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With David Barrie
83 Plays4 years ago
With the Coronavirus lockdown, many of us are having our relationships deeply disturbed as we struggle to connect with others from a distance. What impact does this have on the gospel? This time on PEP Talk, Andy and Kristi speak with small town pastor and football chaplain David Barrie about connecting and sharing with others in our churches, sports clubs and our communities.
David Barrie is one of the pastors of Pitlochry Baptist Church in Highland Perthshire. He has served as a chaplain in Scottish Football since 2001, and for the past 8 seasons, chaplain to St Johnstone Football Club in Perth.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Greeting
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. My name is Kristy Mayer and I'm joined by my marvellous co-host Andy Bannister. Hey Andy, how's it going? It's going well, Kristy. The sun is shining up here in Scotland. What is not to like? Oh, indeed. And it's same here too.
David Barry's Scottish Heritage
00:00:26
Speaker
And we're also joined by our wonderful guest David Barry. David, hi.
00:00:30
Speaker
Good afternoon. Good afternoon to you too. It's not so sunny here in Pitlockry. It's actually quite overcast. I'm jealous of Yandy. I'm sorry to hear that. Well, it's good to have you on the show, David, because I always feel a fraud saying I'm from Scotland and American listeners going, is that a Scottish accent? It isn't, but you are genuinely properly Scottish.
00:00:50
Speaker
and you're in a beautiful part of the world. You're based in Pitlockery and for non-Scott, so we're not familiar, but roughly where is that in this country? Geographically, banging the centre of Scotland. I think if memory serves my right, only about, I don't know, half a mile from where I'm sitting is the centre of Scotland. But I was brought up in God's country in Glasgow, so I'm a Glaswegian. My accent is getting very civilised because I've been away from Glasgow for 20 years.
00:01:19
Speaker
I wouldn't dare say anything following that because I'll just get in trouble. Silence is golden, Andy. David, welcome to the show.
Role as Pastor and Football Chaplain
00:01:27
Speaker
You are the pastor of Pat Lockry Baptist Church, aren't you?
00:01:31
Speaker
Yes, Pet Loughley. You know, my surname there is actually Scottish. I'm betraying my own adopted roots here. I'm so sorry. And you have a wonderful bio. I was just going through this and we're chatting about it before we started a recording. And you were the chaplain for Sterling Albion FC, weren't you?
00:01:52
Speaker
I was, yes, from 2001 to maybe about 2010. And then after a couple of years of coming away from football chaplain, say I've been the chaplain with the mighty St. Johnston football club who are based in Perth, in Perthshire. And I hear they're in the Premier League, aren't they? They are, you know.
00:02:14
Speaker
six years ago was it? Five years ago time flies by they won the Scottish Cup and it was wonderful being involved in the club during all of that. A relatively small club in a small town city in Scotland so it's great to be involved in that side of ministry.
00:02:30
Speaker
Amazing. You know, we'd love to hear more about that.
Journey to Chaplaincy
00:02:33
Speaker
How did you, I mean, your background, you've got a lot of experience in mission and evangelism. You've got a master's in using church community as a welcoming place. But we'd love to hear more about your experience as a chaplain. How did you, what did that look like for you going in there as a pastor? And how did you go about connecting football with the gospel? I was youth pastor at Stirling Baptist and I received a phone call, a message
00:03:00
Speaker
into the office that said someone from Manchester United is trying to get a hold of you. So I had all these delusions of grandeur and eventually phoned and it was a guy called John Boyers who was a director of an organization called Score that had opened up Stirling Albion. They were looking for a chaplain. It was a new manager and manager was very community orientated. And so I met with John Boyers in the car park of the football clubs
00:03:28
Speaker
at the stadium at a football club. He, over one hour in his car, described to me where it was to be a chaplain in football. We went in to meet Ray Stewart, who was a Scottish international and one of the members of the very famous West Ham team. And from that moment onwards, I became the chaplain. And really, for three months, every Tuesday night, every Thursday night, because they were part-time team,
00:03:53
Speaker
I would stand
Influence and Evangelism in Football
00:03:54
Speaker
at training, I would get introduced to the players, I was told wear your suit and match day and go into the boardroom, just treat this place as if it's your own. And that was wonderful, it was great advice from the manager, Ray Stewart, just come in, be seen, be about and then when the time is right, we'll get you with your football boots on and we'll come and you can join in the training. And I did that ever since I did that with the apprentices, I did that with the players.
00:04:19
Speaker
Obviously, they get to a certain point in the training where I just can't keep up technically or physically, but I would be there being a ball boy. But it was about rubbing the shoulders with the players, getting to know them behind the scenes, more often than not, away from the club, getting to know their families and being there, just being part of the team. You know, it's like being part of the dressing room, but you're not really part of the dressing room because it does go too far and you have to remind yourself
00:04:47
Speaker
I'm a representative of Jesus here and I need to step back. So that's roughly how it came about and roughly how it goes, I guess.
00:04:57
Speaker
I think what I'm fascinated about that story there David is I think there's a lesson isn't there for Christians in general that I think sometimes you know we're not looking for those points where we can find those points of connection whether it's the in your case football club or it's you know getting involved ourselves in a sporting activity or some or something in the community because I love that phrase you talk about rubbing shoulders with people I wonder whether you know evangelism gets easier the more the more shoulders we can learn to rub
00:05:21
Speaker
with our friends and our neighbours who don't know Christ is one of the problems as Christians sometimes we're too quick to sort of get involved in church activities and not quick enough to get involved in community stuff where we will actually meet more people we can share Christ with.
Community Presence and Adaptation During COVID-19
00:05:35
Speaker
It's just doing life with people. It sounds simple, it should be simple and I know in our church activities we've got a lot going
00:05:44
Speaker
and it's resource-hungry. I often have referred to our Sundays and we are just a small, you know, 120 worshiping adults, a small church in a wee village in the centre of Scotland. But to run a Sunday is resource-hungry and I've often called Sunday a big monster. And it's a monster that is important but boy, it exhausts. And
00:06:11
Speaker
To be in community with people over a long period of time where they can see you, works and all, that hopefully you're consistent is vital. They can see what you're like under pressure. They can see how you work with your money and treat people and talk to people, all of those sorts of things. I found the most, the strangest time in football in particular, I would be a number of occasions I'm in a dressing room
00:06:40
Speaker
and there's just a wee lull in the conversation. And football dressing rooms are much like dressing rooms when you are changing rooms when you're a boy at school. If you show any weakness, people pounce on you and you become the butt of the jokes and it can be quite a tense place at times. And I can remember a number of occasions where just the conversation died and it's quiet and then a player would say, so Rev I know nothing about Christianity, tell me about it.
00:07:10
Speaker
Now, at that point, as a chaplain, I'm allowed to answer the question. I don't go in there to say, you know, whenever a player's injured, I wouldn't say, let me pray for you. I wouldn't do that because, you know, if they give me the permission, so be it. That's the way the manager and the chairman understand my role.
00:07:28
Speaker
And it's at those moments you need to be on your toes, on your twinkle toes, sitting there. I remember sitting again in Fort Bank at Stirling and a player who was injured and I'm watching the game with him and it was a half time and he turned round. As soon as half time happened and he goes, Rev, what are you preaching on in church tomorrow? Where did that come from? Again, using every moment being ready to give an account of the hope that lies in your heart.
00:07:54
Speaker
I find that and that's only because you're consistently there through the times when you feel like a lemon to the times where you just run off your feet. What a wonderful opportunity that God gave you there, David. That's incredible. I mean, sport is a big part of many of our lives, isn't it? And just thinking that now at the moment, at the time of recording, we're in the middle of COVID-19,
00:08:20
Speaker
We've gone into lockdown and for many sport is being withdrawn from our day-to-day activities and that's going to have a really big impact on many of us. What do you think it might look like to continue kind of rubbing shoulders with people in a time now when sport has been taken away? How do we carry on with those relationships and making the most of those opportunities? There's so many things come to mind. Initially, I was speaking to our Chief Executive this morning at St Johnson.
00:08:50
Speaker
and she was just making sure that I was willing and ready to speak to staff at the football club because a lot of footballers they're used to routine routine routine routine they see their families at certain time and then they come into a football club and they're generally quite pampered they're great guys
00:09:09
Speaker
But, you know, they have their breakfast ready for them. They have everything washed, multiple changes of clothes during the day for training, lunch, all of that. Now they're back home with their families on lockdown. And a lot of them are not ready for that. And so my role, I'm available, as I do often through text and through the phone, just offering some basic encouragement and things that we would say in the church quite often, but
00:09:39
Speaker
you know, guys wouldn't talk to each other certainly in a football club the same way. So I'm able to offer that. But when it comes to the wider scene, our church, so all of our services now, all of our contact is maybe not physical, but we are contacting with people online. And so we in Pitlockery have chosen, even though we have got our system of pastoral care, we've got home group and small group leaders,
00:10:08
Speaker
constantly connecting with those people in their group. We've got pastoral visitors with a list where they're phoning up the elderly and then firm. We're looking after each other as we know how to do it. We've done this for a long time and we've got that system in place and we generally do care for one another. But we've chosen not to sit in that good system that works for us and there's about 25 to 30 of our church who are able
00:10:33
Speaker
who are not working, who are now joined what is called the Athol Area Community Volunteers. So there's a couple of hubs in Pitlockray, they've pooled their resources,
Technological Adaptation and Outreach
00:10:45
Speaker
they've got a good system in place, good protocols. And we as a church are saying we want to be involved in that. We want to care and we want to be out there and serve in our community. And I was thinking about this earlier on.
00:10:59
Speaker
They ask a whole series of questions of what you can bring. Can you speak a foreign language? That would be handy. But then they say, do you want to do light duties, like garden light duties? Do you want to befriend people on the phone? Do you want to do a bit of administration for the setup? And then there was a little box that you could tick. It says Other. And then you could type in other things that you could bring. And I felt compelled to type in prayer, counseling. And I ain't no counselor, to be honest.
00:11:28
Speaker
bit counselling and then I put in funerals and in bracket I put in, I'm sorry to be morbid but let's be honest and I put a few dots after that. So there's ways in which we have chosen to connect all the more with our community and may this be one of the ways in which we can do it so that we can become even more churches out in the margins more often than not in our communities. It's been our
00:11:54
Speaker
to bring ourselves from the margins closer into some of the centres. Most recently, our high school was under threat from closure. So as a church, we get right behind it. We did everything we possibly could to say we support our local high school. We believe Pollock should have one. And that was noted by our community. And this is one other way in which we desire to just come in closer into the hearts of the community in Pollock.
00:12:24
Speaker
I love the kind of principles there, David, of looking for every opportunity, whereas Christians, where you can wade in and get involved in some of the stuff that's going on around about. Particularly, I think we were talking before we press record on the podcast here, that I think, given the kind of COVID-19 situation we're in,
00:12:43
Speaker
Right now, I think a lot of churches have sort of, I don't understand why it's sort of defaulted into, let's just take our regular Sunday morning service, stick it online and the job is done. But I think of course the danger is you're looking after your own tribe and I'm not reaching out. Talking to you has really encouraged me because I think.
00:13:00
Speaker
I've for a while been thinking there are similar opportunities in this moment right now, as people are anxious, people are looking for help, people are looking for ways of connection. And I wonder whether as churches, we need to be really praying, you know, Lord, what are the, what are the opportunities that this precise time that offers us right here, right now? Because as you say, for so long, we wanted to be back in the center of our communities and we've been on the edge. There's opportunity. I think if we, if we look in the right place to where the Lord is leading, uh, to really get involved here.
Empathy and Community Service
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, we're all going to do it differently. As a church, we, you know, in your Google Cal, or not your iCal or your Google, you have calendars that are color coordinated. We've intentionally put Sunday, our Sunday pod, our Sunday live stream in YouTube, we've intentionally put that in the color of outreach, not in reach. And we, so again, churches will do it differently, but we have decided to go for 25 minutes.
00:13:55
Speaker
10-minute max, talk, sermon, it's not a sermon, I guess, but storytelling, whatever it may be, 10-minute worship and talk and tell it. We are fortunate that Heartland, our local radio station, which covers Highland Persia, they've decided to take that for next Sunday, and they're scheduling that into their broadcast, which is wonderful. So I don't know how many people that I reach, but many more thousands who are ever dark in the door of Earth Church on a Sunday.
00:14:24
Speaker
other things like that. We were going to do Jack and Ori as it were, but do Bible stories because we've got toddlers groups, we kind of connect with them. So we were going online with Zoom and we're going online with YouTube to do things like Jack and Ori and do singing time. And the response back from our community is yes please. We will put things on there which are highly
00:14:49
Speaker
outreach orientated and we'll share the gospel etc etc but we also want to just you know it hurts when our community hurts we do want to hurt when our community hurts and and and so it's a wonderful story you you may know it father damien i refer to this every now and then he was a catholic priest who had a ministry among lepers and he had no success among the lepers and then one
00:15:14
Speaker
time he came back from a long weekend of journeying over rivers and jungles to a leper colony, came back and he stuck his feet into a pail of hot water and he felt nothing. And the next time he travelled to see the lepers he stood up and he says, fellow lepers. And from that moment onwards his ministry exploded. The success of the Gospel was there to be seen.
00:15:40
Speaker
We need to hurt our communities. We need to not hoard. We need to share. We need to show people who we are. We're not perfect. None of us are going to be doing BBC productions online. But neither do we want to be without hope. We want to share that hope. So that's kind of our heart to the best that we can actually share it.
00:16:06
Speaker
I love what you're saying there about, you know, none of us are going to be perfect, you know, online, it's going to be messy. And at the same time, as you're saying, we have such an amazing opportunity at the moment, using technology and harnessing the goodness of God's gift and connecting with people.
00:16:22
Speaker
in local communities and elsewhere. I mean, you gave a couple of examples there, but what do you think it might look like for one of our listeners, you know, for one of us who are listening and thinking, actually, this is great for you, you know, you're a pastor at the church, you're taking care of your flock, you're also reaching out. What does this look like for me as a single mum, like with a baby and, you know, I'm just kind of locked in and locked out and locked down. Yeah. Look after your baby.
Balancing Family and Community Work
00:16:49
Speaker
Love that baby. You know,
00:16:52
Speaker
Listen, I'm just David Barry from Ardennes and Glasgow and I'm nothing special. I know what I'm called to and I try and do that to the best of my ability. My wife Miranda is reminding me time after time after time every day about good protocols for when I go out and how often I go out which is fewer and fewer each day because I need to look after my family. There's no point in me
00:17:17
Speaker
get out there and trying to save the world and trying to make sure my flock is all happy and contented and safe when my own family don't see me. And I know many people spend their sales for the gospel and that is a witness but you know in 20 years time I know for a fact that they'll have to go back and look at all the minutes in church files to say who was this guy called David Barry?
00:17:44
Speaker
but I want my children, my grandchildren to know me and to love me into it a year's time. So I spend myself for my family and, you know, we've got a routine because we're a lot down. At 10 o'clock we will have, as a whole family together, our devotions together. Before that, they're doing the hoovering. They're doing the dusting. You know, we're out raking some leaves as well. We're doing this together as family and getting through it. I just so happen to be out there. I've got a
00:18:12
Speaker
I've got a tight toe, I guess, some sort of reputation. I want to be seen in my community. I want to mobilize my church family in that community. But I need to look after my family first and foremost. I really do. And I'm passionate about that, I guess.
00:18:30
Speaker
That's really helpful advice in there, David. This has been just a really fascinating conversation. I think one of the things I've really enjoyed sort of chatting with you around is that, you know, sometimes on pep talk, we have people who've written kind of books and, you know, sort of philosophize. And that's important. We need that in the kingdom of God as well. But I also just, you're really interested to hear somebody who is a local church pastor, as you say, in a small town, relatively small church, having a tremendous kind of impact. I guess my
00:19:00
Speaker
Well, that's kind of a question for you. So the Christian angled it from like somebody who's not a pastor. But we also have pastors and ministers listening to this. And just a final question to think about, sometimes for friends I know who are in pastoral ministry, sometimes it's easy to look around and go, oh, I'm in a tiny church in the middle of nowhere. You know, what impact can we realistically have? It can be quite tough.
00:19:21
Speaker
being a minister in a small town church.
Advice for Pastors Feeling Overwhelmed
00:19:23
Speaker
But I love the fact you've kind of rolled up your sleeves and waded in. What kind of advice would you offer to someone, you know, listening to this who's pastor like yourself, perhaps feeling a bit disillusioned? How would you sort of encourage them to go, come on? You know, there's amazing opportunities for the gospel, even in unlikely contexts. Here's what you've got. I mean, I'm notorious for seeing something and then wanting to jump in and do it.
00:19:50
Speaker
What I'm trying to do just now is I'm still creative this morning. I was up very early thinking about all sorts of things we could do. I've jotted them down. And now, well, early this morning, I spent probably two hours texting people and phoning people and saying, what do you think of this idea? And rather than me saying, great, I'm going to go away and do that, I've just asked them to do it. So I'm trying to work with my resources as well. I mean, we are a tiny, wee church. But we've got a big heart.
00:20:20
Speaker
We are fortunate enough that there's such a thing as community in Pitlockry. There really is. We know each other when we go to the co-op. I say to Miranda my wife, I'm going to wait at the co-op for five minutes. She laughs because you meet people and you do community and you come back 30 minutes later. So I guess I always just look to see what I have. What have I got? Is there a need there? Can I serve that need? Sometimes it has to be no. We don't have the resources of big churches.
00:20:49
Speaker
I don't know if I would want the resources of big churches as well, because I would feel burdened that I'd be desperate to use it. I'd probably burn myself out trying to use those resources. So for
Conclusion and Blessings
00:20:59
Speaker
me, it's just what is out there? What needs to be done? Can I help? If not, who can I get to help? So I know someone who's got a small forest
00:21:15
Speaker
Our husband died who maintained it last year. It's not been maintained. We are now sending guys in there in the next couple of days before there's a complete lockdown to just manage some of the wood in there to then store it for next winter, just in case. And we don't know how much we're going to store, but it won't just be for us. We're going to share it out. That's just one wee example of what resources out there, what possibly could be the need. Let's see if we can do something about it.
00:21:45
Speaker
David, this has been a really, really helpful kind of conversation. Hugely grateful that you've taken the time and just to speak with us. Blessings on all that you're doing in Pit Locker, especially right now, when I think it's a tremendous need out there. And again, thanks for joining us on the show. An absolute pleasure. God bless you.
00:22:06
Speaker
And Christy, good to have you with us as ever from London on the co-hosting. And for all of you listening at home, we will be back in two weeks' time with another episode of PEPTalk. Thanks for listening.