Today marks one hundred days since we set out on the adventure of theonehundredyearsproject and we thought we should write this post as both a review and a maker of all that has happened so far. As you will know by now I (Neil) am a recovering achiever 😂 and so I love to try and quantify what I do to see what we have done (don’t worry we will write about what we have learnt as well – I know it’s not all about ‘doing’)

So far we have;

• Prayed in around 80 different locations around Northern Ireland and Donegal. (It’s probably more than this but we didn’t keep track of every little hole in the hedge.)
• Clocked up just under one thousand miles on our travels (992 to be exact).
• Spent around 65 hours praying and travelling around this island we call home.
• Released 24 episodes of the theonehundredyearsproject podcast.
• Created our blog and have shared 43 posts detailing what we have been up to.

Each of the three ‘projects’ that we have engaged with; prayer, the podcast and blog, have been a direct responses to something we have believed God has asked us to do. None of them were a result of planning or strategy, but sheer obedience. We don’t always understand why God has asked us to do them but we do them anyway. Here’s what we’ve been learning through each of them.

1 – Prayer

We started praying geographically because we felt God call us through the book of Joshua. In the book God speaks to Joshua in many different ways but two of the instructions that He was given that spoke to us were that “I (God) will give you every place where you set your foot….” and then later on in chapter 18 God indirectly calls them to “explore the borders” and “take possession” of the land He’d give them. We felt we needed to go and plant our feet in as many places as God wanted us to and we knew this country was at least where we needed to begin. As you might know, our initial steps were slow, we weren’t sure of the purpose or even how to properly do it, but we’ve started to find our stride as we’ve moved outwards.

Here is a map progression of how our prayer map has built up over the 4 months since we started back in January.

This process has highlighted a few things to us.

• Prayer is vital – I know, I know, we all should know this if we are following Jesus but this is something we are still growing in. Too often I (Neil) have thought of prayer as something that accompanied the ‘real work’ of mission. What I am learning is that prayer is the real work as much as getting boots on the ground is. Prayer is transforming the spiritual realities so that the physical actually can happen in the way that God intended. When Joshua was called to take the city of Jericho God didn’t ask him to set up battering rams, platoons of soldiers, and create a military strategy. No, He called him, and the people, to walk around silently for 6 days and shout after 7. It made no sense physically but spiritually it was the best strategy ever because when the walls of that city fell down a 400 year promise came into reality.
• The impact of the church – We’re not sure we fully appreciated the impact the church has had on our land. Around every corner we turned on our travels we found a church, chapel or Mission hall of some description. It was a clear reminder of how God has used the church to shape the culture of this place. I was shocked at the scale of many of these buildings and how many would exist in one small town. I could imagine how each of these towns and villages would revolve around these churches back in the day. It was so great to see so many of these churches still running missions, Alpha’s, and other welcome events. The church is incredible 👍
• The diminishing church – alongside the joy of seeing these churches around the country, is the sadness that so many of them are not thriving today as we imagine they once were. The fact that there were sometimes 3 types of church in the one small town showed the disunity that had built over the years. I actually like that we have different styles of church, but the sadness is that most of these expressions do not celebrate each other. While some churches were trying to engage with their communities so many of them didn’t appear to be doing so, and when you add all that together we see that the church on the ground is not what it once was here. Thankfully heaven has a different plan!
• God is a genius – the beauty we have experienced from driving around these past 4 months has been stunning. There have been so many times that we have been dumfounded by the beauty of mountains, hills, fields, rivers, lakes, waterfalls. Alongside that we have watched how God gave us all creativity and we have loved seeing beautiful bridges, buildings, sculptures, and murals as we have travelled around. God truly is a genius
• Apache Pizza is thriving – this is something Janet and I laugh at in every place we visit – this pizza shop chain literally is everywhere!!!!!!

2 – Podcast

We started the podcast because of three ways God spoke to us on New Year’s Eve, and out of all that we have done this was the hardest one emotionally to do. I hated the fact that some people would think we were trying to ‘launch a new ministry’ or that we were seeking to become ‘influencers.’ I knew that we wouldn’t be getting thousands of views and I didn’t like that some people would laugh at that. I knew that I had to get over my pride and my fear of man and just be obedient. So, we’ve done it, and while I have still had to work on my ‘stuff’ we also have had a lot of fun on the journey.

Here are some screenshots from the podcast episodes

It’s definitely much harder to try and work out what we have learned through doing the podcast but it has been lovely to receive feedback from people who have watched the episodes and found them helpful. We haven’t analysed views or any other insights from this as we have felt that because we aren’t ‘trying to grow a following’ that at this point we will ignore all of that.

3 – Blog

If you are reading this you’ve already seen the blog! This really was something we wanted to write in real time. A space where we can share the pioneering journey as it happens; warts and all. Something that other pioneers can read and follow along with and something that we hope will be an encouragement to them. It’s not always been easy to keep up with it as we have had a lot of other outside commitments which has left us with more time challenges than we would have expected but overall I think we’ve done OK.

So, I guess our overall learnings from the whole thing so far now that we are on hundred days old are;

• Success is best measured by obedience – the scale, impact, reach, bank balance, team etc. are inconsequential in terms of measuring success unless God has called you to do that. Obedience to God’s voice is the only metric we need to look at because His ways are the only ways we want to follow. In many ways what we are doing now, in human terms, is the smallest and the most insignificant thing we have ever done in ministry but in terms of obedience it might just be the most successful.
• Trust is hard but it’s the only way to live – the phrase ‘just trust God’ sounds like such an easy thing to do until you are in a situation where you have to do it. I wonder if it is even harder to trust God when there is the option to do something about it yourself. I’m not diminishing someone who trusts God in a more desperate situation, not at all, I guess it’s just when you’re in that situation you have no other option, you have no other choice. How we have started the onhundredyearsproject is not the only way we could have done it. We have had other options in the season we are in. We are capable enough to go and get work somewhere to lift the financial pressure. We have done this kind of ministry work before and have enough knowledge and relationships to set up some stuff. But God has told us to wait for His voice, in each moment. That has been hard for me (Neil) especially. So many times I have wanted to just go for it and set a bunch of stuff up, but what I am learning is that even if those things turned out to be good they mightn’t be God. We need to trust His voice and trust that He knows WAY more than we do about this!!!
• Where God guides, He provides – Ok, a cheesy quote that I have read on many a fridge magnet over the years but a statement that is so true. We’ve had moments this year where the ends weren’t meeting and we weren’t sure if we would need to go and get ‘real’ jobs but 100 days in we are still going. In fact just yesterday we received another gift that provides for us for another month. 🙌 I know this truth will continue to be tested in us and I pray that we grow in our understanding of it!

Well, thanks for coming on the journey this far – we’ve got a long way to go yet but we can’t wait to see what God has up His sleeve!