UN26: A Celebration of Mission
Pre-conference Information: All you need to know before you attend.
access
You will receive a zoom link to the conference 24 hours prior to the start of the conference. Please check the email account you used to register. To keep this call secure, the zoom link should not be forwarded or shared.
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programme
Saturday 13th June 08:00 – 14:00 (UK)
08.00 Welcome, Multicultural Worship and Prayer
Main Session 1 – Vinu Paul
Prayer and discussion in breakout rooms
09:00 Internship Graduation
Stories from around the world
Main Session 2 – Andrey Bondarenko
Prayer and discussion in breakout rooms
10:15 – 1 hour break for food.
Main Session 3 – Andy McCullough
Stories from around the world
12.30 Seminars in breakout rooms
• Chandan – Reaching Hindus in North India
• Dr Anna Hampton – Discernment and Decision Making in Times of Crisis and Risk
• Shireen Awwad Hilal – What the Crisis in Gaza Has Taught Me
• Wes Watkins & Andy Martin – Lessons from the Unreached: Recovering the Church as Movement
• Michael Akkotia – Planting Churches in West Africa
13:30 Closing Comments and Prayer
14:00 Finish
Keynote Speakers
Vinu Paul
Vinu carries apostolic responsibility for the Commission Churches alongside Guy Miller, and currently oversees several Commission churches along with a team of leaders that spreads over 15 nations including India and UK.
Vinu along with his team have raised and released a number of leaders to expand the Apostolic ministry in India and beyond. They are believing in God for 1000 churches by 2030.
He is married to Julie and they have two sons – Jonathan and Ankit. Vinu is also the lead elder of Living Hope Church in Mumbai.
Vinu will speak on the key theme of the conference, “A Celebration of Mission,” from Luke 10.
Andrey Bondarenko
Andrey and Natasha began leading a small church network in Eastern Ukraine in 2008. The ministry has since spread throughout Ukraine, into Europe and beyond into Northern India. Since the beginning of the war in 2022, they have adopted an early church strategy, following believers scattered by the war, encouraging them, and helping them plant new churches throughout Europe.
Natasha is also inspired to found Christian schools which instills creationist beliefs and biblical values in order to participate in the transformation of society through the power of the Gospel. She has founded two schools and currently supports a school in Kyiv as well as serving online Ukrainian refugee children scattered around the world.
By 2024, the Nations Family of Churches became international, with the Lord uniting churches from different countries as partners in global mission. The apostolic team carries both a church-planting and a church-adoption mandate from God, with a vision to establish churches in all 50 European nations. The most recent Nations conference, held in Budapest in September 2025, brought together 160 pastors and leaders from 15 European countries.
Andrey and Natasha Bondarenko have three sons: Daniil (20), Ilya (18), and Timofey (12)
Lessons from Phillip
It’s impossible to follow someone’s example without sharing their beliefs and values. We live as we think. We will explore Philip’s beliefs, which enabled him to live and act with faith during a crisis.
These are Philip’s unique life attitudes:
– seeing the challenge as an opportunity
– learn, accept help, and work in partnership with others
– be open to radically new things from the Holy Spirit
This isn’t just about learning from Philip. It’s about stepping into a life of faith that moves.
Andy McCullough was born and raised in Cyprus, is married to Jessica, who is South African, has four children who were born in London, and lived in Turkey from 2009-2016. He has a Master’s Degree in Contextual Theology with Mission from All Nations Christian College, and works as the Executive Lead for the Hummingbird Trust. He is passionate about cross-cultural church planting, and is involved in coaching and developing churches and leaders, mostly in the Eastern Mediterranean/West Asia region. He also leads the Unreached Network (www.unreached.network), facilitating best practice in cross-cultural mission across the wider Newfrontiers family (www.newfrontierstogether.org). He is the author of four books on the Bible and mission.
Seminar Speakers
(No Photo)
Chandan
Chandan lives in South Asia. He grew up as a Hindu, became a follower of Jesus and spent a number of years in a traditional church. More recently he became involved in leading a discipleship making movement which has an intentionally contextualised approach to reaching and discipling people. This movement is seeing growth and a powerful work of God taking place.
Reaching Hindus in South Asia
The gospel is good news and the power of God to transform both lives and communities. In this seminar, Chandan will share his journey of learning how to effectively reach Hindus in South Asia with the gospel, and how he and his team are discovering ways to meaningfully contextualise the message for those coming to faith from Hindu backgrounds.
Shireen Awwad Hilal
Shireen Awwad Hilal is the Director of Community Outreach and Development of the Bethlehem Bible College. She is also an instructor at the College, where she teaches educational and leadership courses. She holds a BA in English Literature from Bethlehem University, an MA in Educational Administration from Texas A & M University and an MBA from Tel Aviv University. As part of her work in community outreach and development, she manages the work of the Shepherd Society, which is the social outreach arm of the Bethlehem Bible College. She has a passion for humanitarian and development work, and the work with the Shepherd Society enables this to be put into action – offering both emergency assistance in the form of food, medical assistance and so on, and also durable solutions through job creation and micro-finance projects.
In addition to assisting those in need in the Bethlehem area, the emergency assistance has more recently extended to Gaza.
Shireen’s passion is also for peace with justice, and she has been a peace activist for many years. She has been a women’s group leader and consultant in peace and reconciliation during this time. Shireen is married with four children, and lives in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine.
Seminar: What the Crisis in Gaza Has Taught Me
Michael Akotia
Michael Akotia was trained by Newfrontiers and is now a part of the Newfrontiers sphere called ChristCentral. He has been involved in planting and leading churches since 2001. He oversees 24 churches in three nations in West Africa(Ghana, Togo and Benin). He is part of the ChristCentral Apostolic team. Michael regularly preaches the gospel once a week on the state radio and another private radio station that reaches all in the Volta region of Ghana and beyond online. He is married to Mabel and they have three children. They are based in Ho in Ghana in West Africa. He leads the City of Grace church in Ho. Michael also has degrees in Psychology and Management from the University of Ghana and Central university of Technology in Bloemfontein in South Africa. On days off, Michael enjoys listening to music and watching films.
Planting Churches in West Africa – lessons from the field.
West Africa has fast-growing churches (many built on legalism), strong community ties, and unique challenges like oral culture, Islam, African traditional religion influence, and resource limits.
We will look at how to planted grace filled, spirit and word-based, missional churches in this context.
Dr Anna Hampton
Anna Hampton (DRS, Trinity Theological Seminary) is a global risk consultant with over 32 years of ministry experience, raising her family in Afghanistan and Turkey. She and her husband, Neal, serve with Barnabas International, providing pastoral support to gospel workers ministering in dangerous areas. Anna is the author of Facing Danger: A Guide through Risk, Facing Fear: The Journey to Mature Courage in Risk and Persecution and writing the third book in the series: Facing Persecution: The Ethics and Spirituality of Loving Your Enemies.
Discernment and Decision Making in Times of Crisis and Risk
Summary: In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the three critical elements of a robust theology of risk, and practice one basic skill of risk assessment integrated with a theology of risk.
Andy Martin & Wes Watkins
Andy Martin has been engaged with church planting among the unreached for over 25 years and has tracked with the church planting movement conversation during that time and is a facilitator of the Motus Dei Network.
Wes Watkins (formerly Warrick Farah) is the editor of Motus Dei (2021) and coeditor of Margins of Islam (2018). He is an adjunct professor at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary. As a missiologist with One Collective, Wes facilitates the Motus Dei Network and is a researcher at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.
Lessons from the Unreached: Recovering the Church as Movement
This presentation explores a missiology of church multiplication movements among the unreached, drawing on insights from the Motus Dei network and wider global research. It traces how the conversation has developed and examines how churches in these movements take shape in ways that often differ from familiar models. It also highlights the role of simple, reproducible structures and offers a framework for understanding the kinds of breakthrough being reported. Throughout, it reflects on what these movements can teach us about recovering the church as a living, multiplying movement in context.
who we are
The Unreached Network seeks to co-ordinate best practice in cross-cultural mission across the global Newfrontiers family. Newfrontiers is a group of apostolic leaders partnering together on global mission, joined by common values and beliefs, shared mission, and genuine relationships.
Under the ‘Unreached Network’ umbrella we offer training, resources and connection to help equip churches to send and support cross-cultural partners; to equip church planting teams for contextual effectiveness and to interact with the wider missions conversation.
pray with us
offering
During this year’s conference we will be taking an offering to help resource cross cultural mission among unreached people groups.
- Account Name: Hummingbird Trust
- Sort code: 230580
- Account Number: 55354111
- Payment Ref: UN26
Visit unreached.network/give for gift aid, overseas donations and to allocate your donation to a specific fund.
join the conversation: #unreached26
We look forward to seeing what God will do when we come together.