History and Word by Kieron Densham

All of this came about at the beginning of our internship with Duncan and Kate in September 2007. Duncan and Kate had been traveling a huge amount that year and had given their position at TACF over to the YouthNet team. One thing that they had always held to is that they are all about the local church. Duncan once said that if it wasn't for the connection they had with the local church they would not be as effective as itinerant preachers as all of the stuff they preach on across the globe came from experiences of God being God in their home church. Now without a home church to speak of Duncan and Kate began seeking God for His mind on it all. At which point God told them they would be planting a network of churches. The number 1000 was give what they heard and they began to pray more into how they could possibly plant 1000 churches in their lifetime. One of the messages that Duncan regularly preached was about an Acorn. He would ask the question, " How many oak trees are there inside just one acorn?" Some would answer one which is partially correct but what Duncan would say is that one tree has the potential to produce thousands of acorns which each in turn have to potential to produce thousands. Therefore the answer to the question was not one but thousands. From there Duncan and Kate knew they were going to plant 1000 churches and they know that it was going to start with just one. The question was where?

There were a few doors that Duncan and Kate pushed before Raleigh but God, in one way or another, closed those doors. When Raleigh came on the radar however there was no closing that door. God sent confirmation after confirmation after confirmation.

Duncan had been talking with a prolific church planter a few years earlier Duncan asked him where in any of the world would he plant a church if he could. The mans reply was Raleigh, North Carolina. His reasons where because of the huge number of young people in the area due to all of the colleges and also the fact that it is a hub for academic achievement. So many people know and travel to Raleigh because it is a center for excellence. At that time Duncan suggested the idea to Kate but got a very short 2 letter response NO. Gods wisdom won out in that situation as the timing was just not right.

When right timing came about Duncan and Kate looked at Raleigh again and pursued God for His thoughts. They were driving back from a wedding in downtown Toronto and were chatting the idea over. at which point Duncan and Kate prayed, God if you want us to go to Raleigh we will go, if you want us to stay in Toronto we will stay we just want to know either way! As soon as they had prayed this Duncan spotted a car that was driving right in front of them. The car was a Plymouth Voyager and it had on it a North Carolina plate. WYV3100. This blew them both away and they immediately began to try and work out what the relevance of the letters and numbers on the license plate meant. Firstly The car was a Plymouth Voyager. Named after the voyage that a certain ship took from the dock in Plymouth carrying the first settlers of a place we now call the United States of America.

The license plates in NC have the phrase First in Flight on them. Then they unpacked the license plate itself. WYV "with Your Values" The values that they had been soaking up and preaching on for their whole time at TACF. Duncan and Kate saw this as confirmation that they were to set out on a voyage into the USA as the first in flight from TACF to plant a church carrying the values. The numbers were the easy bit. Duncan had another message about oneness that he taught regularly where he talked about the Godhead being one and us being in the godhead. The 3 represented the trinity and the 1 represented the oneness including us! The two 0's represented Duncan and Kate themselves!

They were seriously excited about what had happened and decided that we were going to look at Raleigh more purposefully now with the intention of planting the first CTF church there. So I went to work researching the city and it's history. Some of the things I found out were just astounding. Raleigh is otherwise refereed to as the city of Oaks. As you have already seen the relevance of the Oak tree is huge. God was saying yep, this is the place where the 1000 strong church movement begins.

The next thing we found out is that Raleigh was an intentionally built city. North Carolina needed a capital city so they bought out a plot of land and designed the city to be built on the plot. After looking into it a bit further i found out that the plot of land that was bought to build this city was..yeah you guessed it.. 1000 acres!!! The question about whether this was the right place has disappeared. Duncan and Kate were looking for a place where they could plant the first CTF church a church that would within their lifetime become 1000 churches. and Raleigh was the city of oaks built on a plot 1000 acres big. I looked into the word acre to see what it actually was and the meaning of the word is this. " The amount of land that 1 yolk of Oxen could plow in 1 day". I found this out the very same day that Duncan had preached a message at TACF about church planting. He was encouraging the church not to strive in the harvest field but to be yolked to the Bull (Holy Spirit) and let him plow the field. The amount of land 1 yolk of Oxen can plow in 1 day is 1 acre. We are Yolked to the Holy Spirit in the harvest field and the Harvest Field Duncan and Kate were looking at was historically 1000 acres!

I loved being around the church as it was in it's formative stage and I loved seeing God come through time and time again with confirmation that Raleigh was the place. It is an honor to have been involved in even the smallest of ways. We love you guys at CTF Raleigh so much and can't wait to see the Acorn become a forest.