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With Richard Gibb
72 Plays3 years ago
During the periods of restrictions we've had during the pandemic, some churches have become very creative with their outreach activities. Today Andy speaks with the pastor of a small church plant about their "drive-in church" and Christmas carols on the back of a tractor and trailer. Full of ideas and enthusiasm, it's great to hear how a small church is having a big impact.
Richard Gibb is on the leadership and preaching team at Loch Leven Church in Kinross. He is married to Alison and works as a Director for a management consultancy firm. Richard, who helps lead activities within the new church, studied Theology at Wheaton College near Chicago and at the University of St Andrews. He swims each day and had a mid-life crisis a couple of years ago when he took up judo!
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Transcript
Introduction to Pep Talk Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Manister from the Solar Center for Public Christianity up in Scotland. And actually I'm broadcasting solo in a sense today because my partner in crime, Christy Mayer, who normally graces the airwaves with her presence and brings sanity to our conversations, Christy has got an issue to sort out at the college she works for. She's the safeguarding officer.
00:00:36
Speaker
which means she gets to do all kinds of exciting things occasionally and such an exciting thing has apparently happened today. So you only have me, you only have me and the guest because we have a great guest for you today on
Meet Richard Gibb: Pastor & Finance Professional
00:00:46
Speaker
pep talk. We have joining us is Richard Gibb. Richard, welcome to pep talk. Thank you, Andy. Great to be here.
00:00:53
Speaker
Now, Richard, your bio is quite interesting. You have done a number of things. You are the pastor of Loch Leven Church. You've also been a pastor at Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh, a big kind of well-known church down there. But also, your full-time role, you also work in the world of finance, where you work for EY, formerly Ernst & Young. Is there anything I've missed? You've also written a book. You've got a PhD. So many things have gone on in your world.
00:01:21
Speaker
So I'm not a real doctor, Andy, to be honest. But yeah, just in fasted Charlotte Chapel a few years ago. Fantastic time there in Edinburgh. And as you say, working for EY currently.
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm a day job from Operations Director based in Edinburgh. Excellent. Now, if you are listening to this podcast wondering about how to manage your investments better, I will disappoint you. We're not going to talk to Richard about the world of finance. We are going to talk to Richard about the world of evangelism.
Journey into Evangelism
00:01:45
Speaker
I suppose the place to begin, Richard, is you when you were at Charlotte Chapel, right? You said you were your pastor responsible for evangelism. I know at Loch Leven Church,
00:01:52
Speaker
You do a lot of evangelism, you're very keen on reaching out. I guess a great question to begin with is just a bit of bio, really. How did you get into that particular kind of focus? Because I mean, every church leader wants to concentrate on evangelism, but you've really focused on it and it's really been part of your DNA. How did that come about? What was the journey that God led you to? How did God lead you there?
00:02:14
Speaker
Yep, I think within Charlotte Chapel, to start with, that was part of my remit as assistant pastor. So I was given that responsibility, although I very much enjoyed that role. My heart is to see people coming to faith in Jesus, as obviously your heart is on the I know. And in that position, we were able to have courses like Christianity Explored, and we had people trained up and how to share the faith. So we had
Innovative Evangelism During Lockdown
00:02:38
Speaker
lessons with the Herald's Trust. We had Elitra's member of Charlotte Chapel, and she came and trained folks in Charlotte Chapel to share their faith one-to-one. And that was fantastic. And also right here at Loughleven Church here in Kinross. We tried to be creative. And over these past few months, you know, during lockdown, we've obviously met in Zoom, where we've not been able to meet in person. But during lockdown, we also tried to be creative evangelistically. So we had things like driving services. We would rock up into a field in our cars.
00:03:07
Speaker
You came and spoke. Very, very appreciative to me. Thank you for that. For our second anniversary last September. And it was brilliant. And we've had similar events. Lend your SU centre. We have used a car park in a car's town park and we preach the gospel. We've had events currently meeting the boathouse. That's in Kinross, a former restaurant. And it's got a fantastic location right on the shore of Loch Leven. We've had barbecues there. Again, we have a simple gospel message.
00:03:38
Speaker
And that's been great. And we have things like Christmas time, we try and do things. Last year we tried to organize an event where we would go around the streets using flatbed trailers and tractors to get the farming community involved. And we're fun to have a couple of trailers going up at the streets like the Tampa trailer.
00:03:55
Speaker
But singing carols in the Gospel, we were told we couldn't do that very last minute, but I think for this Christmas, that's definitely on the card. So carols on a... carols on a... Absolutely, and guest bombs that drive the tractors. What could be better? Now let's talk for a minute about the kind of creativity, especially
Lessons from Lockdown Evangelism
00:04:13
Speaker
around
00:04:13
Speaker
around the lockdown stuff, because obviously, you know, we've had, we've had lockdown. We've come a long way out of that, but still, you know, there are still restrictions and so forth and so the way to go. Are there lessons that you folks learned at the church, Richard, during lockdown about, you know, perhaps creative ways to evangelism that you might see yourself carrying on post lockdown? Were there things that you figured out because of the circumstances that actually you've now gone, you know what, that's a really interesting way of reaching out.
00:04:42
Speaker
I think the the the drivings that seem to work quite well and I think because people can come along they can park the cars sit there honestly and be kind of safe in the car that that worked well so probably still do still keep doing that like for example the boathouse in Cunross there's a nice big car park just being built or it's just being built and so even though we've got the boathouse venue we might still have like a driving service using the car park
00:05:07
Speaker
say Christmas time or early in the year. So drive-ins work really well. One of the things we did as well during COVID is we would every Easter in Christmas time we would Easter, for example, we give it 500 Easter eggs from the community. So Pew and Facebook, who was an Easter egg? We get an address, deliver it on Easter morning with a wee booklet with Easter story for
00:05:32
Speaker
And that was great. And we got really good feedback from the community, you know, a good way of building bridges in the community. And just because we're a new church, we're just like three years old now, just again, just to communicate, we're a church, we're just in Kinrod. And at Christmas time, same kind of thing. Advent calendars, we gave out, I got hundreds of people in the community and like a wee Christmas booklet for kids as well. So yeah, that seemed to go quite
Community Engagement Through Festive Events
00:05:55
Speaker
well.
00:05:55
Speaker
I think I love I see the connection there between chocolate evangelism. Yeah, it's funny. So I'm glad to find that you came across the same thing as we just as a family found discovered again, because there was very little we could do otherwise. But during that first lockdown, we landed upon, you know, just in our neighborhood doing the Easter egg piece, because I forget the exact name. I think that there's a company called something like the meaningful chocolate company or something like that.
00:06:23
Speaker
We're not sponsored by them, by the way, but they do Easter eggs and advent calendars. And it's great because you get the wee booklet with the Easter story and the Christmas story. The artwork's really nice. And it's a great conversation starter. But the stuff that you're doing at the boathouse and through the church,
00:06:40
Speaker
there, Richard. So, you know, I know a question that some pastors, not everyone listens to this, the pastors, we have people of all kinds of backgrounds, listens to pep talk, but I know one question, I think pastors and church leaders sometimes struggle with, you put an event on, so you do your drive-in thing or something, something like, how do you then get
00:06:58
Speaker
non-Christians there. What have you found at Loch Leven Church? What works in terms of getting guests to things and maybe what doesn't work? What have you found works for you folks in terms of getting new people into events and such like?
Boosting Church Visibility and Outreach
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah sure, initially we met as a new church. We were meeting in a high school and folks didn't really know we existed to be honest. They didn't know we were actually there but I think because we forced out of the high school and you know
00:07:25
Speaker
more into the communities that are out of the location. We've advertised quite strongly, like in Facebook, in our Kinross newsletter. We've tried to meet in central locations, like the event we had with yourself, Andy. That would be right in the centre of Kinross, in a field opposite the Green Hill, the main hotel in Kinross. We've tried to meet in visible locations. There are things like that, also a word of mouth, telling our friends, neighbours, just that we've got an event on. But yeah, just using local media, local
00:07:55
Speaker
like publications, Facebook? Actually the Facebook thing is, that's an awful, I think an underrated connection tool because there's probably right, I think for most sort of towns and villages, even streets now, like our sort of local neighborhood has got its own Facebook group and you know, I think there's a huge opportunity there.
00:08:15
Speaker
Christians rather than, you don't want to flood it and annoy people, but actually, you know, if it's a place where everyone is talking about what's going on, to be unashamed of saying, hey, we're the local church, this is what we're doing. Yeah, exactly.
Utilizing Social Media for Evangelism
00:08:27
Speaker
One of the things we did at Israel and just during lockdown was when we could start meeting with people, one to one, keeping two meetings apart was we would interview people in the community. So we would meet with
00:08:38
Speaker
The person who leads CHAS, the Inkin Ross, Rachel House, our children's hospice, would meet with them, do a short interview with them, put it on our public Facebook page. We met with the chap who oversees the Lockleaving Reserve. We met with someone who leads a local charity, Broken Not Broken, and we put it on our public Facebook page. We've created We Love Lockleaving.
00:09:00
Speaker
I think it's got 800 followers so far. It was just launched about a year ago that because of community content on it as well and publicised it through our local community Facebook pages, it's got quite a lot of number of people who are now following that page. We're going to launch Chris Jant to explore actually on Monday just next week. It's a game of publicising Chris Jant to explore through that same Facebook page in the community.
00:09:25
Speaker
That's fantastic. We're huge fans of Christianity Explored at Solace. In fact, we've had Craig Dyer, who's the leader for Christianity Explored in Scotland on the podcast. If folks haven't fully thought about Christianity Explored that Rich has talked about there, just go check that out. You can hear our conversation with
00:09:42
Speaker
with Craig. So, another question for you, Richard, is that, you know, obviously for those of us in the full-time ministry, like myself, like yourself, although you're doing, we're not in full-time ministry, but you're doing a lot of ministry, right? Just going, how do you make sure you keep your contacts with non-Christians so that you're not just all you have a time filled with Christian activities?
Maintaining Non-Christian Connections
00:10:02
Speaker
Is that mainly through work for you? Because you obviously have that split role, or are you also finding time
00:10:07
Speaker
to get out there in the community and get to know people as well. Because that's important, right? That people, you find those chances to actually mix with people locally, not just with your passers hat on. How have you found some ways that work for you? Absolutely, completely agree. My full-time day job is with EY, as you mentioned. That keeps me quite busy. But alongside that, I lead the young scouts, the beavers here in Kenross and it's brilliant. It's a complete change from
00:10:34
Speaker
financial stuff, which is a nice relief from sitting at your desk on your computer, being the case of six to eight years old. And it's a great way of building links with kids in the community and also the parents. So that's been really, really helpful. As a church, we try and be involved in also local charity events and charity organizations. And again, just building links there for folks in the church having those active contacts also has been really helpful.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah. Well, let's talk about sort of church and community bits. And obviously, as we just said, the other big chunk of your life is the workplace, the business world of EY. How has it been being Christian in the workplace?
Faith and Openness in the Workplace
00:11:16
Speaker
Have you found a place where it's kind of easy to talk about faith? Have you found a place where, you know, you can sort of shut that down and don't go there? How has it been for you being a Christian in the world of business Monday through Friday? Yeah, I think it's
00:11:31
Speaker
within EY, you're encouraged to share what you believe and without being over imposing upon people. So, you know, on a Monday, for example, it's very easy to say, you know, I've been involved in church at the weekends and speaking about that. And I think for people as well, I find they were interested about how you can still be involved in sort of leading a church at the same time as working in business. So that's always created opportunities to discuss about my faith. But
00:12:00
Speaker
There's no bars as such to communicate my work as long as you're getting your drop down all the time.
00:12:08
Speaker
It's interesting you mentioned the Sunday thing. I remember somebody once, when I heard somebody once say that actually, I wonder whether sometimes as Christians, we miss that, the what did you do on the weekend opportunity? Because you know, the temptation is that you're asked on a Monday morning, how was your weekend? The temptation is to go, oh yeah, I had a great fun of play, you know, I played Fuzzy on Saturday, went to the new Bond movie, went to the original Sunday, and then move rapidly on, rather than maybe, if we talked more confidently about church, went, yeah, I had a great,
00:12:36
Speaker
a great time at church and scrum. What do your colleagues make of you being a pastor? Because obviously you wear these two hats. What do your colleagues at work make of that one? They're fine, to be honest. It's not something that most of them would know about. We're all in the church, but help to lead a church here in Kinross. But they wouldn't see it as strange.
00:12:59
Speaker
I think the respect, particularly enough, if something happens that they go through a difficult time, whatever it is, they tend to confide, rather than myself, maybe more than they would usually, because they know I'm involved in a church, I mean, in church leadership and who they can speak. Yes, again, it's not been a negative. Yeah.
00:13:17
Speaker
The other thing as well, I guess, in the workplace, one last sort of thought here, Richard, I was talking to a friend who works for a large company in London who just made the comment, the aside, he went, he said, interestingly, that spirituality is actually increasingly people, you know, there's much more openness he felt.
00:13:33
Speaker
and the workplaces talk about those bigger conversations about about value and and meaning and purpose and and work-life balance and you know mindfulness and this whole basket of things and as christian sons we get a bit nervous about that because it can go a bit new agey but also there's an opportunity there to say you know we yeah we believe that spirituality matters we believe there is more to life than just the end of year bonus
00:13:56
Speaker
or whatever so I just wonder whether you've sort of picked up that sense that there are some of these interesting sort of wheels turning in culture right now. Yeah I agree with that absolutely there's options in the workplace you know for I think we've been restricted during COVID things that we can do but now we're beginning to go back to our offices. Within EY we used to have events where we would have a like prayer team together for Christian colleagues and also events where we have like a presentation
00:14:22
Speaker
about a Christian topic to folks in our office and things like that. It'd be great to start back again. We're going back to offices just now within EY in the past few weeks and to get those things back up and running would be fantastic. But yeah, there's definitely an interest there about spirituality.
00:14:38
Speaker
So last kind of question on the workplace, and I've got one last question on kind of sort of the church
Guidance for Workplace Evangelism
00:14:44
Speaker
thing. So I suppose for, you know, you've been a Christian for some years, you've had the benefit of being in ministry as well as in the workplace. So for somebody who's listening to this as a Christian at work, who's sitting there thinking, I'd love to get something started in my workplace in terms of something more Christian, but I don't know where to begin. What advice would you give somebody on the, perhaps on the very first steps for somebody who's a Christian at work in terms of,
00:15:07
Speaker
you know, perhaps seeing God at work in the workplace. What advice would you give somebody as to where to begin? I think within our experience, it was to meet together, to pray. Christians in the office in Edinburgh, that was great, to have that support together.
00:15:24
Speaker
My role is why I've travelled a lot with work, because I tend to be in London or overseas a lot. It's a lot often in the Edinburgh office. But when I wasn't in the office before, much more frequently, we would meet together, say, at lunchtime. We could have a bike study. I just have that support network with your local colleagues. It's great. And also there may be events where you could have a guest speaker, use the office environment, use one of the rooms and just have an informal event, invite your local colleagues to that.
00:15:54
Speaker
meeting, give you some food items as well, food's always good. Identifying folks who are placed, those who are Christians already pre-trained together every so often and maybe some lunchtime events would be great.
00:16:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's some great practical wisdom there. I think, as you say, starting, you know, building together, building sort of fellowship because of the strength in numbers.
Virtual Evangelism During Lockdown
00:16:15
Speaker
And then on the lunchtime event piece, again, for folks listening who want to go deeper into that, that's something we've done quite a lot of at Solas. I mean, actually during lockdown, it was hilarious because everything was on Zoom. I think there was one day where I spoke at the Ministry of Defense at one end of the country and then some business at the other end of the country where they assumed me into two different meetings exactly like you described.
00:16:35
Speaker
um to cover some sort of you know just to sort of do some very very gentle pre-evangelism um and then of course last question i guess on the on the church side should we sort of you know talk about church talk about work now just pull the camera back out again you know again perhaps similar questions so for for churches that are now you know going through this coming out of covid things are slowly warming up again you know one thing i'm conscious of that it's easy for churches if they're not careful to get all the focus on getting the sunday morning back to where it was and forget about the evangelism
Revitalizing Church Evangelism Post-COVID
00:17:05
Speaker
piece. Again, would there be any sort of advice for what you've experimented with and tried for church leaders who are like, yeah, we need to get the evangelism going again. Again, how could they start? What might be some advice you'd give now that, you know, things are a bit less restricted? We're obviously learning ourselves all the time as a new church, but I think things that we've learned during lockdown
00:17:27
Speaker
you know, things that have worked from a evangelistic perspective, whether it's drive-ins, whether it's reaching out to community, you know, with like their chocolate things, like Easter time or Christmas time and fully booklet. So going back to basics, you know, what is it? Why do we exist as a church? Who are we seeking to glorify and point people to? And it's just continually reminding ourselves, I think,
00:17:48
Speaker
about why we exist as a church. One of the good things about us as a new church, we don't want to build in this church. We've met at the high school, we're now meeting at the boathouse. And it's a great reminder that the church is opposite to the people, the body of Christ, it's not a building. And I think alongside that is we want to see more people come to faith in Jesus and join the church family. And so I think, yeah, for us in Kenosha, it's continually trying to remind ourselves why do we exist?
00:18:18
Speaker
who we live in for, who we can deserve, point people to, as we get back to meeting together in person as well, which is great, together for the Church family. Yeah. Again, great, great advice from there. I think one of the things I've found hugely encouraging is having, you know, so less of a connection with you folks. I've spoken, my colleague Gavin has, is watching you folks as a small, fairly young church. I love the innovation of going out there and going, let's just see what works, you know. Heck, let's do carols on a trailer. Let's do drive-in church.
00:18:48
Speaker
Sometimes as Christians, we don't dare to try something very different. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But if it turns out that actually it does, hey, you've invented a whole new way of outreach. And I have to say, Carol's on a trailer. I'm going to remember that one. First chance I get is, you know, if I'm in a church where we've got that ability. What a great idea. Rich, it's been a pleasure kind of talking to you. I love the energy and enthusiasm
00:19:12
Speaker
And just the sort of joy that you bring to this, I can see why you're, you're, you're good at evangelism. Cause just that sort of joy, I sort of sort of lost out of you. People can't see it. We haven't done the video recording. You've been smiling throughout the entire kind of podcast. So Richard, thanks for taking the time to be with us on, on pep talk. And thanks for listening as ever to the show and I'll be back, hopefully joined by my partner in crime, Christie Mayer.
00:19:35
Speaker
In two weeks time for another episode of PepTalk where we'll talk to a different guest about something that we can learn together about evangelism in today's world. So thanks for listening and goodbye.