In January 2009, God gave me two words: “move in”. It was a message for my generation to imitate Christ and literally move into the neighbourhood, specifically among the unreached, urban poor.

I wasn’t endeavouring to name a movement, but we later became known as the “move in” people. That’s how we got our name.

After I put the vision online, at movein.to, I began to meet one-on-one with many people who were interested in moving in. Before long, the idea of a conference began to emerge; we were thinking 30 or 40 people at first. The Peoples Church and its Senior Pastor, Charles Price, got behind us. Just 12 weeks later—in May 2009—the conference happened, and 700 people came.

At the end of the 24-hour conference, seven or eight “emerging teams” had committed to pray weekly about moving into a specific neighbourhood patch.

Amazingly, over the course of that summer, many of those first “potential MoveIners” did move in, and by the end of that year there were about 40 MoveIners on eight teams. By the end of the following year—2010—there were about 15 teams. Then 25 teams in 2011, and 35 teams in 2012. Today, there are 80 MoveIn teams in 31 cities in 12 countries in North America, Latin America, Europe, West Africa and Southeast Asia.

As a movement we know 20,000 people by name – people we wouldn’t know had we not moved in. God is at work! Touching one life at a time.