Prayer

We believe that intercessory prayer for the town is one of the most significant activities we can be engaged in towards the achievement of our vision. To this end much of our corporate time together is spent in prayer for the town and much of our energy goes towards encouraging prayer for the town.

Community

We see God building together a close knit community around us of people, amongst both those who do know, and those who don’t know, Jesus. Much of our activity is simply spending time with each other, having fun, eating together, having parties and going on outings together. We pray that Jesus is at the centre of this community and that those who don’t yet know Him will meet him in the context of this community. “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
1 John 1:3

Hospitality

A key way the Lord has given us to build community has been hospitality – the opening of our lives and homes to others. We have an ‘open home’ policy as much as possible, with time made for cups of tea, meals together, parties. We encourage shared living arrangements and outreach to those who are struggling with accommodation issues. We believe this is one of the most effective ways we can communicate the gospel in this context with love, compassion and generosity.

Generosity

We long to be a generous people – following Jesus teaching on money and trying to emulate the early who shared their possessions and alleviated the needs of those around them.

“Kingdom not empire”

This phrase was given to us by different people at different times in the early months of the Well. It causes us to want to seek the prosperity and fruitfulness of the whole Church in Sutton. If hundreds of people start coming to our meals and times of prayer but the town remains untouched we have failed, but if the structure of the Well disbands and the town is transformed we have succeeded. We want to work with other churches as much as is fruitful and not unnecessarily duplicate what other local churches are already doing for the town. Several of the group are involved with other local churches in addition to their involvement with the Well.

Spirit Led

From the beginning we shied away from long term plans and goals (though we do now have some in place).  Our philosophy has been very much to follow the Lord’s leading one step at a time and consistently seek His Kingdom together.  Much of our direction has come out of shared discussions, prophetic words and outside teaching input.  We long to be a people lead by God’s Spirit.

Evangelism

We are committed to doing all that we can to see people come to know Jesus in the town. We don’t simply want to talk to God about people in prayer but also talk to people about God in evangelism. Included in this is the desire to show the relevance of Jesus as clearly as possible to those people and communities who would aren’t currently in any meaningful contact with a local church. We would like Jesus to be the most talked about person in the town.

Teachability

We are committed to resisting a spirit of pride, elitism and arrogance. We want to receive all that we can from people locally and from beyond the local scene that we might be equipped to fulfil our goal. To this end we have invited, and will continue to invite, several leaders (both local and wider) to speak into our lives corporately and as individuals.

Edginess

We see Jesus and the early church as pretty radical and uncompromising in the way they lived and spoke. We long to emulate this value and not slip into a comfortable suburban lifestyle with Christianity as a side hobby. We are missionaries to this town and want to operate in the best of true missionary tradition and practice which has always had an edge to it.