“In response to God’s love for all people, our hope and desire is to see all parts of society in Dublin and Ireland transformed by the gospel”
Our hope is that the Ignite Network will be a simple network of small communities (micro-churches) who desire to see the good news of the gospel impact areas of society in need of healing, justice or an expression of God’s love.
The network exists to create opportunities for people to know Jesus and serve him in creative and meaningful ways. We hope that people will come to realise and experience that they are known and loved by Jesus. We recognise that society has changed dramatically and, whilst we still value meeting on a Sunday morning in a more traditional way, we realise that if Jesus walked in Ireland today he wouldn’t be contained solely in a building, rather he would be out meeting people where they are, loving and serving people and telling them of the hope of the gospel. It is with this conviction that we believe it is our role and privilege to serve and love likewise. To be open to all, to be loving of all.
Walking on this earth, Jesus began with simple, ordinary people, calling them to follow him, and to learn about him and to learn what his heart was for. We believe Jesus was against injustice and was always for the poor, the powerless and the lost. Jesus is considered the greatest movement leader of all time. His message of hope and love and good news is still as relevant and powerful as it ever was. Sometimes people have misused and mishandled his life-giving message and, as a result, people have been hurt. We believe that Jesus came to show people a new life, a different way. With a message of love, of hope and a future, to offer peace and comfort to a struggling and hurting people. We believe that we are ordinary people but that God is extraordinary and, although like the first disciples we will make mistakes and fall short continually, we further believe that God is bigger than us and has heart for all people.
The network exists to empower, mobilise, resource and provide accountability to leaders and these communities to proclaim and demonstrate the good news of the kingdom of God. We hope to do this by encouraging and equipping ordinary people to work with God in living out the gospel to see transformation happen in our city and beyond. Our hope is to see many different expressions of ‘church’ exist to show and tell of God’s love.
Each community or micro-church has the capacity to be like the church, to be God’s hands and feet in the world. Each of these micro-churches has a particular ‘purpose’ that drives them; a mission they pursue in response to God’s calling and leading. The community is gathered around that common purpose as they encourage and love one another in the journey, together pursuing this vision as a vibrant community of Jesus-followers.
We use four words to help us understand what it means to follow Jesus; to live as a Christian. Whatever background, denomination or expression of Christian faith – we believe these four aspects are important as we follow Jesus. They are like DNA, they frame our existence as a larger network but they also give purpose and structure to underpin the fundamental intention of our smaller sub-groups.
Worship is what we do in response to what God has done for us. We believe that worship is the core of what we do. We do this through singing and music, through praying and also everything we do in lives. Colossians 3: 17 says ‘Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.” So we worship God continually, with all that we do: knowing God ourselves, and being known and loved by Him, has an impact on how we live and what we build our lives on.
We believe that the idea of community is essential to the life of a Christian – we are called to love each other, to encourage and support each other, and to build each other up, and we are ‘wired’ to connect and belong to one another. In the bible it says that, when we become Christians, we are in God’s family and we can call each other brothers and sisters. It is this type of deep relationships that we hope to encourage.
God loves us and accepts us as we are. He also believes that being in relationship with Him and being more like His Son, Jesus, is the best thing for us. We all change as the years go on – we get older and wiser. We believe that we are also called to be transformed – we are called to be more like Jesus as the years go on, with the help of the Holy Spirit. This can happen in lots of ways: through reading the bible, prayer, following Jesus in all that we do, through facing tough situations and relying on God in the middle of them. (Like other things in the world, we change through internal thoughts and wrestling but also through external forces that can have positive and negative effects.) Life changes, and we will grow and develop our thinking through both internal wrestling and external experiences which may have both positive and negative effect. But we believe that God, through the Holy Spirit, is continually transforming us for our good.
We are called to go and love everyone we meet, not to live for ourselves so we become an exclusive club. God’s desire is that all people may come to know him and be in relationship with him in the bible it says “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” We don’t do this by ‘bible-bashing’ but by sharing our lives with the people we meet and come to know – loving and serving those people that they too may know what it means to be loved by God. We feel that it is our calling to bless and serve the community we are living in, because God cares about the people living there. We are motivated by God and how he loves us. It is this purpose that directs and moves us forward.
