Newfrontiers describes itself as is an international family of chruches together on a mission. Newfrontiers is rapidly growing and in September 2005 was approaching 500 churches worldwide.

History

Newfrontiers has its roots in the charismatic movement. It began out of the ministry of leader Terry Virgo who had been somewhat disillusioned as a young Christian by his experiences of church. As a pastor of a church on an estate in Seaford in the UK he spoke of building a church that was biblical both in its doctrine and in its experience. As friends and others began to ask for his help both in renewing existing churches and in starting new ones a family of churches began to gather into ever closer relationship with him and each other. Charismatic is an umbrella term used to describe those Christians who believe that the manifestations of the Holy Spirit seen in the first century Christian Church, such as speaking in tongues, healing and miracles, are available to contemporary Christians and ought to be experienced and practiced today. ... Terry Virgo is the leader of the Newfrontiers charismatic evangelical Christian movement. ...

The Downs bible week ran for a decade from 1979 and gathered more and more people and churches who wanted to hear the bible teaching and experience the lively worship. As the years passed by the churches relating to Terry Virgo forged an alliance to work together to start new churches and carry out missionary work and newfrontiers as we know it today was born.

In those early years newfrontiers was basically a small group of churches in the southern England (most notably Bedfordshire and Sussex) but from very early on the group began to be involved in working in other nations. Newfrontiers now has churches accross the British Isles and in every continent of the world.

After a break from bible weeks of a few years newfrontiers started the Stoneliegh Bible week in 1991. This conference also focussed on bible teaching and worship albums were released. Musicians such as Paul Oakley, Stuart Townend, Kate Simmonds and the group Phatfish were all featured on these albumns.

Stoneleigh was stopped in its tenth year following a prophecy and the group now focusses on evangelism and church planting, aiming to grow to be a thousand churches in the UK and to have individual churches with more than a thousand members.

Newfrontiers run an annual international leaders conference where thousands of church leaders and christians in their 20s come from around the world to gather for the now familiar mix of bible teaching and lively worship times. This conference in Brighton attracts in excess of 3,000 people a year including people from other denominations. Brighton on the southern Sussex coast is one of the largest and most famous seaside resorts in England. ...

As it continues its work of planting new churches newfrontiers is one of only a few groups of churches in Europe which are consistantly growing in numbers and attracting young people.

Beliefs and distinctives

Newfrontiers today remains an evangelical group which largely teaches reformed theology but remains modern and informal in their worship style. The group believes in the modern availability of spiritual gifts including apostolic ministry. The term evangelical has several distinct meanings: In its original sense, it means belonging or related to the Gospel (Greek: euangelion - good news) of the New Testament. ... Alternate meanings: See Apostle (Mormonism), The Apostle (1997 movie) The Twelve Apostles (in Greek απόστολος apostolos [1] = someone sent forth/sent out, an emissary) were probably Galilean Jewish men (10 names are Aramaic, 4 names are Greek) chosen from among the disciples, who were sent forth by Jesus of Nazareth to...

The Newfrontiers approach to church and the format of services has a reputation for being unconventional and informal. Popular culture is embraced providing that it is moral and not in conflict with biblical Christian beliefs. Sermons are often humorous and attempt to relate Christianity to the contemporary world. Spiritual analogies from popular films and books are used.

Worship often takes the form of soft rock and even on occasion dance/drum and bass music. This is why a Newfrontiers slogan is "Changing the expression of Christianity around the world".

With a passionate commitment to build the church according to New Testament principles, they believe that the most effective form of evangelism is worked out from strong local churches. Churches where each member participates, the gifts of the Spirit are outworked, where there is joy in caring one for the other, where there is a desire to make a difference in society and to reach those in need. They aim to achieve this by restoring the church, making disciples, training leaders, planting churches and reaching the nations. They are also strong proponents of the Alpha course. The Alpha course is a course on the basics of the Christian faith. ...

Buildings and meeting venues

Churches in newfrontiers meet in a variety of different locations. Some, such as for example Brickhill Baptist Church retain their baptist roots and meet in a traditional church building. Many others meet in schools and other non-religious venues - in at least one case a newfrontiers church in london meets in a multiplex cinema. A number of churches including Terry Virgo's home church in Brighton have bought old warehouses and converted them into large places of worship. Perhaps the most unusual venues are an old Tram powerstation that now houses a church in Newcastle and a former synagogue that houses a church in Sheffield. A synagogue or synagog (from Greek συναγωγη, transliterated sunagoge, place of assembly literally meeting, assembly) is a Jewish house of prayer and study. ...