Our history
For over 30 years, The Message Trust has been sharing the good news of Jesus with young people and urban communities through word and action around the world.
From Andy Hawthorne receiving a vision from God to share the gospel with people across Manchester (UK) in a city-wide festival in 1988, our work has grown but our heart has remained the same – to see lives and neighbourhoods transformed by Jesus.
Today we’re an international ministry sharing the good news of Jesus in schools, communities and prisons across the globe. Whether people meet our teams in a school lesson, in a community or at a gig, we want them to discover the love and hope Jesus offers for themselves, and for them to become lifelong disciples of Christ.
From day one, Isaiah 43:18-21 and its call to the church has been at the heart of everything we do: ‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.’
Have a look through the following slides to read through our history.
Our beginnings
In 1988, having discovered how little the young men employed in their clothes factory knew about Jesus, Andy Hawthorne and his brother and business partner, Simon, had a vision to do something to change this. That’s when the idea for Message ’88 – the largest Christian mission Manchester had ever seen – was born.
Message ’88 was a massive faith venture, involving the most credible bands, theatre companies and special guests of the time, and was seen as a breakthrough moment for the church in Manchester. In the build-up, over 300 mission events were run, and the Apollo was packed for five nights with an estimated 20,000 young people hearing the gospel.
A second mission was run in 1989 and, off the back of this, Andy Hawthorne and Mark Pennells formed ‘Message to Schools’ with the sole aim of taking the gospel to young people in schools through pop and dance music.
Creative mission begins and grows
In 1991, our schools work began with a week of lessons, assemblies and lunchtime meetings. It ended with a gig on the Friday night where 39 young people decided to follow Christ. That night, a ministry was born.
Message to Schools launched as a duo, with pop performances from Mark followed by gospel messages from Andy. As it grew, singers Elaine Hanley and Lorraine Williams joined the band and The World Wide Message Tribe was born.
Proving instantly popular, and receiving mainstream attention and chart hits, the band never strayed from their core mission – to share the gospel in schools and serve the church in its mission.
Over the following years, The World Wide Message Tribe (later shortened to The Tribe) toured the United States, the UK and Europe in the school summer holidays, performing to over a million young people and selling hundreds of thousands of albums. But once the school term began, they were back in classrooms telling young people about Jesus.
Since then, we’ve launched new creative mission bands around the world who all have the same heart as The Tribe. We’ve also launched non-musical creative teams through Respect ME who go into schools day in, day out sharing the good news of Jesus with young people.
Heading into communities
Five years after the first Message to Schools mission week, God prompted The Message to start thinking more widely about its work with young people.
A schools week took The Tribe to the UK’s most deprived neighbourhood. At the Friday night concert, over 100 local young people gave their lives to Christ which was amazing. But what surprised the local church was how many of them came along to Sunday services – and how disruptive they were! Whilst doing all we could to help the church support these young people to grow in their new faith, but it was tough. Sadly, many fell back into their old lifestyles, it was gutting. We got praying as there had to be another way.
We had a vision of Christians moving into the poorest areas to live and work for the long-term, supporting local churches to reach their young people and communities. This bold initiative was named Eden, and the first Eden team was launched in 1997.
In Eden’s first decade, over 300 people joined teams, making it one of the largest missionary-sending movements in the UK for over 100 years. As people heard about the impact Eden had on communities, God began to open doors for teams outside of Manchester.
27 years on and Eden has continued to grow launching teams across the UK as well as in Canada, Germany and Brazil.
Working in prisons and beyond the prison gates
Wanting every young person to hear about the hope and love Jesus offers, The Message has been working with young offenders in the UK since 2004.
What started in one prison has since grown. In 2024, our UK Message in Prisons team had the opportunity to work with 10% of England and Wales’ prison population. Their work spans first-contact detached work on prison wings, Alpha and discipleship courses in association with prison chaplaincies, right through to running Peacemaker courses and offering mentoring and resettlement support to those they work with.
As prisons work grew, we saw too many men and women who had found Jesus leaving prison with little or no support, without a job and in some cases no safe place to live, and sadly too often they were drawn back in their old lifestyles and caught in the cycle of re-offending.
Something new was needed: a combination of a supportive, mentoring community, discipleship, employment and training for ex-offenders giving them the opportunity they needed to turn their lives around and become ‘urban heroes’.
After the miraculous acquisition of the property next to The Message’s headquarters, the Message Enterprise Centre was developed and officially opened in January 2013 by the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Sir Peter Fahy.
Since then, we have employed over 90 team members on two-year programmes in our social enterprise businesses both here in the UK and South Africa, including in The Mess Café (Manchester), Neal Street Espresso (London), Gangster Cafés (Cape Town) and the Community Grocery warehouse (Manchester).
Equipping others to share the gospel
Raising up the next generation and equipping evangelists so that more people can hear the gospel is at the core of our DNA.
In 2001, we launched a gap-year programme, today called Message School of Evangelism. Students come from around the globe to Manchester for they get Bible teaching, evangelism training, to be equipped for mission all whilst getting to put what they learn into practice taking the gospel into schools, prisons and communities. As students graduate, they’re commissioned and sent out to a lifetime of service for Jesus.
Alongside this, we want evangelists across the globe to be sharpened and equipped to share the gospel with a new boldness. It was from this desire that Advance Groups were launched.
In 2016, Andy Hawthorne began meeting regularly with 12 other evangelists so that they could encourage and spur each other on in their ministry. Each group member established their own group, and this began the Advance Groups movement. Over the years, small groups of men and women started meeting monthly to not only learn more about evangelism and sharing their faith, but to put it into action too.
As organisations, like the Global Network of Evangelists, heard about Advance Groups and their impact, we began partnering together to roll out groups around the world and translate the free materials into local languages. By the end of 2024, there were over 200,000 people meeting in more than 30,000 groups in 100 nations.
Alongside this, The Charge and Scattering weeks of mission were launched to equip young people to tell others about Jesus. As they get involved we’ve seen teenagers praying for their friends, launching CUs in their schools and even helping to organise mission weeks.
Keeping families fed
As the UK came out of its first Covid lockdown, we saw how much families were struggling to put food on their tables and the idea of the Community Grocery was born.
Bridging the gap between food banks and supermarkets, Community Groceries provide members with access to affordable food and wrap-around support. Members can come and shop from just £5 per visit getting all the food they need for their family. But it’s about more than food, we also provide members with free wrap-around support too. Courses include debt management, cooking classes, exploring Christianity courses and Alpha courses, and many more. As members shop, they connect with partner churches and lives are being transformed by Jesus.
Our first store opened in Sharston in September 2020 and the ministry quickly grew from there. By January 2025, 27 Community Grocery stores had been launched around the UK, each in partnership with a local church. Over 68,000 members had joined since day one!
Across the UK and around the globe
As doors have opened to share the gospel, we’ve launched hubs across the UK, making it possible for us to reach more young people and communities. But as our work at home grew, around the world others were catching our vision too.
In 2014, we launched our first international hub, Message South Africa. Beginning with prisons ministry around Cape Town and an Eden team in the Salt River neighbourhood, the team has expanded its reach across South Africa as God provided new opportunities. We now have creative mission, prisons and enterprise work, Eden teams, and a suite of enterprises employing ex-offenders there.
Two years later, The Message launched in Vancouver, Canada with a flagship Eden team in the challenging environment of Downtown Eastside. And a year later, our work spread to Germany. Since then, The Message has continued to grow internationally launching in the Netherlands (2023), Brazil (2023) and Uganda (2024) – with new opportunities to launch even more Message hubs internationally continuing.
Sharing through festivals
Our ministry is characterised by both social action and unashamed gospel proclamation.
In 2000, The Message took this to the next level through Message 2000, an ambitious city-wide youth mission which saw around 10,000 young Christians give up part of their summer holidays to volunteer on social, environmental and crime reduction projects across Manchester. It saw churches across the city unite and was hailed as a massive success as lives and communities were impacted by the gospel. In Swinton Valley, there were no recorded incidents of crime during the 10 days of Message 2000 and the police reported a sustained reduction in crime!
Three years later, we partnered with the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association, and put on Festival:Manchester, another week-long city-wide venture. Over 5,000 young people got involved in 317 local community projects, many in association with the Greater Manchester Police. Around 55,000 people attended the open-air festival weekend in Heaton Park.
Then coming out of the pandemic, we went again, partnering with the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association to put on Festival Manchester 2022. As teams headed into schools, communities and put on events for people from all walks of life, they invited them to the free festival weekend in Wythenshawe Park. In July 2022, over 65,000 people flocked to the park and heard the good news of Jesus proclaimed and 3,472 responded to it.
But festivals have not just happened in the UK. December 2024 saw Festival Bombo, a huge free family festival happening in Bombo (Uganda), and what an amazing time it was! For three days, young people, men, women and children flocked to the festival to enjoy the live music, performances, inflatables, sports, face painting and everything else that was on offer. As people and families enjoyed themselves, they got to hear the good news of Jesus and had the chance to respond to it.