Over the last decade a number of church planters and leaders in Dublin have connected around the topics of evangelism, discipleship and church planting. During this period a variety of new churches have emerged. They include a Pentecostal church in Crumlin, a Baptist church in Blackrock, an Anglican church in Rathmines and a Vineyard church in Liffey Valley. This informal networking has involved occasional conferences, study groups and plenty of close support relationships. Sean Mullan has been a key networker and encourager in much of this.

During this period different leaders have received training either at the church planting forum in New York run by City to City or to the European City to City Events - Sean Mullan (Abbey Street Methodist Church), Rob Jones (Holy Trinity Rathmines), Mark Smith (City Church), Rob Duff (Liberty Church) and Steve Vaughan (Christ CIty Church).

Additionally there have been a number of meetings, facilitated by City to City staff (Al Barth, Walter Wood) visiting Dublin and meeting with church leaders to facilitate greater collaboration.

Off the back of one of these meetings the monthly prayer meeting was started, where friendship, trust and a shared vision started to grow and the conversation grew, with a number of visits and meetings with Neil Powell who has experience from doing something similar between 2010-2020 in Birmingham, UK - see https://2020birmingham.org.uk/

After a trip to Athens with City to City Europe in November 2019 Rob Duff and Steve Vaughan then spoke to a number of other leaders about trying to start a church planting forum as a ‘first and achievable’ step on the journey and Kieron Lynch from Immanuel church joined in to help us come up with a plan for that. And that is where we are up to and we’d love for you to consider connecting in.

We do not claim to be ‘the answer’ that Dublin needs, and we do not think we have all the answers to the questions around church planting in Dublin. In fact, when faced with the enormous task of reaching Dublin with the gospel we feel small and insignificant. But our hope is that God will use our efforts together to plant more and healthy churches that bring blessing to Dublin and bring many to Jesus as Lord and saviour.

Our desire is that the group will grow in number and diversity, and since it is a ‘movement’ no one person or group ‘controls’ the movement and leadership through relationships and trust rather than hierarchy and trust.

Our desire is that the group will grow in number and diversity, and since it is a ‘movement’ no one person or group ‘controls’ it. Leadership is relational and porous as supposed to hierarchical and didactic.

Do read Neil Powell’s helpful paper which goes over the difference between a movement, a network and a denomination.