Welcome to Catalyst Brochure

Welcome to Catalyst

Raising World Changers

God has called each of us to change the world, from an individual life to the direction of a nation.

We believe that the local church is the carrier of the most transforming message the world has ever seen. We believe that each church is meant to be the kind of community that raises world-changing people. Together we are starting to build these kinds of churches across the world!

Together, Catalyst churches are working around the globe: planting churches, raising leaders and working into the marketplace. We are expressing creativity, serving the poor, and speaking into and shaping culture. Our churches are centres of influence from Southampton to Spain, from Milton Keynes to the Middle East, from Birmingham to the Balkans, and many other places.

Welcome to the Catalyst Network of Churches

Since I began leading the team in 2017, there has been major upheaval around the world. The Covid-19 pandemic impacted every nation, and in Africa, in particular, not only caused life-threatening illness but also a real danger of starvation as lockdowns prevented people from working. The response from Catalyst churches was a central emergency fund that raised £682,000 for food and medicine. We’ve been told it saved thousands of lives. It has subsequently led to the Business Redevelopment Fund that has enabled many people to get back into the marketplace with their microbusinesses.

Since then there have been other emergency situations – the Ukraine war, the earthquake in Turkey, droughts and floods. Working with our wider family of newfrontiers, we continue to both pray and provide immediate support whenever a crisis emerges.

Our overarching aim throughout all of this is to raise world-changing disciples who are partnering together in the extraordinary and the everyday work of the gospel. Come and join us as we journey together as family.

Contact

CatalystNetwork

catalystchurches

catalystchurches

catalystchurches

catalystnetwork.org

If you have any questions or would like more information please contact us:

General Enquiries

sharon@catalystnetwork.org

Finance Enquiries

finance@catalystnetwork.org

Connect with Simon

simon@catalystnetwork.org

Simon Holley Leads the Catalyst Team

What is Catalyst?

Our vision is to reveal Jesus, and see His advanceKingdom into every environment in the UK and the nations of the world.

Connection

Character

Catalyst churches are characterised by the strength of their relationship with God and one another. We put a great deal of value on our different gifts, understanding that as we come together we add to the whole of who we are. We also have a deep commitment to work together to reveal the wonder of who Jesus is.

Connected Hubs Gathering Churches

We are a family of churches connected together through relationship and served by apostolic teams of individuals called by Jesus to serve multiple churches. These teams lead the apostolic hubs that make up the backbone of our work, and aim to inspire and equip churches and people to be all that they can be in God.

Our hubs gather church leadership teams together regularly for prayer, encouragement and connection. Hubs are made up of differing numbers of churches connected relationally and served by apostolic teams.

We gather our whole church leadership family together for prayer, connection, teaching and sharing a couple of times a year. In the UK there are currently more than 80 Catalyst churches. Overseas the number of churches relating with us is in the hundreds. We seek to provide in-person opportunities that serve this diverse family well.

We also encourage Catalyst churches to connect widely with one another and others – sending prayers, finance, teams and support around the globe.

Each Catalyst church is looking to build from the same apostolic foundations and yet each one is unique. We are united through a shared vision and recognisable characteristics, even though these are worked out differently in the setting that each church inhabits.

The Journey

2012 Launch

When Newfrontiers was redefined as a network of apostolic spheres worldwide, David Devenish began to gather a team for the sphere that would become known as Catalyst. Over 70 UK churches committed to Catalyst and David outlined his prophetic vision to raise up a generation of younger leaders.

2013 Generosity and Diversity

It was agreed to decentralise funding; a radical step in which central costs were halved to enable churches to be more engaged with mission through direct funding. We had a strong sense that this new step would reap massive benefits in terms of global outreach and catching all our churches up in apostolic mission. At our first festival, the strength of our diversity was displayed in the zones. People began to see their potential as world changers in many different spheres of influence.

2014 Creativity, Multiplicity and Togetherness

God loves the artistic community, and we felt that, for too long, artistic gifts were only being valued for use within church. Sputnik was established to encourage creative artists who take Kingdom values into the secular worlds of music, television, theatre, art and writing.

The concept of hubs was also born. Simon Holley delivered a key prophetic call to avoid the ‘lethargy of bureaucracy’ as we grow. There is always a temptation to move towards top–down structure, but we felt called to develop a model that operated in the opposite direction.

We believe that God is glorified as men and women work and lead together. We recognised the importance of valuing everyone for who they are and releasing them to be all that God has called them to be.

2015 Multicultural and Multigenerational

A review of overseas relationships revealed rapid growth. We were now connecting churches in 49 nations. It became imperative for more churches to catch the vision for overseas mission. During this year many stepped into new relationships across the globe. David Devenish also delivered a key word at the festival on being a multigenerational movement.

2016 Called to Influence

At our 2016 festival, Alan Scott shared his church’s experience of ‘loving a city to life’. Churches were challenged to love their ‘cities’ rather than simply running programmes to draw people in. This led into Catalyst4theWorkplace, a oneday event that drew together Christians working in all areas of life. Many felt truly valued for the first time and were inspired to bring the Kingdom of God into their workplaces.

Another key prophetic message was a fresh call to UK church planting. Phil Wilthew prophesied that we were to believe God for 400 churches in the UK. Simon Holley’s message on the focus required to make disciples who make disciples resonated across our churches.

2017 Handing on the Baton

2020 The Word of God is Not Bound

Simon Holley began to lead the team, taking over from David Devenish. Church leaders continued to gather within hubs, and there was a fresh emphasis on church planting. We ran a successful festival in 2018 and several non-UK conferences.

The Covid pandemic meant we moved our gatherings online, including running a 48-hour online festival that included non-stop prayer around the globe. Gathering online had the unexpected benefit of strengthening our global relationships.

2023 Onwards

There will certainly be challenges ahead but we seek to be guided by God in everything we do. We are excited about the future, anticipating the fulfilment of prophetic words, and much more to come.

Apostolic Hubs

We strongly encourage you to relate to one of our apostolic hubs. Each hub is led by a team of men and women called to serve multiple churches around the world. Each hub team is committed to apostolic ministry, which means being responsible for breaking new ground for the gospel, helping churches to build healthy foundations, providing ongoing care for churches and leaders, and helping to raise up leaders for translocal ministry. Our hubs are built primarily around relationship rather than geography.

The next page shows who is leading a hub and where they are based. Hub gatherings are a mix of in-person and online.

We felt called to develop a model that would continuously release people into their gifting, and support them in working together in apostolic teams.

TEAM LEADER

Matt Hatch LEEDS, UK

Connecting churches and ministries in the north of the UK, US, Africa, Middle East and New Zeland.

TEAM LEADERS

Martin Tibbert & Sam Amara

BEDFORD, UK & LAGOS, NIGERIA

Connecting churches from 10 different nations.

TEAM LEADER

Phil Wilthew BEDFORD, UK

Connecting churches in the UK, Europe and New Zealand, working into dozens of nations around

TEAM LEADERS

Tim Simmonds & Richard Thomas

MANCHESTER & WORCESTER, UK

Connecting churches in the west of the UK, reaching into nations around the world.

TEAM LEADER

Matt Partridge

OXFORD, UK

Connecting churches in the UK and impacting the nations; particularly the Middle East and the Russian-speaking world.

TEAM LEADER

Andy Johnston

SUSSEX, UK

Connecting churches in the South-East of England and reaching out internationally into East Africa, Europe, and South-East Asia.

TEAM LEADER

Michael Feulner

YALOVA, TURKEY

Connecting churches across Turkey, as well as Farsi and Turkish speaking churches in Europe.

TEAM LEADER

Richard Wightman

MILTON KEYNES, UK

Connecting churches and ministries in Southern Europe, Kenya and Asia, in addition to the UK

As part of the Catalyst Network of Churches you and your church will benefit from support and encouragement through relationship with leaders of other churches with a common vision. You will have opportunities to connect with others who are passionate about God and his Kingdom across the globe, engaging with and supporting those who are pioneering around the world. Through the hubs and our larger events you can receive apostolic insight, teaching, coaching and mentoring.

We believe that churches are stronger together than apart.

Commitment

We also ask that you commit to relationship with us by regularly attending a hub of your choice and our occasional church leader days. Please encourage your wider leadership team to attend our biannual leaders weekend, and your church family to attend our biannual festival. Many of these gatherings are hybrid – both in-person and online.

We will invite you to play a part financially in enabling Catalyst to facilitate relational growth. You can do this by giving to Catalyst central funds – we keep our administrative costs as low as possible. You can also give to your hub – we have decentralised a lot of our global mission support to hubs as it enables churches to build direct relationships with those they are supporting.

We also provide opportunities to give to large-scale activities that are beyond the financial capacity of local churches to facilitate, for example, support of apostolic leaders in developing nations.

Finally we have an expectation that Catalyst churches are leading the way in good governance, operating to all current legal requirements and in compliance with best practice recommendations of the Charity Commission.

To relate with us it is important that you share our vision and reflect our characteristics; for example, seeking prophetic direction and teaching from an evangelical Bible-based foundation. We ask that you actively seek to advance the Kingdom of God in your sphere of influence and look to strengthen and raise up leaders in all generations.