Lebanon focus

We are currently running an appeal for Christians in Lebanon who are responding to people in crisis all around them. Our partners are supporting people in need with emergency food packs, blankets, medicine and more, as well as providing trauma support and investing in long-term discipleship. Pray for people to turn to Jesus during this time and find comfort in him. For more fuel for prayer, please download and use our prayer resource and use this link (or turn to page 6 of CMS Magazine to find out more).

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Colombia: earthquake

An earthquake in western Colombia on Monday has killed at least 265 people, and another 500 are still missing. Pray for comfort for all those who have lost loved ones and homes, and for the country as a whole as they rebuild following this tragedy.

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DR Congo: Ebola outbreak escalating

DR Congo’s Ebola death toll has jumped from 1,500 to 2,000 in the space of a week and the current outbreak is on track to be worse than the 2014–2016 outbreak (which killed more than 11,000 people). CMS partners in DR Congo write, “Pray for protection and healing for communities affected by the Ebola outbreak. Pray for healthcare workers, health facilities, community health volunteers, and ministry partners involved in prevention, awareness, treatment, and response efforts.”

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Middle East: preparing to return

Mission partners J and R are currently on home leave in the UK, visiting churches and spending time with family. Pray for a restful time, and for them to be able to return to the Middle East as scheduled towards the end of October.

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Rwanda: the growing church

Praise God for exciting progress in Rwanda: the recent ordination of three pastors and five deacons earlier this month, ongoing construction of a new cathedral, and a new phase of Biblical Education by Extension (BEE) teaching just begun for several people from different Anglican dioceses across the country. Pray for Christians across Rwanda to continue to grow in faith as they are discipled and disciple others.

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UK: preparation for festivals

Two teams from the CMS office are preparing to represent the organisation at Greenbelt and Big Church Festival over the August bank holiday weekend. Pray for plans for transport and other practicalities to come together. If you are going to be at one of these festivals, please do come and say hello!

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Greenbelt is an annual fixture in the team calendar and we are looking forward to this year’s festival. CMS has a stand so if you are coming do come and say hi to us there.

Church Mission Society at Greenbelt 2026

• Friday 28 Aug, 3.30pm: Pioneer meet-up at Hope and Anchor
• Saturday 29 Aug, 11am: Fringe Dweller with Jonny Baker and David Cotterill + guest artists at Shelter
• All weekend: Come and connect at the CMS stand, and sign up for Fringe Dweller

The theme of the stand this year is based around Fringe Dweller, with a series of postcards using images from the book inviting people to join in God’s mission at the edges.

The popular Fringe Dweller Lent course has been set up as a course you can subscribe to any time which comes to you via email. Each postcard has a QR code so you can do that. Do come and take those and encourage people you’re with to visit the stand and do that.

Part of the charism of pioneering and indeed CMS mission purpose is about joining in with what God is doing and making disciples at the fringes. In fact the name Fringe Dweller was inspired by former General Secretary of CMS John Taylor who suggested in one of his newsletters that if we are followers of Jesus then we will find ourselves fringe dwelling. 

A new prospectus for pioneer training was delivered yesterday to CMS office which looks great – so do come and grab one of those. Our best advert for the course is former students so please invite people to come and talk to us about training. It’s not too late to sign up for September (though it is quite late!).

Last year we had quite a few conversations about Aspen, the new ecclesial community we launched last November. So if that’s something you’d like to talk about we’d also love to do that.

Look out for me (Jonny Baker) and David Cotterill taking Fringe Dweller to Greenbelt in the Shelter venue at 11am on Saturday exploring ‘Flip The Script’ with a series of artists responding to it. It feels such a Greenbelty kind of theme!

We will have a pioneer meet up for anyone and everyone at 3.30pm on Friday at the Hope and Anchor. Do come along and meet other pioneers, Aspen members and so on. 

Speaking of the Hope and Anchor, Methodist pioneer friends will be hanging out there I’m sure. Ash and Anj Barker and Newbigin hub friends are involved in the URC venue. Anj is hosting some conversations each evening that are pioneer/mission focused. 

Greenbelt is always a joy – look forward to seeing you there.

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The Acts 11 Project is convening in September to address essential questions for the church in mission today.

by Harvey Kwiyani

10 August 2026

Shifting Centres, Moving Peoples: Rethinking Partnership in an Age of Migration

For more than three decades, partnership has been one of the defining aspirations of Christian mission. It appears in our strategic plans, conference themes, and mission statements. Yet despite our shared commitment to partnership, many churches and mission organisations recognise that genuine mutuality remains difficult to achieve.

Across the UK and beyond, conversations with church leaders, academics, mission practitioners, and diaspora Christians reveal a common question: How do we move beyond good intentions towards genuine mutuality?

The challenge is not a lack of goodwill. Rather, many of our patterns of mission and church life were shaped in a world where authority, resources, and theological leadership flowed from a handful of centres to the rest of the world. Christianity today, however, is unmistakably polycentric. The demographic centre of the Church now lies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and among migrant communities around the world. Migration has transformed the landscape of mission, bringing Christians from every continent into our towns, cities, and congregations.

This changing reality invites us to ask important questions. What does partnership look like when mission is no longer a movement from the West to the rest? How can churches move beyond host–guest relationships towards genuine reciprocity? How do we share leadership, resources, and decision-making in ways that reflect the diversity of the global body of Christ?

These are not merely theoretical questions. They shape how denominations relate to diaspora churches, how theological colleges prepare future leaders, how mission agencies collaborate across cultures, and how local congregations witness in increasingly multicultural communities.

These are precisely the questions that will be explored at the Acts 11 Project Mission and Migration Conference, taking place on 4–5 September 2026 at Liverpool Hope University.

Under the theme Shifting Centres, Moving Peoples: Rethinking Partnership and Mutuality in an Age of Migration, the conference will bring together church leaders, theologians, mission practitioners, students, policymakers, and diaspora church leaders for two days of theological reflection, practical learning, and honest conversation.

We are delighted to welcome keynote speakers including Dr Alexander Chow, Dr Sheila Akomiah-Conteh, Adam Martin, and Dr Nuam Hatzaw, alongside workshops led by practitioners from organisations such as Welcome Churches, Agapé UK, WEAVE, and the Acts 11 Project.

Rather than simply discussing migration, the conference seeks to create space for genuine encounter. Together we will explore practical questions including:

• How can established churches and diaspora churches move beyond host–guest relationships towards genuine partnership?
• What can churches learn from successful intercultural ministry partnerships?
• Why is cultural intelligence becoming an essential leadership skill?
• How are refugees and migrant communities reshaping the Church’s understanding of mission?
• What can the multicultural church in Antioch teach us about partnership today?

Our hope is that participants will leave not only with fresh ideas, but also with new relationships, deeper theological insight, and renewed confidence that God is using migration to reshape the Church for faithful witness in the twenty-first century.

Whether you serve in church leadership, theological education, mission, research, or a multicultural congregation, we warmly invite you to join us.

Take part

The conference is available in person or online, with registration options for one day or both days.

We look forward to welcoming you to Liverpool as we continue this important conversation together.

Book now

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We catch up with ordinand Jez Drury at the end of his first year on the MA programme at CMS Pioneer Mission Training.

HH: Hi Jez, and thanks for agreeing to be interviewed a second time. Can you tell us a bit about your context and where you are based?

JD: I am based in the Parish of Maybush in Southampton, a large parish of around 28,500 people. We sit very close to Southampton Docks, the second‑largest container terminal in the UK. The parish includes a large post‑war urban estate originally built to rehouse people after the city centre was heavily bombed during the Blitz.

This area continues to experience significant levels of deprivation. Issues associated with poverty are common – including high levels of child poverty, social housing, single‑parent households, and single‑occupancy households. As of 2019, Maybush had the lowest per‑capita church attendance in the diocese.

Since lockdown, our church community has been actively seeking new ways to respond to local need. On Tuesdays, we have Crafty Cafe and run Marketplace every Wednesday to help alleviate food poverty. From this, we now have social prescribers attending to support people in accessing doctors, dentists, and other essential services. We’ve also begun conversations with Mountbatten Hospice around issues of death and dying.

We are intentionally building relationships across the community – with statutory agencies, local organisations, and residents. This has meant stepping outside our buildings, meeting people where they are, and inviting the community into our churches and halls. It has prompted us to rethink what it means to be church, here. Increasingly, we are creating safe, hospitable spaces where people can gather, belong, and encounter God.

You are studying the Pioneer MA with us; can you tell us what led you to join the course?

I’ve always had a heart for mission – especially for those outside the church walls and on the edges of society. That’s where I feel most at home. I often feel like I’m on the inside looking out, noticing the things we could be doing and wanting to make a difference to the people I meet.

For many years I’ve wrestled with how I fit within the church, and how we welcome people who may never walk through the doors on a Sunday. I’m hoping that being here will help me discern what that looks like for me as I move forward.

When you first joined us, your application said: “This is part of my discernment process towards ordained ministry. I need a better understanding of what it means to be a pioneer and what that looks like for me in reality, within the context of people I meet.” Can you tell us how this has panned out so far?

I am almost 12 months into my journey with CMS, and I’m beginning to get a clearer sense of what a pioneer is. In many ways, it still feels like the beginning, so I’m trying to stay open‑minded about what this might look like as I continue. I’m aware that the word pioneer means different things to different people. What I do know is that I’m called to the margins – to those who are institutionalised, however we understand that term. I’m not comfortable with the church simply repeating what it has always done. I don’t believe God calls us to comfortable Christianity; he calls us to make a difference.

Part of living that out is the Crafty Cafe group on a Tuesday. It began with around eight people, and now, less than a year later, we regularly welcome about 20 each week. I’m taking an organic approach to evangelism, and over the past six months I’ve started to see four or five of our regulars coming along to church on a Sunday morning. They come for their own reasons, and our response is simply: you are welcome.

Jez, can you tell us more about leading an intergenerational congregation?

I have recently begun to lead services that genuinely cater to an intergenerational congregation, helping people of all ages easily understand what’s being shared from the front. This is very much a work in progress – I’ve only led two services in this style so far – so it’s still early to know how effective it is. But the initial feedback has been encouraging, and I’m hopeful about how this approach might grow.

In terms of your lectures and assignments, what have you found useful at CMS; what might make an impact in your future ministry?

The bits from college that have been most useful to me are the sessions on culture and how we understand the culture we find ourselves in, and liberation theology and seeing the reality of this in the community I find myself in. 

It’s helping me understand the people I meet and how I work more effectively with them.  

How can we pray for you, Jez?

A year into this new chapter, please pray that I am able to sustain a good pattern of study alongside my work commitments. Please also pray for my family as we continue to adjust to this rhythm and discern how study, ministry, and daily life fit together. And please pray for the Parish of Maybush as we keep working together to understand and follow what God is asking of us next. My own prayer life continues to grow, and I am finding an early‑morning rhythm of prayer especially life‑giving as I keep trusting God for whatever lies ahead.  

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Colombia: female genital mutilation

Praise God that Colombia recently made female genital mutilation (FGM) illegal – the first country in Latin America to do so. Mission partner Ann-Marie Wilson works with Orchid Project to end the harmful and needless practice in every country where it is still practised. Pray for the efforts of Ann-Marie and others to continue to impact leaders and decision-makers so that the practice can be eradicated in more countries around the world and for more girls to be spared. 

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DR Congo: Ebola

According to the World Health Organization, the current Ebola outbreak in DR Congo is now the largest Ebola outbreak ever reported in the country. The official death toll is now over 1,500, though it is feared the true number may be higher. Pray for healthcare personnel as they care for the sick and do what they can stop the spread of the virus. Please lift up mission partner Martin Gordon, Bishop of Goma and his family, and CMS-Africa partner Bisoke Balikenga, who leads a peace centre in Bunia, at the heart of the outbreak, as they support those around them.

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