Graham Heaps with an encouraging story of church plants old and new
There is often something delightfully unexpected about divine providence.
Who would have imagined that the shyest young man in the Aberystwyth Christian Union in the late 1960s would become an almost life-long church planter, and that without significant change in his basic disposition? Yet almost 50 years later I find myself nervously yet enthusiastically involved in a third church-planting project. This time I am seeking to support 15 or so folk, all at least young enough to be my children, who are attempting to establish Grace Church in the West Yorkshire city of Wakefield, six or so miles south of Leeds.
History
My planting days began in late 1973 when, at the ridiculously young age of 24, I was unanimously called to be the pastor of the fledgling Dewsbury Evangelical Church.
When I arrived in the run-down, former industrial town, the ‘church’ had been going for just 13 months and the addition of Sue and me increased its membership to a new high of six! Yet, in response to fervent prayer and earnest though often rather feeble efforts to spread the gospel, the Lord graciously built a sizeable church for his glory.
Then in 1986, with the help of Mick Lockwood and the friends at Thornhill Baptist Chapel, Dewsbury Evangelical Church started to plant a church in Mirfield, three miles west of us in the Calder Valley. Mirfield is a town of approaching 20,000 people, and before the new church began it had no gospel church of any stripe.
Planting there was a vision we had seen growing among us since the earliest years of the work in Dewsbury and, in truth, only fear, coupled with anxieties about leadership for the new work, delayed its beginning until the mid-1980s. In the end the churches in Dewsbury and Thornhill were able to give a couple of dozen people to the new work. In 1989 we called John Harris from Shepshed to lead that work, which left me free to return to full-time preoccupation with affairs at the greatly reduced work in Dewsbury. Since then, thankfully, the church in Mirfield has also been blessed by the Lord and continues to thrive.
Then, around five years ago, young men in the congregation in Dewsbury refocussed our attention on the spiritual needs of the nearby city of Wakefield, with its population approaching 80,000 people. Wakefield is not without some gospel witness but large areas of the town appear to be almost completely unreached. Following much prayer and earnest discussion, church services were started some two years ago, and we now meet at 10.30 every Sunday morning at Jubilee Hall on the Lupset estate. Jubilee Hall is a well equipped and widely used civic building, 300 yards off the main Dewsbury Road (A638), just over a mile to the west of Wakefield city centre.
Needs
Thankfully, we are now beginning to see some small signs of progress in the work.
Unchurched people are starting to come in and we have a handful of folk on a Christianity Explored course. I sense a growing excitement in the embryonic church, but we are all profoundly aware of two pressing needs, which are heard prominently in our prayer meetings.
First in our minds is our need for the blessing of the Lord in conversions. My young colleagues (and dear friends) are regularly sharing their faith with neighbours, friends and work mates. Indeed, their zeal has been a great challenge to this pensioner who has been in Christ for more than half a century. They are earnest, winsome Christians with a passion for the Lord and his gospel and a love for people. Yet we wait as yet for a harvest related specifically to the life of the new church.
A close second in our thinking is the need for more workers. Indeed, since we began we have lost some who have had to move for work or family ties, and the hearts of others are in gospel work elsewhere. As a result there seems to be too few of us to grasp all the opportunities we have at the moment to follow up and disciple people who are currently in our orbit, let alone to seize all the openings that present themselves. People need time and love. It is all too easy to spread yourself too thinly. Hence we pray, seek and even ferret for more labourers to join us.
Lessons
Having been involved in a number of attempts to plant new churches, I am perhaps in a position to highlight a number of observations on such work, which I believe can help others who are considering or are newly involved in such ventures. Three stand out to me from the works that have dominated my brief life.
• The preciousness of working together. There is something very beautiful about the way the Lord draws together the hearts of those who share in such spiritual endeavours. I have found my heart united with folk who were so different from me in age, temperament, background and life experience, to my great joy and benefit. This is one of the ways the Lord rewards those who step out of their comfort zones to devote themselves to the hard graft of seeking with others to build and strengthen the Lord’s kingdom. There are few blessings to compare with it in this world.
• The importance of keeping focus. Even in attempting to plant a new church it is tragically easy to get distracted from what we are really about. Church plants are about reaching new people with the gospel. They are surely not primarily for the convenience of meeting closer to where we live. Or, if that is a big part of the reason for starting a work, surely it must be seen as a great opportunity to reach out to people who live around us. One of my greatest failings as a pastor was to do so little to reach out with the gospel in Heckmondwike when church growth relocated us to that town for five years as a temporary Sunday morning meeting place. Pre-eminently, new churches must be about the business of winning others for Christ. That must surely fill our vision and dominate our prayers.
• The reality of Satanic opposition. Satan’s hatred for all attempts to plant new gospel churches in Wakefield has been evident to me (and others) for generations. Men of far greater vision and faith have been foiled in their longings and attempts to get new works off the ground there. And, since we have begun our work, almost everyone involved has been faced with significant, in some cases devastating, personal trials and afflictions. Clearly all is in our Father’s hand, and he overrules all to grow us more in likeness to his Son, but we ignore or underrate Satan’s activity to our own great danger. Satan hates it when we seek to plunder his kingdom. Please join us in praying for all involved in Grace Church, Wakefield, or in similar work elsewhere, that none would be intimidated or floored by the efforts of the Evil One.
Postscript
Being involved in Grace Church, Wakefield has been a great tonic and blessing for me. I missed the early days of the ‘public face’ of the church through caring for my dying wife Sue. Since then, being a loved and humblingly valued part of the church has given me focus for my ongoing life and my service to the Lord, and new joys to balance the heartache of losing my best friend. It has been a particular joy not to have responsibility for the weekly Bible ministry in the church, since we have the excellent ministry of our leader, Ian Goodson, and the riches of three young men besides him to share the preaching work. All four have considerable and developing gifts in public preaching. That has left me gloriously free to serve by chatting (and hopefully listening) to those who come in, as well as seeking to do all I can to encourage all who are engaged in the work. I hope that this will prove useful while ever the Lord spares me!
