Ambassador in Germany

Through the boldness of one Advance Group leader in praying for healing, God opened the door for a whole community to hear the gospel.
Read the full story HERE

Christina was invited to go to an Advance conference, but she was unsure about going alone. She decided to ask her friend, who didn’t know Jesus, to join her, even though the gathering wouldn’t usually be the type of event you might think of inviting a non-Christian to. However, by the grace of God, during the evening Christina’s friend had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and ended up giving her life to Jesus!

Aaron had been chatting to Mark*, a young guy on his estate, about Jesus for months but Mark never seemed to show much interest. However, one evening Aaron received a call from another young person who he’d been discipling, who explained that he’d bumped into Mark and had ended up sharing the gospel with him – the great news was that Mark had accepted Jesus! Sometimes we’ve just got to trust in God’s timing!
*Names changed

In one Advance Group session, in Germany, Maria prayed for more boldness to go beyond sharing her personal faith, and to begin to invite people to surrender their lives to Jesus. Two weeks later, she was invited to preach in a church, and on her way there she felt the Holy Spirit prompting her to finish her talk with a call to respond to the gospel. In the end, over 20 people gave their lives to Jesus that day!

Whilst out in Uganda, Isaac, one of our Advance Ambassadors for Uganda, introduced a group of young adults to Advance.
‘As we began to explore some of the Advance materials, we started to talk about how abiding in Jesus leads us to bearing much fruit.. These young people so loved and valued the Advance teaching that they started to come every day to meet together and to delve into it further, simply because they’d never had anything like this before. After the two weeks I’d been with them, this group had already multiplied into four further Advance Groups!’