Why The Name Change

"God is saying I'm going to change your name."

We believe that God clearly spoke to us about changing the name of the church - How did that happen?

In Oct 2005 on a visit to South Africa our good friend Steve Oliver was praying with Mark and he said "I have a strong sense that God is going to speak to you about a name change for the church! I also believe that God will show you what the name is to be..."

Mark listened carefully, and took it very seriously, but he said, "At the time it just didn't 'sit' in my spirit and I had no sense of a new name whatsoever. But I prayed very specifically... 'Lord if this is you, you will need to make it really plain and clear to me.'" He decided to tell no one except Nigel, and there it stayed, for a while...

Towards the end of 2006 and early part of 2007 Mark had two or three different conversations with people about the churches name. One new person said "I nearly didn't come to the church because I thought it was only for families!" Another person phoned to ask, "Is the church just for families or can single people come as well?" All of which made him think, but he still had no sense of what we might do about it.

Diversity

At the same time the Holy Spirit began to prompt a conversation about the whole subject of Diversity in the church - That we might truly reflect the heart of God by having a genuine mix of young and old, married and single, rich and poor, male and female, black and white.

One Tuesday morning in April, Nigel, Donna Bloomfield and Mark were meeting to share and to pray, and they got into a conversation about Diversity and what it meant. Donna was particularly sharing what was on her heart about it all. This in turn led to a significant prayer time.

As they were praying Mark said "I felt the Spirit come on me very strongly and I began to pray out about how I believed God was going to bring people to us from many different nations but that he was also going to be sending people out from us to the nations of the world - suddenly I got a very vivid picture of one of the terminals at Heathrow Airport. I standing there waiting to collect people who were coming in and at the same time watching the 'nations' coming and going and as I was praying I suddenly felt God very clearly give me a new name for the church."

But he still didn't tell anyone except Nigel.

Not long after that God used a couple in the church to give Mark a teaching tape from another church - the whole sermon was about the name that he felt God had spoken to him about!

Sunday 8th July 2007

Then on Sunday 8th July God used a church member Marina John to bring a prophetic word to the whole church. She said that she felt God wanted to speak a word to the church that was related to Gen 17:1-6

Marina had no idea what Mark had been carrying in his heart, so it was even more surprising when she said that she felt God was speaking to us about changing the name of the church.

She said she believed that God was doing a work with us as a church in regards to the nations, and in the same way that God had spoken to Abraham about changing his name and about him being the Father of many nations, so he was saying to us that it was time to change the name of the church.

In the autumn of 2007 with all that leading and confirmation Mark felt it was right to tell the church the name that God had given him and in the spring and summer of 2008 we entered the process of changing the name of the church to - Gateway Church Swindon