Newsletter January 2025
AWAKE, AWAKE ZION
Dan Holland,TFMLead Evangelist brings a message for 2025 and beyond
AWAKE, awake, Zion, clothe yourself with strength! Put on your garments of splendour, Jerusalem, the holy city. (Is 52v 1a)
As this new year begins, I feel the need to stir myself up and shake myself AWAKE. The Christmas season encourages us to indulge our natural senses with screen time, rich food and drink. There’s lots of sitting around indoors, preferably around a log fire, and then more eating! If we are not careful our spirit becomes dull. I don’t want to be sluggish and prayerless, but spiritually and physically switched on, charged up and ready to run after Jesus into 2025.
Over the last few years God has given a sharp wake up call to His Church – horrific scandals, falling way and betrayals. We can’t survive on the victories and sacrificial faith of previous generations. The corporate church has been idle and even asleep too long, we’ve been far too comfortable. Unfortunately for us the enemy of our souls has not, he has been wide awake sowing his tares everywhere, including in the ‘church’. Jesus warned us, but it is still a shock when we discover it (Matt 13v 24-27)
TFM has been a sleeping giant, not that we have been literally ‘asleep’, that’s not our style at all. However, in the last few years we have getting back on our feet and spending much time, seeking the heart of God for the way forward. ‘We have never been this way before’ (Joshua 3v 4). We are standing up to our full height and setting the faith bar high. God has shed fresh vision (see overleaf) to be implemented more fully in 2025. We live in momentous times; we have been chosen for these days to bring hope to the world. We have great news to share, the words of eternal life (John 6v 68) Holy Spirit is giving TFM a trumpet blast and a call to war, spiritual war against darkness.
People are disillusioned with the world, it’s leaders, the church and ‘business as usual’. We are presented with a great opportunity to proclaim the glorious hope we have found only in Jesus. TFM exists to awake the lost with the clear trumpet sound of the gospel, there’s no time to waste. We have significant opportunities at Download, in Kenya and Littleport. AWAKE Suffolk Coastal is our big mission this year, the 40th anniversary of TFM. Our faith filled goal is at least 10 churches and 100 volunteer evangelists. We are spreading the ‘gospel’ net wide and praying for a bumper catch (Matt 13v 47-50). Whatever happens, we plan to leave it all out on the field, our ‘gospel seed’ that is, trusting God for the rest. So to TFM, the church, the lost and even the future evangelists that don’t know it yet, the Spirit of God says,
“Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Eph 5v 14)
This is what God is AWAKEning us for…….
NEW TFM VISION AND LOGO
Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instruction. (Pro 29v 18)
Our annual conference was hosted at Wessex CF, Basingstoke in September. We gathered with our core supporters and friends to celebrate all the wonderful things God has been doing in this last year. This includes our partnership with the Basingstoke churches, and I also shared a burgeoning new vision for TFM. Next year will be our 40th anniversary, and we need fresh vision, so what does God want of TFM? Where is He taking us and what is He asking of us? What is the best use of our finite resources? I’ve been relentlessly seeking Him, I believe TFM is integral to God’s plan for the evangelisation of this nation. He has been whispering His thoughts! Our new logo with the cross at its centre is a symbol of these exciting changes.
5 POINTS OF VISION
God has caused me to find symbolic significance in the five digits of the human hand Why? It speaks of TFM reaching out into the world, as it were, the hand of God
• The thumb represents a new logo for TFM, the refreshed brand of TFM works with each of the other four fingers, but more of that later.
• The first finger is a new generation of TFMers raised up and working alongside the seasoned evangelists of TFM. My constant cry is, ‘God send us the next generation’.
• The second finger represents big missions which are so much easier to recruit and train for. AWAKE Suffolk Coastal 2025 beckons with our call for 100 evangelists.
• The third finger is Kenya, our foreign mission planned for next year. Our friend pastor James spoke to us at the conference!
• The little finger is chaplaincy, it gets into those nooks and crannies that other fingers can’t reach.
For the last 2 years we’ve being going to Download heavy metal festival with a TFM team, now a mainstay of our yearly calendar. Chaplaincy involves different skills, including innovative evangelism, so God is sharpening us.
PROPELLING TFM FORWARD
God wants to propel us forward; we can’t expect to operate the way we did 30-40 years ago and get the same results. The gospel hasn’t changed but our methods of presenting it must. Society is unrecognisable from the beginning of TFM in 1985. We must spread our sails wide to catch the wind of the Spirit again, wherever it may take us God wants us to live expansive and generous lives as we seek His Kingdom. We can’t be any bigger than our vision, it’s time to dream again. Much is at stake, including the eternal destiny of this nation, which we are called to evangelise.
STEWARDING THIS VISION
So we honour the glorious past of TFM while moving forwards focused on the future. This will involve much hard work, and embracing the discomfort of change but, the vision we see with our spiritual eyes is more real than what we see with our physical eyes! We mustn’t despise the day of small things (Zech 4v 10) Vision necessitates FAITH -without faith we can’t please God. Of course, the enemy does not want TFM to transition and flourish, but as we follow Jesus together, we can outwit him and avoid His traps. The moment of receiving vision is exciting and impactful –the road to fulfilled vision is long with many hindrances, much prayerful wisdom is needful Together, we will see TFM thriving in another season as a new generation rally to the cause of Christ, And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matt 24v 24)
Exciting times! God bless you, and wishing you a very happy and Spirit-filled 2025,
Dan (Lead Evangelist)
