5 Reflections from Australia

It was very encouraging to connect with global city unity leaders in Perth, Australia, a month ago. Drawing from across the globe, leaders of major city movements and regional “Gather Movement”-type organisations met for a week to discuss and pray into this growing paradigm shift happening everywhere. These are some of the main impressions from that time.

1. It’s truly global

Leaders attended from India, America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and Europe. This unusual gathering underlines the global nature of this movement of God in our day. This isn’t a Western phenomenon, nor is it led by one significant leader or church. It’s happening in Fiji and Florida, in Germany and Chennai, and in Durban and Ottawa.

2. The basics are the same

Leaders came from very different contexts, some facing complex issues in their countries and cities. Yet across this diversity, three main foundations consistently emerged.

Foundation 1: Friendship

All that is and will be accomplished by the Church across a city or town will stand or fall on the quality and depth of relationships among leaders. Unity-based city transformation moves us from simply knowing about each other to becoming the family of God across a place.

Foundation 2: Prayer

All these movements hold prayer as the engine room for deepening unity and extending transformation. It is only regular, sustained, fervent prayer that will shift the status quo of our cities and towns, breaking them free from ingrained poverty, immoral corruption, and systemic failure.

Foundation 3: A city focus (town/borough/region/island/village)

The goalposts of success have shifted from church growth and maturity alone to profound change across a place. To see transformation across a place, churches will of course need to grow, deepen, and multiply. However, church growth on its own—without being part of a bigger vision of city transformation—has often led to siloed working, individualistic progress, and insular thinking.

3. Perth is developing rapidly

Over the past few years, the city unity story in Perth has accelerated. Pastors’ gatherings are now taking place in all 32 sub-districts (LGAs) of the city. Unity is connecting people across many denominations, and significant effort is being made to embrace the many migrant churches from multinational backgrounds. This city is organised, well led, and beginning to make a meaningful impact.

4. A call to go deeper into unity

Unity is not something pursued by a few people with a particular interest—it is at the very core of our faith, from the nature of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to the foundation of all our relationships. You cannot build a stable marriage without deep relational unity. We all long and pray for unity in our families. We dislike being part of a divided local church, or living in a divided nation. Unity involves humility, peacemaking, listening, kindness, and forgiveness. Building a unified Church requires significant love and investment. This call to deeper levels of unity will ultimately encourage, inspire, and influence the wider unity of the city.

5. The Lord’s Table

The call to centre our unity-building around the Lord’s Table was prophetically expressed during the meetings by Ian Shelton, a long-serving unity catalyst across Australasia. He carries a strong message that unity is grounded in the sacrifice and deep love of Christ. Placing the bread and wine at the centre of our conversations, planning, strategies, and events establishes the foundation of our work and brings us back to the core of our faith.

At the table, the city is realigned around Jesus as King—the provider and healer of our communities. At the table, personal brokenness is healed; we are forgiven and restored. The table releases the power of God over darkness and reframes church unity to be more about love and less about overcoming differences. In all our hopes and dreams for our places, the Church of God and our role in the wider vision of transformation are centred on Jesus—His death, resurrection, and ascension. The table reminds us of this and forms us as one Body in one city with one Gospel.

At the National Summit on June 8th–9th in Oxford, we will be strongly taking up this theme of going deeper into the unity God is calling us to pursue, for the sake of our places and the nation.