Hi!! 🙋🏻♂️🙋🏼♀️
We are Matt and Rachel Wright…
We don’t want to go through the motions of following Jesus; we want to actually do it, everyday, and we are always learning. Jesus is the most important thing, and we believe following him is a call to be missional disciples.
In the past the UK sent out missionaries to share the good news of Jesus all over the world, and now many nations are sending missionaries back here because as a nation we have turned away from God.
We see ourselves as home-grown missionaries, raised in the UK, shaped by it, and ‘sent’ to it. We believe our ministry is only one part of what God’s Church in the UK needs, and that it will compliment what God is already doing wherever we go. We love feeding into and supplementing God’s work by stirring up the embers of the Church again.
We have a huge passion for the local Church in the UK! For years now we have worked with and within multiple churches from a variety of denominations, and we have the good news stories and the scars to prove it. Between 2018 and 2022 we experienced a number of significant life transforming events: the tragic loss of our son Boaz, the world-wide pandemic, helping lead an international discipleship organisation and the birth of our two daughters. These things have impressed upon us the need to make every day count.
Our journey together has taken us from Israel-Palestine to Romania, Kenya, Southampton, Leeds, Chesterfield, and many places in between. During that time we believe God has been preparing and training us, and ultimately leading us to ignite ‘Embers’, a UK-based missional discipleship platform to help facilitate and encourage church renewal. Embers was established in January 2023.
Embers is a small organisation with a big dream: the renewal of God’s Church in the UK.
Every Christian church starts with good intentions but life can be hard, and so many things can get in the way and dim our fire. We long to encourage and equip God’s people in the UK to follow him as everyday missional disciples.
The name ‘Embers’ emerged for a few reasons:
1) When a fire is burning well the hottest part is the embers. If removed from the fire an ember will cool down and go out. Similarly when the Church is functioning well the members, or each individual follower of Jesus, will be in an ever deepening relationship with God and living missionally in their everyday context. However if you remove the Christian from the gathered Church they will quickly ‘cool off’, their devotion to God will wain and their missional living will become less of a priority.
2) Given the right conditions, each ember in a fire has the potential to start a whole new fire! We believe each follower of Jesus, given the right conditions, has the potential to help begin a whole new ministry or even church. We believe in the priesthood of all believers and that each and every follower of Jesus can hear from him and be used mightily by him. This is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit.
3) If a fire lacks oxygen it doesn’t matter how much fuel you add, the fire will die. We believe the oxygen for the Church is the Holy Spirit. You can fuel a church with the best plans and equipment and whatever you like, but if the church is trying to function without the leading and power of the Holy Spirit, it will die.
So we are here to bring hope and encouragement, and our training is the main way that we do it.
For those interested in theology, we subscribe to the Evangelical Alliance’s Basis of Faith and the Nicene Creed. We know churches use different labels but we will happily work with anyone who loves Jesus and wants to know him more. We love working with individuals and organisations as well as families. We also enjoy working with those who don’t yet have a faith in Jesus and are exploring it.
We are Baptists by background, Matt is an ordained elder with the Free Methodist Church and we have big ecumenical outlooks. We have worked with various Churches Together groups. The material we teach draws from John Wesley among others and is rooted in the Free Methodist vision and values. We like to learn from the past but are also keen on what God is doing today.
In summary: Embers is here to help people in the UK live for Jesus in such a way that local churches are renewed and then communities are changed – because fire spreads! We encourage you to explore our website and look forward to hearing from you if you’d like to know more.