A New Season
2023 marked six years of church revitalisation; it has been such a privilege to play our part in the revitalisation of the Church. In 2017 CRT was birthed and built on HTB’s 30 years of church-planting experience to further accelerate church growth in this nation.
Over the years, we have expanded – launching the Accelerator Programme to train church planters, working with dioceses and bishops to plant not just resource churches, but churches in estate, towns and rural villages. We have launched the Peter and Caleb Streams as a response to the lack of diversity in leadership, and the over-stretching of focal vicars. And in response to the pandemic, Love Your Neighbour was birthed to equip churches to offer crisis provision – playing their part in sharing a united message of Christ’s love in action.
But we are in a new season, and a new season calls for a new name. We are pleased to share that the Church Revitalisation Trust will be operating under a new name – the Revitalise Trust.
Our vision remains the same. Together we are still playing our part in the evangelisation of the nation, the revitalisation of the Church, and the transformation of society, and we are committed to doing this through the delivery of our mission. The new name encapsulates our vision to revitalise the Church through our church planting and revitalisation activity as well as revitalising communities and broader society through our Love Your Neighbour social transformation initiative.
We are planting and revitalising churches – equipping them to become hubs for resourcing, planting and regeneration within their dioceses, as well as planting churches that build deep relationships within their communities, whether in an estate neighbourhood or a seaside town. We remain passionate about developing leaders; creating pathways for diverse, spirit-filled and effective teams to lead churches that are playing their part in reversing the decline in the Church of England.
Our network has grown from 62 churches in 2017 to a total of 167. We want the entire Church body to flourish, which is why we run courses for church teams, as well as leaders, and gather our network together for times of refreshing at Focus.
We also want to see the transformation of lives, communities and societies, by meeting not just the spiritual needs of our neighbours, but the practical. Love Your Neighbour has evolved from offering crisis provision to resourcing churches across the nation to play a pivotal role in their communities by building partnerships and being centres of transformation.
The support from dioceses, bishops, funders, donors and friends, means that we can be audacious in believing in what God can do, both in the UK and internationally.
By 2026 we are aiming to be working deeply with 50 high-quality Love Your Neighbour Hubs, and broadly with 700 churches. And by 2030, we hope to see 1,500 churches planted and 3,000 leaders developed. It’s an ambitious goal but with God’s help we believe it’s achievable.
For now we are grateful to be celebrating 21 new church plants in 2023, the expansion of both the Peter and Caleb streams to new locations in the UK, the growth of Accelerate, with sprint courses for Kids, Operations and Youth teams, and a second year of Love Your Neighbour’s Hub Accelerator, which is now training 26 Hubs.
Thank you.
We’re grateful to be able to continue to share the impact that resourced and supported churches and church teams are having across the nation. And are extremely thankful for the role we’ve been able to play in reversing the decline of the Church of England. Thank you for journeying, supporting and praying for us.