Firbush Retreats Firbush retreats are organized and led by Robert T. Walker. Firbush retreats are designed to make the best theology accessible to as many people as possible and especially those not trained in theology and often not familiar with routine technical terms. They combine times of worship and prayer with reflection on a theme related to Torrance theology. For more information see https://tftorrance.org/firbush. ----------- Nov 12, 2015 Firbush Retreat Fall 2015 Robin Brodie, "Congregational Participation" https://tftorrance.org/firbushF2015 The audio recording for this presentation is available on the Firbush Retreat section of the website for the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship. The following AI transcript is too rough to rely upon, but perhaps useful for word searches and time-stamps. It is unretouched; if anyone wishes to listen to it and clean it up we will be happy to post an improved version (contact the webmasters). We invite speakers to send us slides for their talks, which we will post alongside the audios and transcripts. If any speaker wishes to have their talk removed from the website, just let us know and we'll take down both the audio and the transcript. ------------ 00:00-00:07 ...congregational participation and so I thought it'd be good if we read 1 Corinthians 12, 12 to 28 00:07-00:12 and I'm not going to read it, I'm going to get... those have got Bibles here perhaps to read it. 00:12-00:14 So, anybody got a Bible? 00:14-00:20 Good. I'm worried I can read a bit. Anyway, I'd like to have a few people reading because we are talking about 00:20-00:24 congregational participation. So anybody else got a Bible? 00:28-00:34 Great, okay. Perhaps we could have... So we're going to read from 1 Corinthians 12, 12 to 28. 00:34-00:38 If we've only got two Bibles here, have we got any more now? I think Tom has. We've got quite a few now. 00:38-00:42 Well, let's start then... this is probably going to be a complete shambles... 00:42-00:48 Let's start... we're going to start from 1 Corinthians 12, 12, one body, many parts. 00:48-00:51 We'll start with Moira and then Lindsay, did you put your hand up? 00:55-00:59 We're going from... well, I think what we'll do is we'll just read a sort of paragraph each or 00:59-01:04 a bit as far as you feel like reading. So, but go on to Lindsay and then we'll go to Bob at the front. 01:04-01:08 Tom, are you going to read? And do we have any more volunteers at the back? Yes, very good. 01:08-01:12 So, another one here, so perhaps Steve, you could do a bit. 01:12-01:16 All right. 01:16-01:21 All right, well hopefully, I'm sure the Spirit will lead us. 01:21-01:25 Anyway, as long as we get through the verses, I don't mind who reads and we'll just let the Spirit lead us. 01:25-01:28 So, I'd like to do this just because it's congregational participation. 01:28-01:32 All right then, let's start with 1 Corinthians 12, 12, we're going to read to 28. 01:32-01:42 One body, many parts. The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts, and though all its 01:42-01:50 parts are many, we form one body. So it is with Christ, for we were all baptized by one Spirit 01:50-01:58 into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 01:58-02:08 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, 02:08-02:14 "Because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of 02:14-02:21 the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I'm not an eye, I do not belong to the body," 02:21-02:29 that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, 02:29-02:35 where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 02:35-02:43 But as it is, I would arrange the memories in the body, each one of them as he cares. 02:44-02:51 If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, 02:51-03:00 yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again head to the foot, 03:00-03:06 "I have no need of you," or the contrary. The members of the body that seem to be weaker 03:06-03:11 are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think let follow 03:12-03:19 include the greater honor, and our less respectful members are treated with greater respect, 03:19-03:26 whereas our more respectful members do not need this. But God has so arranged for the body, 03:26-03:34 giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, 03:34-03:38 but the members may have some care for one another. 03:38-03:52 If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. 03:52-03:59 Now you are the body of Christ and individual members of it, and God is appointed in the 03:59-04:05 church of first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, 04:05-04:10 helping, administration, and various kinds of tongues. How far is it? 04:10-04:14 Just that's fine, in fact, thank you very much indeed. Thanks very much for all taking part in 04:14-04:22 that about the body and a bit of congregational participation in that. So really I'm just going 04:22-04:31 to talk a little about personal history here to start with, and my experience was of one-man 04:31-04:37 ministry to start with at various churches. And these were actually positive experiences 04:37-04:42 generally and were times of good and close fellowship, so please don't take what I'm going 04:42-04:50 to say a kind of spirit of negativity or criticism. But the first church that I was at, which was one 04:50-04:57 which was a strongly Bible teaching church, and it was a very, very good Bible teaching church. 04:57-05:03 I used to go there twice on a Sunday and then we had went to the prayer meeting on the Saturday 05:03-05:11 night and we went to the Bible study on a Wednesday, but almost all of that was led by 05:11-05:18 the minister and the situation was that he didn't want to have any other organizations or 05:18-05:22 anything else happening in the church because as far as he was concerned it was a Bible teaching 05:22-05:27 church and that we needed to be at these events every week and if we were willing to come to these 05:27-05:35 events and go to them that was fine, the rest of our time was our own. And the situation, well 05:35-05:39 there was to be fair that sometimes some of us who were elders in the church were allowed to take 05:39-05:45 a Bible study every so often on a Wednesday evening, but apart from that everything was done 05:45-05:50 by the minister and for the very good reason that he saw that this was a Bible teaching church. 05:50-05:57 And then we moved on, we went to Bible colleges as David said, went to Bible college down at All 05:57-06:02 Nations in north of London and that was a good experience because it was a Bible college and we 06:02-06:06 were all learning together to be ready to go to missionaries and so there was a lot of participation 06:06-06:12 there which was excellent. We came back and we were then asked to go to a very traditional 06:12-06:18 church of Scotland in Aberdeen where they needed a Sunday school leader because they were very short 06:18-06:22 of anybody who could actually do anything. They had very traditional church, traditional elders 06:22-06:27 and one man ministry and really nobody very willing to do anything in terms of working 06:27-06:32 with the young people. So we were actually asked to go there to help with the Sunday school at that 06:32-06:38 time. But again in this church it was very much a traditional one man ministry with a very heavy 06:38-06:43 eldership and a lot of people there from the doctors and the lawyers and the place, just your 06:43-06:50 traditional church of Scotland eldership who were there very often for social reasons. And the 06:50-06:58 minister was really expected to do everything and he was an awkward fellow in terms of being able to 06:58-07:04 visit people. He came to visit Bryony at one point when we just had a baby or something to that 07:04-07:08 effect and really didn't know, felt very awkward in the house with being there with a woman and 07:08-07:12 drummed his fingers and whistled but he couldn't think of anything to say and he just clearly 07:12-07:18 wasn't, his gift was not visiting and yet he was expected to do everything as the one man minister. 07:18-07:25 And then we moved on to the, back in 1984 we moved to the church that we're in now which was 07:25-07:33 Bancory West Church in Bancory and the model there again at that stage was of a one man minister 07:33-07:39 and he was a very good chap actually, really wanted to move things on but he had the eldership 07:39-07:44 which was very traditional again, the doctors, the lawyers, the bankers and so on were all on 07:44-07:48 his eldership and they had a very strong idea as to what they wanted that church to be like. 07:48-07:55 And so he, it was a very unreal situation because they did have sort of committees for 07:55-07:58 education and committees for this and that and the next thing and I think I was on the education 07:58-08:03 committee and it was a bizarre and unreal situation because we would have these meetings 08:03-08:08 about the education committee every two months and we would go along and the minister would come and 08:08-08:12 then there would be these worthies from the eldership there and myself and we would discuss 08:12-08:17 what we were going to do for education in the church and it would always come down to right 08:17-08:22 minister you'll do all that then and so we'd walk out and the minister had been left to do everything 08:22-08:27 that had been discussed and we would come back two months later and none of it had been done, 08:27-08:30 we would have a further discussion and the minister would then be told to go and do all of 08:30-08:33 that again and no one seemed to remember the previous meeting, I don't think it was even 08:33-08:38 minutes and it was just really an unreal situation and obviously the problem was that the minister 08:38-08:42 couldn't possibly do all this stuff that he was being asked to do, he was also expected to visit 08:42-08:47 of course, these churches that I went to in Aberdeen and in Bancrae, I mean the minister was 08:47-08:51 expected to visit all the time and if anybody wasn't visited it was being I've not been visited 08:51-08:55 by the minister so very very traditional, I know you all know what I'm talking about where the 08:55-09:03 minister was expected to do absolutely everything and the situation was it was the morning services 09:03-09:08 were really pretty traditional because that's what the elders wanted and the eldership was getting 09:08-09:14 older and we had a big problem because we had three children, we had just moved to this church 09:14-09:20 and we just thought this is not going to encourage our three children to come to faith or to continue 09:20-09:25 with their faith, it's just going to be a disaster and really the common features of the one-man 09:25-09:30 ministry taken from my own experience and from speaking to church members of other churches over 09:30-09:36 the years would be something of the following and you may be able to add other things from your own 09:36-09:43 experience, hopefully not. Minister burnout due to unrealistic pressure to perform impossible 09:43-09:50 workloads imposed by the expectations of the congregation or self-imposed, so minister burnout 09:50-09:57 due to unrealistic pressure to perform. Aloofness because of the isolation due to the feeling of 09:57-10:02 failure to meet expectations and aloofness just because of loss of perspective often 10:02-10:07 and they're there, everyone's looking at them, they lose perspective, they're failing, 10:07-10:10 so this kind of, one of the ways of dealing with that is to be aloof and that's probably the 10:10-10:15 experience of our chap in Aberdeen who just really he just seemed to be quite distant from the rest 10:15-10:18 of us, you couldn't get to him, couldn't get through to him, you couldn't speak to him as a 10:18-10:26 normal human being, he seemed to just have a wall around him. Authoritarian, this is the way things 10:26-10:33 will be and I will not brook any contradiction. People may make helpful suggestions but are turned 10:33-10:39 away as they seem to be threatening the authority of the minister. Defensiveness, I was speaking to 10:39-10:45 one couple recently in Glasgow who were talking about their church and they were very keen to 10:45-10:49 start up a Christian aid thing just to do that in the church, they went to the minister and 10:49-10:54 suggested that they could start up a Christian aid group and he wasn't keen on that and they said to 10:54-11:00 him well what vision do you have for this church and his response, I kid you not, was I have 11:00-11:06 absolutely no vision for this church he said to them but he completely, he was there as the 11:06-11:11 minister and that was his view of things, he was in charge and he wasn't going to allow things to 11:11-11:20 change. Oppression of the traditional eldership, social elders, huge problem in Scotland, I don't 11:20-11:25 know if it's still the same in all churches but it has been a huge problem in Scotland where elders 11:25-11:29 are there not because of their faith at all but simply because they are the doctor or the lawyer 11:29-11:36 or somebody else in the community and their attitude seems to be that they're seeing change 11:36-11:41 and difficulties in every area, other area of their lives and they certainly don't want to see change 11:41-11:44 in church, that's the one stable place where they do not want to see change and they won't let it 11:44-11:53 happen. My father-in-law was an elder in a church in Kilmacove in Bridge of Weir a good number of 11:53-11:58 years ago and he came up with a imaginative suggestion for some change in the church, I'm not 11:58-12:05 exactly sure what it was and one of the other elders said to him Mr Stone you'll never do it 12:05-12:13 and that was the kind of attitude that was among the elders that they didn't want to see change and 12:13-12:19 if you came up with a suggestion they didn't want to know about it. Often too because they were 12:19-12:24 there because of their social position there was really a suspicion and an embarrassment about 12:24-12:29 anything spiritual and certainly when I joined in the Westchurch there if you talked about anything 12:29-12:33 directly spiritual or open to the spirit anyway there was an embarrassment if there's a kind of 12:33-12:36 blankness came over the face and what are you talking about I don't know what you're on about 12:36-12:42 and then very much the attitude towards the minister he is paid to do this job and we're 12:42-12:47 his employers to ensure that he does it so really very oppressive eldership has been a huge problem 12:47-12:53 and I think still is in a lot of churches in Scotland. Lack of emphasis on the body of Christ 12:53-12:58 and the gift to the spirit I can't remember a sermon on 1 Corinthians 12 12:58-13:06 over all the years from these churches I've talked about and really the gift if you've got a one-man 13:06-13:12 ministry and an oppressive eldership the gifts of the spirit are going to be a terrible threat 13:12-13:16 to a one-man ministry he certainly doesn't know one-man minister wants to know about them 13:16-13:20 and it would be a severe embarrassment somebody stood up give a prophecy in a church where it's 13:20-13:26 traditional eldership that is going to be bad news so the results and I mean along with some good 13:26-13:32 fruit as God is always bigger than our shortcomings the result usually is criticism of the minister 13:32-13:38 apathy in the congregation I remember in the very strong bible teaching church that we went to 13:38-13:44 to start with that after we'd been there for about six or seven years we were continually having 13:44-13:48 these discussions with other young people in the church about how it had become like stagnant 13:48-13:53 water we're getting all this terrific teaching coming into us and really great understanding 13:53-13:57 of what the bible said but there was no outlet for it so it became like stagnant water we were 13:57-14:02 all keen to go out and do something but there wasn't any outlet so we just became stagnant 14:02-14:08 and we were frustrated there was frustration and there was disappointment and that goes for the 14:08-14:13 ministers often too in these situations they just live a life of disappointment that they're not 14:13-14:17 achieving anything they came with great visions but because of the situation that they're in 14:17-14:22 they're expected to do too much the elderships on top of them just disappointment and sadly often 14:22-14:27 well not often but sometimes breakdown which is really sad I mean it's there's just too many 14:27-14:33 breakdowns of ministers in the church of Scotland divisions in the church between factions in the 14:33-14:39 church often sort of more evangelically minded and more traditionally minded people divisions 14:39-14:46 there splits bitterness long-term damage to folks faith we've got people I've spoken to who said 14:46-14:50 that through the splits that they've seen in the church that they've been in they'll never go back 14:50-14:54 to the church of Scotland again and often they'll never go back to any church again because of the 14:54-14:59 disappointment and damage that they've seen and also good ministers leaving the church often 14:59-15:06 so tremendously unhelpful results from this one-man ministry model and no doubt all of you can 15:06-15:11 think of other results I've only mentioned a few I've come across you've probably got others 15:11-15:17 which from personal experience you won't be happy with and we were doing a study in our um 15:17-15:23 eldership we had in our eldership in Bancory now we have them one month we have elders meetings for 15:23-15:29 business and then the other month in in between months we have study meetings where we study 15:29-15:36 various things very various subjects and um the we were studying leadership in this last about two 15:36-15:40 days ago and um we were looking at a chap called Tom Houston maybe you some of you know I wasn't 15:40-15:46 quite sure who he was but Tom who's been quoting on leadership from this study session and he says 15:47-15:54 a leader should know what they are gifted for and concentrate on doing that well leaders should work 15:54-16:01 to kill the idea of the omnipotent leader so not in favor of the one-man ministry as you may guess 16:01-16:07 I'm now going to talk just about God's work in Bancory and I want to stress that I'm not 16:07-16:12 setting Bancory up as a model for others to follow God works differently and creatively 16:12-16:18 in each situation and I'm only sharing the story of what happened in Bancory over the past 35 years 16:18-16:23 with a view to seeking some general principles for congregational participation so I don't want 16:23-16:26 people at the end to say oh well that could that could never work and where we are because that's 16:26-16:30 not the point of what I'm trying to do I'm just giving an example of some of the things we've seen 16:30-16:35 there and some of the principles I hope that might come out of it so perhaps wrongly not very 16:35-16:38 helpfully said God's new work in Bancory because it may seem like I'm pushing the Bancory thing 16:39-16:44 but just give you a little bit of history in the 1980s when we arrived in Bancory 16:44-16:51 1982 in fact just a little bit later there was a confluence of committed Christian families 16:51-17:00 and PhD students studying under J.B. Torrance who came to together in Bancory it really was 17:00-17:05 God's work there was no other way of saying it God brought a number of committed Christian families 17:05-17:09 no doubt through the oil industry it was just getting going and so a lot of people came in 17:09-17:14 because of that and these PhD students we had Baxter Kruger come over at that stage 17:14-17:20 we had Gary and Kathy Deddo who you probably know and we had the Tim and Kerry Dearborn 17:20-17:29 who were all American students they'd heard J.B. speaking and his tours in America and just loved 17:29-17:34 the sound of what he was saying and would just give up their homes their churches and come over 17:34-17:39 and study under him to do their PhDs so we had this and they would come in with their experiences 17:39-17:45 from the church in America and what they were learning from J.B. and they really helped to us 17:45-17:52 to revolutionize what was going on and to think differently about church they would they would 17:52-17:56 ask us we would say well we would talk about how we were frustrated by this one man ministry that 17:56-18:02 we were involved in and they would say well why don't you do something to change it well we can't 18:02-18:06 change this this is the church of Scotland there's no way we can change this we're not elders or 18:06-18:10 anything and they would say well why not you know so they really kind of opened up the question 18:10-18:16 why not why don't you think differently and in the church itself in the early 80s we had early 18:16-18:22 attempts by the minister then at church house groups and we started off having some house 18:22-18:26 groups that's really revolutionary in the 80s to have any kind of house group we would study sort 18:26-18:31 of courses but they they kind of petered out because I don't know if you've had this but we 18:31-18:36 always found we had the unhelpful over talkative person who completely killed the group off and 18:36-18:39 we didn't know how to deal with that kind of thing so you'd get one guy who'd always get onto 18:39-18:44 his hobby horse and then of course after two or three weeks the numbers would just dive and 18:44-18:50 so the groups it was a good start but it didn't it didn't last very long and then we had so what 18:50-18:54 we decided to do in coming in as the committed Christian families was we couldn't get into the 18:54-18:59 eldership they weren't interested they wanted to keep the church the same very suspicious of us 18:59-19:05 doing too far too keen and so we started to teach sunday school we started to teach the bible class 19:05-19:11 we started to run the youth group and did all the things that the elders didn't want to do 19:11-19:15 basically so they didn't want to do any of that stuff and they were happy if you got involved 19:15-19:20 because it kept it off their back so we took on the sort of the dirty jobs if you like and it did 19:20-19:24 them as far as they were concerned and we also sometimes got to look in on the summer informal 19:24-19:28 services because and they were a bit uncomfortable about them it wasn't a traditional service and if 19:28-19:32 we're going to have an early morning service on a sunday oh yeah we'll let these new committed 19:32-19:36 evangelicals do it because we don't know what to do in these situations it's outside our comfort zone 19:36-19:41 so we've got little bits of toe hold in there and then we also did quite a lot of parachurch 19:41-19:47 activity at that stage there was a very early ladies prayer group and prayer is huge and 19:47-19:54 everything i'm going to say and the only three or four of them who had been praying in banquo before 19:54-19:59 we got there and really praying for revival in the town and they had early words of prophecy 19:59-20:05 of blessing on the town and they were just a small parachurch group which weren't particularly 20:05-20:11 noticed by anybody but i think absolutely crucial to what has happened in the town and there were 20:11-20:17 also ladies bible study groups where ladies just started saying we want to study the bible together 20:17-20:21 and on often on wednesday mornings they would get together and these groups would just groan 20:21-20:25 more and more women would want to come to them then they'd have to split them and there'd be 20:25-20:29 another split another split over the years so they were very influential in terms of the ladies 20:29-20:35 studying the bible we also had a men's prayer group where and especially this was the americans were 20:35-20:40 great at this the the dearborns and the deados and the and the baxter and so on they would come up to 20:40-20:46 my house actually quite often and there's about 12 of us would get together and we would pray for 20:46-20:51 the town we would pray for the churches we would pray for the nation and then we prayed particularly 20:51-20:55 for each other's work and i just remember these tremendously helpful times where we were able to 20:55-21:00 share what our problems were at work and the guys would really get down and pray for us and really 21:00-21:04 get involved and they'd come back two weeks later and they'd say well how's it going you know and 21:04-21:08 i would come away from these meetings in the evening just thinking i can really face tomorrow 21:08-21:12 got some very difficult jobs at work and stuff and i can really face them now through these prayer 21:12-21:18 meetings and then we we started going to spring harvest and taking people to the to spring harvest 21:18-21:22 and then there was a point although the church was still very traditional we actually had 70 people 21:22-21:27 going to spring harvest with us and it was a huge number from a small church to be going and we 21:27-21:32 started taking some of the more open elders and they're just their minds were absolutely blown i 21:32-21:39 remember taking two ladies down to hit to um one of the the spring harvests and they just could not 21:39-21:43 believe five thousand people singing with their hands raised singing in tongues and so on like 21:43-21:47 that they they were just their minds were blown of course they came back to the church and just uh 21:47-21:51 we're sort of saying wow this is it seems very stayed here now you know so gradually we're making 21:51-21:56 a little bit of it the god was making little inroads into what was going on but the underlying 21:56-22:03 conviction that we all had was that the whole body had to be involved and that the minister 22:03-22:08 and the traditional eldership were like corks in the bottle stopping the fizz of the holy spirit 22:08-22:15 from bursting out that we really had a stopper there in the bottle still then in the 1990s we 22:15-22:20 started a thing called sunday night live for really throw taking as many people down to spring harvest 22:20-22:25 we all agreed that the church services and the church situation was so boring that our kids were 22:25-22:29 not going to thrive and so we all agreed at spring harvest and we had a big meeting outside the 22:29-22:33 caravans and there's big whole numbers of us there saying right well when we get back we're going to 22:33-22:40 start a service of our own on sunday evenings and we tim dearborn from america when he was an 22:40-22:44 elder in the east church we have two churches in bankary the east church and the west church 22:44-22:49 and he went along to the east church and said look guys i want to warn you that there is going to be 22:49-22:54 a different service in bankary and either you need to bring that service within the churches and 22:54-22:59 bless it or you're going to find a separate church being set up in bankary and the eldership was 22:59-23:04 totally taken aback and shocked by this and we'd already started by that time in the guide hut 23:04-23:08 having an evening service where families would just run it and we were just different family 23:08-23:12 would take it each week and to start with we had about a hundred people coming to it 23:12-23:16 i did the numbers did drop away over the years there wasn't that number long long term but the 23:16-23:21 church has said okay right we don't like it but you can carry on with your sunday night live 23:21-23:29 services and that was an absolute godsend because it gave practical lay training and involvement 23:29-23:34 with people that's where the body really started working we had an opportunity to try and to fail 23:34-23:40 and to find out what gifts each person had and um it's quite funny if you were if you didn't 23:40-23:44 appreciate what somebody done one week you didn't criticize them because you knew you'd be doing it 23:44-23:49 the next week and you were going to have to do it so there was a tremendous sense of being together 23:49-23:55 and being blessed together in doing that and that had great effects the training we trained so many 23:55-24:01 people through that in sunday night live that when we needed them in the church there were lots of 24:01-24:06 people trained up and ready to be part of the body in the church which we come on to later we also at 24:06-24:14 that time started a relational joint youth program between the two churches and there had been quite 24:14-24:19 a strong youth work even during the one-man ministry there had been really keen christians 24:19-24:24 who'd taken on the youth and during the early 1980s and so on they had quite a strong youth 24:24-24:30 group and working there but i had rather dwindled and then when the um americans came across 24:30-24:38 the deerborns particularly were were ministers in a big church in seattle and one summer around 1989 24:38-24:44 they brought they asked their youth leader there to bring over the youth group and they were they 24:44-24:48 did things in the park they played games in the park and they had lots of fun and the banquery 24:48-24:53 kids were absolutely blown away by these young cool american girls and boys who believed in 24:53-24:58 jesus because i mean such cynicism at least that bank is just full of cynicism and they just 24:58-25:03 couldn't believe that these young people who were so cool actually believed in jesus and then one of 25:03-25:08 the leaders of the seattle group that came across about 1989 was so touched by god that she said she 25:08-25:14 wanted to come back and be a leader in banquery and the church in america for the first year paid 25:14-25:19 for her to be the youth minister for the two churches and then once the model that was set 25:19-25:24 up and we had about 50 or 60 kids come to the older group and we had about 20 or 30 kids come 25:24-25:29 to the younger group we called the older one the edge and the younger one the rock once the um 25:29-25:35 churches and banquets seen the impact of this kind of relational youth work which i'll speak 25:35-25:39 about just in a minute and they said right well we'll pay for it ourselves so for one year the 25:39-25:44 american church paid and then the two churches together took on the payment for this full-time 25:44-25:50 youth worker and talk about the difference here was a relational youth ministry and in the past 25:50-25:55 we had the one man talk from the front to the youth group which is great i'm not criticizing 25:55-26:00 that but that was the style you had you got people in maybe a few games and then you had a one man 26:00-26:04 talk from the front and often you tried to bring them to faith in the one talk one evening sort of 26:04-26:10 thing that kind of way of working um but what this relational youth work looked like was that 26:10-26:18 the um the mission statement that we had was that you make contacts you make friends and then you 26:18-26:22 make disciples and the whole idea was we want to include as many people in this outside of the 26:22-26:27 church and everything else just make the contacts have such a good time on the evenings that we play 26:27-26:32 games all the time the verbal content was often very little in both the young group and there was 26:32-26:37 something at the end usually but most of the evening was just really good fun games and then 26:37-26:42 the idea was make contacts then make the friends there by people coming along relationally and then 26:42-26:48 eventually make the disciples and it quite amused us because over the years um we didn't we weren't 26:48-26:53 big on teaching people bible verses or teaching people big chunks of the bible but we found that 26:53-26:57 when kids who had been through the youth work went down to university they would often get involved 26:57-27:01 in navigators and i remember going down to one of their flats in edinburgh and their whole walls were 27:01-27:05 covered in bible verses and the kind of thing that we hadn't done with them in the youth group they 27:05-27:10 were actually doing themselves in when they were actually at university and we have seen over the 27:10-27:17 years that that kind of relational model has been extremely effective in producing young people who 27:17-27:21 have gone on to work in other churches and be youth leaders in other churches and carried on 27:21-27:26 in the faith and the way i look at it is that the youth work is like a teenage ocean i think i 27:26-27:34 mentioned this once before here that um teenage years are like a very rough ocean for kids and 27:34-27:39 very rough place to get across and that you've got to find the right boat to get them over there 27:39-27:45 and that basically as you all know when they become teenagers parents become unimportant 27:45-27:48 it's the peer group that's everything it's not the the leaders that are important not 27:48-27:53 the parents that are important it's the um it's the peer group and if you're going to get them 27:53-28:00 across that teenage ocean safely then you need to get them in the right boat and we felt that 28:00-28:05 this relational youth work was the right boat and it became a cool place for kids from the school to 28:05-28:09 come to so it wasn't like oh you're going to that boring church place it was more this is a great 28:09-28:14 place for having good lots of fun here and they made really good friends so that was another very 28:14-28:18 and that relational model was very important for the church as well because as the church 28:18-28:23 saw the relational model working in the youth work it started having an effect on the church itself 28:24-28:30 the other thing was alpha courses which were run by lay people with and in the alpha courses you 28:30-28:35 know there is the emphasis on the holy spirit and being filled with the spirit and what does the 28:35-28:39 spirit do who is the spirit and how can i be filled with the spirit and we used to always run 28:39-28:44 bible studies talking about the gifts of the spirit and the whole body working together and 28:44-28:49 i remember time after time when we did these alpha groups and people would be totally amazed when we 28:49-28:54 came to study 1 Corinthians 12 because they'd never heard of it before you mean actually i could use 28:54-28:59 my gifts in the church i you were expected to use our gifts in the church and well why isn't it 28:59-29:02 happening and there was amazement as they looked around and thought we've been in the church for 29:02-29:06 years and no one has talked to us about the gifts of the spirit or the fact that these gifts could 29:06-29:12 make a difference in the church or we're entitled or free to do that um so these are these were all 29:12-29:19 things that were chipping away at the one-man ministry and um so the new common features that 29:19-29:24 we were seeing in the 1990s and none of these were instant or constant it wasn't a sort of constant 29:24-29:28 i mean i can't see if the line that went on there were variations there were stops and starts 29:28-29:34 and you couldn't be otherwise with humans and human relationships but there was an emphasis 29:34-29:44 on spirit-led gifts and the abilities of church members and it also involved vision and humility 29:44-29:49 from the minister and a willingness to share ministry i remember that the minister we had 29:49-29:55 just before donald walker who who came later and i'll be talking about him and he was a very 29:55-29:59 tentative steps he could begin to see what was going on very tentative steps but nervous because 29:59-30:06 he was a traditional one-man minister type of guy and and we started asking him down to to spring 30:06-30:10 harvest and he was very kind of nervous about coming to spring harvest and came along eventually 30:10-30:14 and then but when we first asked him to come to um spring harvest this was about six months 30:14-30:21 beforehand he blurted out i might have a funeral that day but he did come so that was quite quite 30:21-30:25 good and he was very open to that and then he he started coming to sunday night live and he was 30:25-30:30 tremendous actually because he he wanted to have communion for the children so he he gave them 30:30-30:34 ribena and grapes and he was explaining communion to them so he was a very open man and but he was 30:34-30:38 just it was all new to him he'd been brought up in the tradition of the one-man ministry and now he 30:38-30:45 could begin to see things moving um so the minister yes a vision and humility from the minister and 30:45-30:49 our willingness to share his ministry that can be a problem for some ministers seeing the minister 30:49-30:56 as the teaching elder the minister can have friends in the parish and doesn't have to be aloof 30:56-31:03 the minister can honestly identify his strengths and weaknesses and ask himself what do i hate 31:03-31:09 doing or put off doing maybe there's someone else who has that gift which will free me up to do that 31:09-31:15 for which god has gifted me and there was a changing attitude too of the kirk session one of 31:15-31:20 the big factors was us was us was peter nelson's church without walls i remember that coming out 31:20-31:24 and we all thought we'll study it and i think to start with the elders thought oh just one of these 31:24-31:28 courses we'll have a study of it but then it became quite revolutionary because one of the 31:28-31:33 biggest things it said was that elders meetings weren't secret and the minutes weren't secret 31:33-31:37 and this absolutely blew our elderships mind they couldn't believe this they thought 31:37-31:41 that all the time the power of the eldership had been in the secrecy of the meetings and the 31:41-31:46 secrecy of the elders minutes and the assumption was and they certainly kept this on that we were 31:46-31:50 not allowed to see the minutes and that it was a anything that was discussed in the eldership could 31:50-31:57 not be in any way come out of that secret secret society and nelson said in church that was 31:57-32:02 absolute nonsense anyone can go along to the church elders meetings and it was quite funny 32:02-32:06 because just after that the eldership the old tradition was it started just dissipating the 32:06-32:10 people just disappeared it was like their secret society was no longer going to work and they 32:10-32:15 started retiring quite quickly and quite soon after that a lot of the committed christians say 32:15-32:19 who had come in who'd been refused eldership before they weren't interested in having anything 32:19-32:24 to do with us were included in the eldership and got on there and that started of course that just 32:24-32:29 changed a lot as well openness to the work and gifts of the spirit we began to have words of 32:29-32:34 prophecy words of knowledge from time to time about the church and which were actually published 32:34-32:41 on the church walls the church began to be about god-given relationships vertically with god 32:41-32:46 and horizontally with each other rather than about traditions and keeping these traditions 32:46-32:52 we began to have a fellowship of grace where people were allowed to fail and we began to 32:52-32:57 have a culture of encouragement not criticism tremendous culture of criticism in churches 32:57-33:03 we began to have a culture of encouragement and not criticism we began to have an an attitude 33:03-33:07 of gratitude i say that because it comes from spider-man i was a i was watching spider-man 33:07-33:11 recently with my grandson and spider-man was saying we all ought to have an attitude of 33:11-33:15 gratitude and i thought that was a really good thing so we did actually start having 33:15-33:23 an attitude of gratitude and not grumbling in the church and there was an op we were presented as 33:23-33:28 having an opportunity to serve and not a duty to serve and there was a real thought that if 33:28-33:34 there's nobody volunteering to do a job don't pressure somebody into doing it unwillingly 33:34-33:40 but ask if god is saying it should be scrapped or split up and arranged differently or if someone 33:40-33:47 should be paid to do it externally do we believe that god will provide willing workers empowered 33:47-33:53 and energized by his spirit or do we secretly harbor the cynical attitude that church life 33:53-33:59 will always be a hassle where we have to force square pegs into round holes to survive 33:59-34:11 the 2000s to date the donald walker bob's brother came to be our minister around in the 1990s not 34:11-34:17 the exact year and he started to be actively participating and encouraging sunday night 34:17-34:22 live where we'd had kind of tacit acceptance before he was getting involved he was leading 34:22-34:26 he was being part of it and just being part of the what was going on in the church there 34:26-34:31 he started a worship planning group to plan the preaching themes and the preachers 34:31-34:37 a how much humility does this take to share even the minister's calling to word and sacrament 34:37-34:43 he was willing to meet with us once every six months and to discuss together where the church 34:43-34:47 was going what we should be studying and who would even preach from time to time 34:49-34:56 we started a creation of a core group and church teams where we had a worship team a property team 34:56-35:02 an outreach team discipleship team pastoral care team a world church team and a fellowship and 35:02-35:08 hospitality team we saw that another church doing this and again donald was happy to have another 35:08-35:13 church minister come and explain how they divided the church up into teams and how it was working 35:13-35:18 and all the elders went away for a day retreat and we were willing humbly to change our 35:18-35:24 models to that and the big thing was that no longer did elders have to be the leaders of any 35:24-35:29 of these teams anyone in the congregation could be the leader and could take part in these teams 35:29-35:37 there was a smooth we had a transition in a vacancy when donald went off to 35:37-35:45 sambabwe in 2010 our youth minister tony steven um became the minister but we had about an 18-month 35:45-35:50 vacancy and with all the lay member training that we'd had through sunday night live we were able to 35:50-35:55 pretty much run the church with god's help through that period without any help from we had an 35:55-35:59 interim minister from the east church but she just let us get on with it because she knew that there 35:59-36:04 were so many people who'd been lay trained by that time to to do it and when tony our minister 36:04-36:11 he gave his first sermon he um said that he was going to disappoint a lot of people and let let 36:11-36:17 a lot of people down and he said that he'd taken three vows in his life one was to his wife at 36:17-36:24 marriage one was to his children at baptism and one was when he became ordained as a minister 36:24-36:26 and he said that he intended to keep all three of these vows 36:26-36:33 so he was really saying i'm not going to allow myself to be forced into a position where i am 36:33-36:38 not able to keep my other vows because i'm being forced to keep the one vow i took as a minister 36:39-36:44 and he's kept to that and has because because of the fact that he sees the body as being the 36:44-36:49 important thing and himself just being the teaching elder and sharing the rest of the 36:49-36:55 ministry with the church so now we have member led activities which tony doesn't take any part 36:55-37:00 in at all we just don't see him at any of them we have the well every month which is a service 37:00-37:06 for worship and listening to god prayer for healing and ministry to one another and we have 37:06-37:13 a reflective reflective prayer group to listen to god we have a weekly prayer and monthly prayer 37:13-37:18 breakfast a weekly prayer every monday evening and a monthly prayer breakfast we did struggle to get 37:18-37:24 prayer groups going over the years very few people would come to them and what we would try to do 37:24-37:30 often was try to have an evening of prayer and so on but what we've now hit on which actually works 37:30-37:37 for us is we've hit on a short half hour meeting a weekly between 6 45 and 7 15 on a monday evening 37:37-37:42 and we found because we've kept the evening short that we've got a lot more people we have about 12 37:42-37:47 people coming along and really praying pretty fervently for half an hour on a monday evening 37:47-37:52 and then we have an hour on a saturday morning before breakfast once a month and again because 37:52-37:56 we've kept it short we seem to have got a lot of people coming there and for us that seems to be 37:56-38:01 the short meetings have been far more effective than asking people to come for long sessions which 38:01-38:06 they just didn't seem to come to um but obviously each church has to find out what's going to work 38:06-38:12 for them um we have about 12 bible study groups and home fellowship groups and one of the things 38:12-38:16 we've done there is we've um and this has been quite helpful we've allowed there to be men's 38:16-38:23 groups and separate ladies groups and we found that for young men and women that because they can 38:23-38:27 come along to a man's group one night of the week and their wife can go to another night of the week 38:27-38:31 to a ladies group they don't need babysitters so we've actually found that we've got more people 38:31-38:36 coming than if we want men and women groups and they've got to get a babysitter just too much 38:36-38:41 hassle cost money so they don't come so that's been quite helpful for us we've also had a thing 38:41-38:48 called going deeper where we um after the sermon on a sunday on a monday evening and all those who 38:48-38:53 wanted to come and get get deeper into the sermon would come and would discuss it somebody would 38:53-38:57 lead it tony again gets doesn't get involved in any of these things i've mentioned at all 38:57-39:02 even the prayer meetings he doesn't come to um he just obviously he feels that that's he does not 39:02-39:08 pray himself but again um showing the extent of what god is doing in terms of the the whole body 39:08-39:15 so what we have now is a ministry team and paid minister and a paid youth minister who works for 39:15-39:19 both churches we've got an administrator as part-time and we've got a music director who's 39:19-39:26 got to just get an honorarium unpaid we've got a pastoral assistant who takes all the funerals 39:26-39:32 and is in charge of the pastoral care and god just called this lady to do this she went for training 39:32-39:37 and she now people they don't even think about asking for the minister to do the funerals they're 39:37-39:41 happy for this lady to do them and she's very i've been to a number of funerals she's done she's very 39:41-39:48 very gifted person to do that um we have two rookies for the youth work as well one of the 39:48-39:53 things we found that with the youth work youth minister as he got older she gets older she loses 39:53-39:59 touch with the young people so we've brought in each year two rookies from often from america or 39:59-40:05 from other parts of britain or from our own youth work and kids who are 18 19 20 years old and they 40:05-40:10 work alongside the youth minister and are mentored by the youth minister and are able to keep really 40:10-40:15 good contact with the young people and that's been very successful over the years and we found that a 40:15-40:20 number of these rookies we've been doing this for about 15 years now a number of these rookies now 40:20-40:24 have gone on to be full youth ministers elsewhere or indeed trained for the ministry our present 40:24-40:29 youth worker amy pierce came right through our youth work from the start and it's now she trained 40:29-40:35 for the church of scotland and is now our youth minister we have seven team leaders with teams of 40:35-40:43 five to ten lay members so um really just some ideas there about about our experience and all 40:43-40:48 of you have different experiences of body participation and it's been a long process for us 40:48-40:54 but maybe just some ideas there to um help us talk about this later and maybe tomorrow morning so how 40:54-40:59 does tft's theology contribute to congregational participation this is where our other sheet's 40:59-41:07 going to come in at the first reading of tft's long chapter 11 it is long in atonement entitled 41:07-41:13 the one church of god in jesus christ it doesn't seem to address directly the practical matter of 41:13-41:19 congregational participation but on closer inspection we see that tom torrance had such 41:19-41:24 a comprehensive view of the church that it's clear that he wouldn't have contemplated for one moment 41:25-41:30 that the true nature or purpose of the church could be reflected or achieved other than by 41:30-41:51 congregational participation first okay and then have some discussion just now we should do the 41:51-41:55 theological bit tomorrow morning well if you feel a bit helpful to have just come back discussion 41:55-42:04 that'd be a good idea yeah okay let's do that yep