My name's Nigel Savage and I’ve been part of the iCQ team for the last three years. My role is Church Coordinator, which means that I keep in touch with the church leaders that we’re working with. I talk through how things are going, look at strategic planning and how leadership development is happening.

When I’m not working with the iCQ team, my main job is working as a leader in a large church in Bristol, which has over 1,000 adults. I’ve been working as a pastor in this church for over 5 years. I oversee all the mid-week groups that happen and I also lead one of these groups.

The purpose of this blog is that each month I’ll be writing about a different aspect of ‘making it happen’. Putting the outreach principles into practice and seeing church be healthy and grow naturally. I’m aware that I still have lots to learn, so this blog isn’t going to be about how wonderful everything is. I don’t get everything right and learning to engage with mission is an ongoing issue.

"the priority for me as a leader was to lead missionally and see effective outreach happen - if I didn’t lead it, then it wouldn’t happen"

I believe that we have to be creative about how we engage with outreach; it has to be realistic, viable, exciting and a natural expression of who we are as God’s people. So mission will look different for different churches and what I’m doing in my context doesn’t necessarily mean it will translate directly into yours. Hopefully there will be principles and ideas that will be valuable and will help you reflect on your own outreach process.

David Parker, a well regarded church leader from the Vineyard movement, has said, “unless you make evangelism your number one priority, it never will be”. I think he’s got a point. There’s so much going on in church life that it can be so easy to be bogged down with other pressing demands. Yet really we should be orientating everything around our number one priority of outreach.

I came to a point as a pastor where I realised that I could look after Christians quite well. Yet the priority for me as a leader was to lead missionally and see effective outreach happen. If I didn’t lead it, then it wouldn’t happen. So although by nature I was happy looking after Christians, I understood that I needed to start leading and championing outreach. I’m glad I have and I hope you find my thoughts and reflections helpful as you read my blog.