The Mission to Bamburgh & Exeter

We set out on Friday 13 February, Ekaba from Calgary and Chidera from Winnipeg, each on an overnight flight to London. Writing to one another over the aircraft's wireless connection, we received the word of the Lord for Northumberland: “Rake in the harvest.” Who we were and how we had prepared did not matter. We were to be present, to speak and to ask, and to say to the people, “The Master has need of you.”

We landed at Heathrow, crossed London to King's Cross, took the train north to Newcastle, collected a hire car at Newcastle Airport and drove into Northumberland in the dark. Ralph and his wife Celia and their family received us with open arms. The house that had had no room for us in August had been made ready for us now, and Ralph told us he had invited a large company from across the county to hear us the next evening.

In the morning Ralph took us, with his son Keith and their cousin Jamie, to the Pentecostal church at Wooler. He had expected the pastors to receive us and give us a few minutes to speak. They did not. It was the first door that did not open to us in Northumberland, and not the last.

That evening the gentry of Northumberland, some of them from its aristocratic families, filled Ralph's drawing room. Among them were three Ukrainians who had fled the war, and Andrea and Derek with their adopted son and daughter, Robert and Chrissy. We sang, Ralph introduced us, and we gave an account of the gospel: the love of the Father, that we may reign with Christ as sons and daughters, and deliverance from religious and cultural Christianity. Chidera spoke of the gospel of the kingdom and the mountain of the Lord's house from Isaiah 2.

The questions were honest and searching: religious violence, other faiths, whether we were Christians only because we were born into Christian homes. A young man named Charlie said he did not believe and asked whether we could still be friends. We told him we already were. Helen challenged us that we had made no mention of women, and we took it to heart. When the formal part ended, Andrea and Derek came to us and asked for a church of His purpose to be planted in Bamburgh.

Ralph drove us to Andrea and Derek's home in Bamburgh. Their daily devotional had said on Sunday that they would have a divine visitation that day. “We met you two, and we thought, okay Lord, we're listening.” Andrea felt her part was to link us into what already existed in Northumberland.

Ekaba read them the word from the plane and described the church the Lord wanted in Bamburgh: a place where the misfits and those looking for a real encounter with Jesus can worship the Father in spirit and in truth, away from the forms. We were not come to be bishops over them. A church in Bamburgh had to be carried by men and women of Bamburgh. Chidera opened the Scriptures on the fear of the Lord. Andrea prayed, and told us how she came to the Lord at her dying father's side; his last words to her were, “God is love.”

That evening at Budle Hall we were asked how the God of the Old Testament could command such violence, and Ralph prepared us for Holy Island, a “thin place” where God and man have come close together.

We crossed the causeway to Lindisfarne, where Andy and Anna of the Northumbria Community had gathered others of their fellowship. After their morning office the company drew into a circle. Ekaba told how we had come and read the word from the plane. Chidera taught that the Lord asked not for one donkey but for a donkey and her colt: He seeks not the mighty but the available.

The brethren answered that they already had a poem about donkeys, and people “queuing up to be donkeys”. Anna told us that fifteen years before, she and Andy had laid their hands on the rock of Bamburgh Castle and prayed for revival. “You two may be an answer to that prayer.” Carol told us the people of the land were tired, and asked us to release what we carried. We prayed over the company with the laying on of hands, and they prayed over us from that ancient sending place. On the hill above the village the Holy Spirit came on one of the sisters, who prophesied that the work would be “in the ones and the twos”.

In the afternoon at Andrea's house we met Ian and Deborah of Whittingham, who gather mature believers who have nowhere to go, and Matt, who had come to the county to plant a church. We prayed that every man would say to his neighbour, “Come, let us go up to the house of God.” By evening we were both tired and had caught colds.

The first gathering of the church at Bamburgh met in the sitting room of Andrea and Derek's house. Andy and Anna came over from Holy Island ahead of the tide, and Carol came from her farm. That morning Andrea had swum four more lengths than ever before, feeling carried, and sensed the Lord saying we were in the flow of the Spirit.

We sang, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.” Chidera taught from Psalm 110 and on living stones: the strength of such a church is drawn from our private places of prayer. “This is the engine room.” Flowing with the Spirit does not mean disorder: “We are not saying no structure. We are saying no man's structure.”

Andrea told us that the night before, she and Derek had asked the Lord whether this was real, and received a profound peace. She had dreamed of donkeys lined up on Bamburgh beach, “ready and willing, waiting for work”. Chidera read Acts 2:42 and proposed they meet at least once a week. Going out of the door, one of the company said, “God's donkey has delivered the payload.”

We gathered again at Andrea and Derek's house. Anna brought Carol's word: “We've had power, we've had glory. We need love. This land needs an anointing of love.” What the brethren asked of us was the power and authority to detonate in them how to love the land. Andrea told us more fully how she came to God, and how a church loved her and Derek before ever correcting them.

Ekaba answered with Annie Johnson Flint's hymn, “He giveth more grace”, and with the word he was receiving for the house: clear out. Clear away the debris and stumbling blocks, so that this place can become Bethel.

That evening Ekaba dined, fasting and unwell, among the aristocracy and gentry of the district at the home of Ralph's brother John. They told him the United Kingdom does not like evangelism. Dominic, a landowner, said, “I am a Christian, but I'm naughty as well, and I can't square that circle.” Katie and Sophie asked about the good Buddhist. When invited to join the company at Andrea's house, Dominic said the class system forbade it. Chidera came later and told them that his stutter disappears the moment he speaks of Jesus Christ.

Friday was a quieter day with no meeting recorded. On Saturday morning we went up to Bamburgh Castle and walked through the King's Hall and the drawing rooms, and from the battlements looked out over the village toward the Cheviot Hills. In the eighteenth century the castle was turned to the service of the poor, with a free school, a dispensary and help for shipwrecked sailors.

In the afternoon we walked with the brethren to St Cuthbert's Cave, where tradition says the monks of Lindisfarne rested with Cuthbert's body in 875. Maria of Andalusia, through whom the Lord opened the door into Spain, had come from Spain with a friend to be with us.

That evening at Carol's house, after silence, Ekaba said the word that had come to him: when Jacob saw the ladder, his response was to raise an altar. Its plain meaning was constancy of meeting and the elimination of fear. One brother pushed back firmly that prescribing a meeting was our agenda. Andrea answered, “Let's put it up front: we haven't been meeting.” The disagreement was real, and it was resolved in love. The church at Bamburgh was confirmed that night.

Ralph walked us through Hulne Park at Alnwick to the ruins of Hulne Priory, the earliest Carmelite house in England. In the afternoon he took us to the home of Polly, where her partner John, a lifelong churchwarden, asked why after a lifetime of service he needed to be born again. Chidera explained the new birth from the beginning: born again means born from above.

Polly asked us to pray for her healing. She told us openly of her diagnoses of multiple sclerosis and of psychosis. We invited her to confess Christ, and she repeated after us, from her heart: “Lord Jesus, I receive You into my life.” We laid hands on her and prayed for her deliverance and healing, and gave John a word: no labour for God is in vain. Before he left, Ralph said, “I've got those first two bits of knowledge, but not the last one.”

After we left, the word continued to be ministered to John and Polly, including counsel on the need to marry. Word has since reached us that they have decided to be married.

The day before, at the Baptist church in Alnwick, Andrea had told the congregation that God's people must meet together regularly, that fear must be put away, and that we must build an altar. The pastor, Chris, and his wife Caroline were greatly encouraged: the first people of an established congregation to receive us with goodwill.

Andrea asked us for counsel to go forward. Chidera told her to embrace the mantle of leadership: “We are invested. We have skin in the game.” Ekaba counselled hospitality and friendship, and the ministry of the word: “It is time to get the bread on the table.” Chidera told their son Robert that if the Spirit puts something in his heart and he keeps it back, the body has been robbed. Before we left, Andrea asked us to write our homes on the map on her kitchen wall. “Not goodbye, but until next time.”

We sat with Ralph's father Charles, aged ninety-one. He asked whether our prayers are heard and whether he should pray for the souls of the departed. Ekaba asked him directly, “Are you at a state of peace with Christ?” “No, not really,” Charles said. He hoped the scales would tip slightly in favour of the good.

We told him the measure is Jesus, and the requirement is trust. “Christ in you is your assurance. It is not a guess.” We left him in the hands of the God who is good, and just, and merciful. Of our burst tyre in August, Charles said, “The angel of God injured your car to bring you into contact with Ralph.”

Over lunch Nicholas asked whether our work was proselytising. Chidera answered that there is no religion to convert into, only good news to be told. Nicholas told us candidly that he went to church to uphold his position, and that he was very pleased we were there. Thursday was our last full day in Northumberland.

Very early we left Budle Hall for the 674 km drive south, the whole length of England. That evening we were with James, who had driven from Exeter to Plymouth in August 2025 and took ownership of the call with his friend. The Fellowship of Christ Church has since moved to Exeter and runs itself as the Holy Spirit leads. We shared the word, answered his questions, and counselled him concerning his coming marriage. It was a sweet time, and we left him strengthened.

We drove from Exeter to Heathrow and flew home, Ekaba to Calgary and Chidera to Winnipeg, each to his wife and children. We had been away fifteen days. We came home with a burden for that land we did not have before, and we intend, God willing, to return and go into the streets to the young people of Northumberland.