With immense gratitude and joy, Chris and I present our Annual Report for 2023, a year marked by God’s grace and favour through Jesus.
We’ve seen many lives born again, transformed, and communities strengthened. Our churches have not just survived but thrived because of their resilience in Christ, who defines the heart of our global family.
None of 2023’s great milestones would have been possible without the dedication of our incredible pastors, leaders, and volunteers. Your unwavering support and sacrifices have propelled us forward.
Prioritising church planting, we saw 45 new churches launched, thanks to God, taking us to 598 churches in 2023.
We saw 25,254 people say yes to Jesus for the very first time. Thank You Lord!
We are now in 54 nations, bringing Jesus to those peoples, healing broken lives, reuniting families, and bringing revival.
We welcomed Sam and Jess Picken to our Global Exec as strategists and C3 culture carriers, helping the team immensely.
We announced our first Global Conference in 10 years for 2024, then planned and prayed for God to bless this great gathering.
We thank God for the privilege of serving Christ and building His church. Pressing forward, we know the best is yet to come.
Thank you for your unwavering commitment and steadfast support. We love you and thank God for you.
A note from Southern Africa
OUR TEAM
The region is led by a team of great individuals forming the C3 Southern Africa Strategic Committee; myself and Judy Roscoe (Operations Management), Asaph Jeka (Church Planting & Expansion), Reagan Morgan (Social Development, and Economic Empowerment) and Willie Manual (Pastoral Care and Oversight). This team is supported by a National Team within each nation led by a National Director from that nation. We are overseen by the remarkable Pat & Amanda Antcliff.
OUR CONTEXT & VISION
The 12 nations within Southern Africa are South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho,
Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Madagascar, Reunion and Mauritius. Together they have an estimated population of 194 million people. We aim to reach 1,000,000 worshippers in these nations. Our dream is to reach every village and every city!
OUR FOCUS
To build a discipleship culture, develop upcoming leaders, plant new churches,
create sustainable economic empowerment, and be socially relevant. We aim to reach the 100 churches mark by the end of 2025.
OUR CURRENT Xpress 2023 was the first Xpress in Southern Africa, with over 30 candidates in attendance from 5 nations. From that, 7 churches were planted in 2023.
Making prayer a core focus for our monthly regional zoom gatherings has resulted in us experiencing new souls being saved and many people being baptised each month. Our region is well positioned for continuous growth.
OUR JOURNEY AHEAD
We aim to continue to expand into new nations, and see our churches grow. We will continue to establish sustainable, healthy, and reproducing, C3 churches across Southern Africa, in Jesus’s name.
In 2023 we welcomed Sam & Jess Picken to the Global Executive! As Lead Pastors of C3 Toronto in Canada, parents to three beautiful children, and long time members of the C3 family, Sam and Jess bring a wealth of faith and strategy to our Executive and we are so grateful.
To make this happen, we invested heavily in Xpress, individual church plants, and the translation of key materials to increase accessibility in remote regions.
We are so pleased to report that because of these efforts, we saw 45 new churches planted in 2023, across 11 different regions.
In those 45 new churches, we saw 1169 people accept Jesus Christ for the very first time.
By the end of 2023, we had seen 169 Xpress delegates graduate, ready to plant churches, or take their existing church plants to the next level. In fact, across all our existing training courses, we saw 526 leaders equipped to take their next step.
Our goal was far surpassed, a testament not only to the hunger and passion for church planting in our movement, but to the Lord for his faithfulness in supplying workers for the harvest! We are so passionate about reaching people in our 12 regions, and we believe we will continue to see a surge in church planting in the coming years.
In our Xpress courses in 2023, delegates underwent immersive physical, mental, and spiritual training with like-minded trainees and experienced trainers.
• Indonesia (June)
• Fiji (June)
• Europe (July)
• Americas (September)
• New Zealand (October)
• Southern Africa (October)
• East & West Africa (October)
Shout out to all our Xpress graduates - you did it!
In 2023, we assembled a strong core team of individuals from numerous C3 churches around the world to run our Global Conference in 2024. From production, to worship, to kids church, we wanted to make sure that every sector of Conference had a distinctly global feel.
Despite challenges with our original venue, our team developed a communications strategy in 2023 that would lead us strongly into Conference in 2024. The focus was for each region to own the promotion language of the conference, allowing them to create a bespoke approach for their churches and pastors.
We love that our Global Day of Prayer keeps us grounded in connection with God and each other at 2 crucial times of the year - right before Easter, and right before Christmas. What better way to begin the busiest seasons in church than by laying it all at the feet of God.
It’s also in our Global Day of Prayer that we give exciting updates in the life of our movement and our Founders & Leaders. In 2023, we announced our next Global Conference and shared the latest stories of Ps Phil & Chris’s travels to Regional Gatherings.
We love seeing the global family come together online, and it certainly made us excited about being together in person in 2024.
These are vital touchpoints throughout the year for our Regions. As people gather under the “We Are C3” banner, we see a strong impartation of C3 culture, and a renewed passion to see one million worshippers in C3 churches across the globe.
In 2023 we focused on increasing accessibility of our Regional Gathering Design Template files for ease of editability for our regions. Due to this increased focus and resourcing, all regions took on the 2023 Regional Gathering design template and were able to add their regional flavour whilst maintaining a global look and feel. A continuous look and feel throughout 2023 created a sense of unity across all of our Regional Gatherings.
Content sharing and gathering was also a focus. C3 Church Global was proud to provide design files, promotional videos, and written tutorials on how to use the content, as well as training and templates for social media, photos and highlights packages, created to enable the increased cross pollination of faith and knowledge.
We were able to record regional updates from every region either at or soon after regional gatherings, providing an update on current trends, church planting and vision for the future.
We started the year with a two part devotional series from Ps Phil on Thanksgiving. In April Ps Phil encouraged us on the topic of the Fire of God. As we led into the second half of the year and built toward our Global Conference, Ps Phil brought a prophetic message on ‘Showers From Heaven’ followed by a message from Ps Chris entitled ‘Prepare The Soil.’
Each region was asked to gain feedback
from their churches so we could understand the engagement with these Messages. Overall over 80% of responses said they play the Message To The Movement either Sometimes or Always, and the results were split on preference of using a long or short version. In order to minister to churches of varying sizes, we made the strategic change to offer Messages To The Movement in both a 5min and 20min version.
The 5min version allowed us to provide content with subtitles in 18 different languages – a huge win for our C3 family across our 12 regions!
This strategic decision was made to increase the focus on Youtube, as the world’s largest search engine. Using a new online video recording platform, we were able to decrease studio recording costs whilst also increasing the output of video content.
2023 also coincided with a strategic shift away from devotionals and toward content specifically aimed at informing and equipping C3 pastors and leaders.
Our top 3 episodes in 2023 were:
• A Life of Prayer with Ps Phil & Steve Burgess
• The State of the Movement with Ps Phil, John Pearce & Mark Kelsey
• Conversation: The Uniqueness of Jesus with Ps Phil & Nicky Gumbel
The growing focus on Youtube has lead to an increase in engagement across every episode.
We loved sharing highlights from around the globe, celebrating anniversaries and milestones, sharing
stories of faith, and promoting upcoming events. Creating a culture of tagging and resharing of content across regions and churches has led to an increased engagement, awareness and sense of community online.
Instagram and Facebook have been primary platforms of engagement. Instagram in particular was used by our pastors as a visibility platform for new podcasts and Messages to the Movement. Instagram is also being used as a communications platform for the growing global communications team with announcements and links to resources being made available through handy direct messaging.
IN REVIEW
598 C3 churches around the world
45 of those churches launched in 2023
54 nations represented within C3
31,434 visitors to C3 churches
25,254 people said yes to Jesus
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