Rev. Ray and Barbara Belfield
‘RETIRED’ RAY STILL GOING STRONG . . .
WHEN RAY BELFIELD RETIRED, HE was looking forward to taking it easy with his wife Barbara. The father-of-four had – handed over Today’s Community Church in Wigan to his son, Dave, and having been on the AOG Missions directors’ board since 1981, was looking to winding down in his old age.
But at the age of 70, Ray was appointed Executive Missions Overseer at the Victory Family Centre in Singapore – a job in which he travels the globe, overseeing church plants.
That was eight years ago, and in that short time Ray has seen amazing growth in churches and believers across the continents. It was 1981 when Ray became involved in missions work, after a family member left them some money and they used it for a round-the-world trip.
He says, ‘From that time I’ve been involved with AoG missions. I spent ten years overseeing the Americas, 20 years in Asia and ten years over the Middle East simultaneously. Through his missionary work, Ray met a pastor in Singapore, by the name of Rick Seaward. Through going to Asia I met a group in Singapore that had grown from nine people to 8,000 people in about three to four years he explains.
‘Rick asked a missionary when he was eight years told what would happen if all the church was wholly given to missions and he’s spent the rest of his life answering that question’.
The two men kept in touch over the years and developed a friendship. When Ray was 57, a prophecy was spoken over his life.
‘I was askedto go and preach at an independent church in Dundee’, says Ray. ‘I spoke on Saturday and Sunday and we had extraordinary meetings.
‘During the Sunday afternoon teaching session, a man walked out from the congregation, put his hand on my head and started prophesying over me. He said, “You’re going to open churches all over the world”. I didn’t know who he was. At that time I was involved in world missions so I thought he was probably talking about what I was already doping. But I was totally wrong’.
It was 13 later that the prophecy was fulfilled, Ray explains, ‘I was one month of being 70; I was retired and I’d given up the Wigan church to my son. I’d had a few phone calls from Rick Seaward and I helped him out with a few jobs.
‘He rang me up and we met and he told me he had a job for me. he explained that he had 500 churches scattered in 70 countries across the world and he wanted me to oversee them.
Ray admits that he thought his age might be a problem. ‘I said to him, “Have you looked at my birth certificate?” But he just said, “You can do the job I want doing”.
That was in February 2001 and Ray and Barbara now, split their time between England and the church in Singapore.
‘He gave me seven people to work with. They are regional mission directors that live in seven continents of the world – the Americas, Africa, Europe, Hong Kong, South East Asia, South Pacific and South Asia’, explains Ray, ‘In the eight years we gone from 500 to 4,000 churches. I go to Singapore twice a year fro six weeks. Then I visit areas of the world. “We’ve just come back from a 42,000 – mile round trip.
‘I was offered a pair of slippers or a pair of shoes. I took the shoes. It’s an exciting time. And Ray admits he is impressed with the way they do things in the countries he works in. The church in Singapore has around 5,000 members and is one church in seven locations. The people are totally committed. It’s a small island and they’ve got all the religions but the Christian church is thriving.
‘One of the churches we’re linked to in Sri Lanka has planted 720 new cell groups and added 2,200 new people to the church in 40 days. We just can’t think in these terms. In Brazil, we planted one church and now there are 56. They think differently.
‘I think God’s really moving around the world. Europe is the problem. We were the most Christian country and now we’re t the most pagan’.
Ray has this advice for how we can see similar success in the UK: ‘We can plan to intentionally plant churches by going to someone in the church and telling them, “We’re going to train you to send you out to plant a church”. We can pick four or five people in a group and intentionally train them to start churches in this country or abroad. That needs to be done.
‘People must think bigger. British pastors tend to think in terms of 100 or 200. We don’t look at the areas around us and intentionally choose people to go and plant a church there. We’ve already started to do this in the UK with church plants in London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast.
‘We’ve got to start making disciples of our people, not just people who love to be preached at. We’ve got to look at our cities and realise that there are hundreds of thousands of lost people. So, along with growing larger churches, at the same time we’ve got to start planting churches, both within our cities and in other cities.
‘Here we often think in terms of money – what it will cost. That never happens in Singapore. They just believe that God has told us to take the gospel to the whole world and we believe that we have educated our people to believe that and so we are a giving church.
‘We give our people and our money. We give our best people to do the job that Christ has called us to do. One of the biggest lies is that we don’t have the money. There’s never been so much money in our churches. The big thing is we don’t want to part with our people’.
But Ray remains positive. He says, ‘I believe that the world is winnable in this generation if wee take up the challenge. Our country has morally, socially and spiritually rolled downhill. What are we going to do about it?
