Godsfield · Thursday, August 27, 2026 · 2 min read
Seven nights, seven churches
Over a week in December, seven Mansfield congregations each hosted a night of the same revival meeting. What came next was thirty-one churches in thirty-one days.
Most collaborations between churches are a shared service and a photograph. Fan the Flame was seven nights, and each night belonged to a different congregation.
The seven, as named in the Religion News Association release:
- The Avenue Church — Pastor Tina Yager
- Paradise Church — Pastor Jay Hill, with William "Jody" Cole
- Fusion Lexington — Jess Wilging, Director of Outreach and Recovery
- Open Bible Church
- Belmont Community Church
- New Beginnings
- Freedom Church — Pastor Jeff Dible
Alongside them, Rubies Women's Group.
The framing mattered. This was not a gospel outreach aimed at the unchurched; the release describes it as fanning the revival flame — rekindling passion among people already in the pews, and building relationships between congregations that had spent decades running in parallel.
What it turned into
March of Prayer, in March, put more than thirty-five churches on the streets of Mansfield. One account describes it as thirty-one churches across thirty-one days.
Then the Festival of Hope at Mansfield Speedway in August — free, community-wide, with an expectation of twelve thousand people.
Seven congregations sharing a week is a nice story. Thirty-one sharing a month is a different kind of thing.
The people behind it
Godsfield itself was founded by Rev. El Akuchie and Pastor Paul Lintern, who by their own account spent decades praying toward the idea of uniting what they call the City of the Church. The organisation exists to collaborate with area churches rather than to run events of its own.
Its anchor text is John 17 — the prayer that they may be one.
Why this is in a directory
Because almost none of it was findable.
Seven nights across seven churches produced, as far as a search engine is concerned, close to nothing. The press release exists. The rest lived on church calendars and Facebook posts that surfaced once and sank — which is precisely the gap this directory was built for.
Every event above that has a published date is now listed here, each linking back to its source.
Sources: godsfield.org · Religion News Association