One of the lectures titles I inherited at London School of Theology was ‘are ministers professionals?’ I did a straw poll of 108 ministers from a wide range of denominations and found a range of opinions. 43% ticked professional, 9% not professional, but 21% and 22% opted for additional categories ‘legally yes, mentality no’ and ‘not professional but with some professional skills’. The heart of the quandry was how to be accessible, human, and alongside, while still ‘performing professionally’ at a level any 21st Century organisation needs and requires. We’ve gone from budding amateurs to responsible trustees, employers, and organisational leaders, while trying to remember that ‘shepherds are supposed to smell of the sheep’

Within the churches a parallel professionalisation has occured. As both working age and retired congregations have busier and more active professional, relational and social lives (and a built in need for netflix) more churches have found the need to staff activities professionally. This can then lead to a spiral loop where once willing ‘volunteers’ assume they are no longer needed, such as when a church employs a young youth worker for the first time and 5 mid-life volunteers step down assuming they are not needed and maybe breathing a sigh of relief that this area of their life can be handed on.

But even more fundamentally a shift has occured in confidence of congregations to share faith. They’ve been systematically retrained away from knowing how to ‘take good news down the street’, and lead someone else to Christ personally, to becoming very occasional recruiters for a 6-12 week course that may happen once or twice a year. So if they have a God-conversation in November, February or April, their recruitment strategy may be ‘why don’t you try out our course next September?’

This is of course crazy, even if like me, you are an ardent supporter of such courses and of creating and developing staff teams. That is why it was so refreshing to join the BD7 cluster of churches in Bradford on a mission this past week as part of a SOMA team. Yes, some fabulous paid and self-supporting staff were heavily involved, and yes, a key part of the follow up will be an Alpha Course, but the ‘back to basics’ revolutionary idea was [gulp] ‘everyone gets to play’.

We had little old ladies in their 70s/80s walking around Tesco and Aldi carparks giving out flyers and praying for people, inviting them into events and watching them come. We had a paralympian congregation member putting on a table tennis event in his local estate community centre and sharing his faith and story in a compelling way. We had recent converts door knocking in between fag breaks, and we had a host of people making a warm welcome at outdoor and indoor events, through BBQs, sports, litter picks, inviting friends to nuetral venues (eg Cricket club) and blessing the community in countless ways. Several people prayed with team members some of whom wanted salvation there and then.

And it all started because one of the leadership team said to herself after a prayer time: ‘I think what we need is an old school mission, where we put out the nets and see what God brings in…’ So a strategy emerged to democratise the church and send everyone out on mission. People who never thought they could go out and make a difference did it en masse…. a true joy to witness and support through our SOMA ministry. BD7 was truly loved.