Pete works with Fresh Expressions to coordinate the team's activities.
Pete and Kath Atkins have lived and worked in Lincolnshire since moving there in 1979. Pete was a GP in a rural practice near Lincoln for 25 years, retiring only recently to devote more time to enabling missional activity across Lincolnshire. They have five children, four of whom have married and left home.
Pete and Kath both have Anglican backgrounds and were involved in Anglican Churches until 1984. They then spent ten years in their local Methodist Church before, with others, planting and leading a Church called Threshold.
Threshold was born with a particular vision to see Church further established in the rural areas of Lincolnshire. It is part of a New Church network, Ground Level, which is led by Stuart Bell.
In 2001, as part of the ministry of Ground Level, and with help and advice from Bob and Mary Hopkins of ACPI and others, they developed a church planting strategy for their region. One strand of this was to begin a course to train people for pioneering missional work. The most recent form of this course 'Mission-shaped leadership' was run in Lincoln by Ground Level with full support from the Diocese of Lincoln and the Lincoln and Grimsby Methodist District before becoming the prototype for mission shaped ministry – the one-year course now being rolled out and offered nationally by Fresh Expressions.
Pete is one of the directors of Ground Level and is currently president of Churches Together in all Lincolnshire. Pete and Kath joined the Fresh Expressions team with the task of supporting the establishment and running of mission shaped ministry in different centres across the UK.
pete.atkins@freshexpressions.org.uk.