I Am Encouraged
Mapping, Praying and Future Conversations on Church Planting in Ireland
A few days have passed since the launch of the Glúnta Church Map, and I wanted to say thank you! It’s been a long process of planning, coding, and drinking a lot of coffee!
The response has been genuinely encouraging. I’ve received messages from pastors, church members, missionaries, and friends across Ireland. Some have shared ideas for how the map could develop. Others have pointed out churches that were missed and should be added. A few conversations have already begun around church planting and the opportunities that still exist across the country. We even commissioned a family to a nearby town just last Sunday after a 2 year residency! Losing 10 people when you only have around 50 people is huge, but it shows how passionate that many people are to see Ireland reached for Christ, and the messages about the map have greatly encouraged me.
To be honest, that is exactly the sort of response I was hoping for!
The map was never intended to be an end in itself of course. It is simply a tool. Maps don’t plant churches. Maps don’t make disciples. Maps don’t preach the Gospel. But they might kick off a few conversations, and eventually get us there.
One of the things I hope the map does is encourage prayer.
As I’ve spent time gathering data, checking church websites, verifying locations, and comparing populations, I’ve often found myself pausing. Behind every dot on the map is a congregation trying to faithfully bear witness to Christ in their community. Behind every town without a church is a place where people are living, working, raising families, and often doing so with little or no meaningful connection to a Gospel-preaching church.
That should move us to pray. For churches that are struggling. For pastors who feel isolated. For towns where there is currently little visible Gospel witness. For labourers to be raised up. For new churches to be planted. For existing churches to flourish.
At the same time, I hope the map helps stimulate conversation to actually do something about it. These are conversations worth having! And if you want to start a conversation about these things, please reach out, because there are a group of us now in Ireland who long to see God move in this way. We might not have all the answers, but we are starting to ask questions.
Over the coming weeks and months, I plan to continue improving the map. There are additional churches to add, corrections to make, and new layers of demographic information that I hope will provide a stronger foundation for understanding the communities we are trying to reach. My hope is that these developments will make the map increasingly useful not only as a directory, but as a tool for prayer, planning, and discussion. I also want to see how we can help inform church planting into the unreached towns we identified, and also understand the contexts that we may be ministering in at present.
I’ll share updates from time to time as the project develops.
For now, though, I’m looking forward to returning to my normal writing rhythm next week. There are plenty of other topics I want to explore, and the map will simply become one part of the wider conversation.
Thank you again to everyone who has shared feedback, highlighted missing churches, offered encouragement, or simply spent time exploring the map.
My prayer remains the same as it was at the beginning: that this small project might help us see Ireland a little more clearly, pray a little more specifically, and think a little more intentionally about the task that still lies before us.
If you are based in Ireland, in ministry, or are praying through church planting in Ireland, please get in touch. I’d love to gather those interested in reaching the unreached towns, and see how we can pray and consider how God might be moving!