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With Mark Oliver
88 Plays3 years ago
In this "down to earth" episode we speak with a career dairy farmer who has only recently become a local church pastor. As you'd stereotypically expect, he is full of practical wisdom and a can-do attitude when it comes to sharing faith, both in new ways online and in the age-old ministry of feeding the needy.
Mark Oliver spent the first 40 years of his life living on dairy farms in Devon or Cornwall. Alongside the farm, Mark and his family have always been heavily involved in church life, he has been preaching since age 16. When the family business finished in 2015 Mark was invited to become the Pastor of Plymstock Chapel where he has remained until today. Mark is married to Vickie and they have three school age children. When possible Mark likes to walk with his family and their dog on Dartmoor and the nearby South Devon Coast. He always has books on the go and is a lifetime supporter of Liverpool FC.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:09
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to another exciting edition of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Bannister from the Solar Center for Public Christianity up in Dundee in Scotland. And I'm joined as ever by my co-host, Christy Mayer from the other end of the country down in London. Christy, how are you doing today? Doing all right, thank you. Ice pack on the standby.
00:00:32
Speaker
Icepack on CS, you were alluding to this before the show began. So why have you got an icepack? What have you done? Been weightlifting, running marathons, kicking students? What's happened? It is a sports injury, I hasten to add. But who knows what I've done, Andy? Who knows? It's...
00:00:49
Speaker
I don't think people really care, but I've done something in it. Well, but it gives you credibility. Oh, gosh, I'm suffering today. I have a sports injury. That's right. Well, from sports injuries and ice packs, let me introduce the guests that we have today.
Guest Introduction: Mark Oliver
00:01:02
Speaker
We are delighted to be joined today, coming from the South Coast from Plymouth. We're joined by Mark Oliver. Mark, welcome to the show.
00:01:10
Speaker
Thank you so much, it's so good to be with you guys. Well Mark, you're the pastor of a plimstock chapel down there, but I understand before you were a pastor of a church, you had an utterly, utterly different career. What were you doing before you went into church ministry?
From Farmer to Pastor
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, it was quite a dramatic change about five years ago because I grew up on a dairy farm, a family dairy farm, so I spent all my life really up until I was
00:01:38
Speaker
just over 40 with cows every day. And yeah, and that came to an end in 2015 before we moved on, yeah.
00:01:48
Speaker
It is, I confess, tempting to ask, are there differences between sort of herding cows and herding Christians? That would be an entirely inappropriate question that could probably land both of us in all kinds of trouble. But another question that does interest me is that, I think, I found it fascinating that you've lived in those two worlds. You've been in the world of business and of work, and I suppose for a better word, a secular kind of context. Now you're a
00:02:12
Speaker
pastor of a church. In terms of evangelism and sharing your faith and kind of getting the gospel out there, what are some of the differences? What are some of the similarities? Were there lessons that you learnt when you were in the world of farming and the world of work that now really help you as you're a pastor of a church? How do those two worlds kind of interact? Yeah, that's a great question. I do look back and I'm quite glad that I had that time in sort of the real world with everyday people
00:02:42
Speaker
doing a job like that. So I'm really grateful for the experiences of that and what I learnt along the way. And it is different. I mean, for a start today, as soon as people know I'm a pastor of a church, obviously they're not shocked if I want to talk about faith or church and things like that. On the farm and that world, it was probably a slower process of building relationships with people in order to be able to share faith.
00:03:12
Speaker
Some of it I got right and some I got wrong, to be honest, Andy. I didn't get it right all the time in sharing faith. But I think, like a lot of life, it is an attitude that says, when I got it right, when I wanted to be talking about Christ, you tend to find opportunities. And in farming, you meet a lot of people. It's probably quite an evangelized area of our society in a way.
00:03:41
Speaker
I didn't know too many other Christian farmers. We were down in Cornwall when we were farming most recently for the most part of my career.
Evangelism in Farming vs Pastoring
00:03:53
Speaker
And I think it was a case of just whenever I could letting people know I was a Christian and off the back of that hoping for opportunities to chat to people and to share my faith.
00:04:08
Speaker
Interestingly on the phone, I mean, we had a number of staff with some of them. I found it easier to talk to about Jesus in another way. It's quite hard when you're the boss to sort of, you don't want to feel like people have to listen to you because you're the boss. So I used to find that actually quite a struggle. And I would understand that if people are trying to talk to employees, but it's just, I think the attitude is, is the important thing in the workplace of wanting to share your faith.
00:04:36
Speaker
and then being aware of opportunities around you. Of course, once you're labeled as the pastor of a church, then you get those opportunities more readily and more easily and people are expecting you to chat about that sort of thing.
00:04:51
Speaker
I mean, this is an area, this is a community that most of us don't often think about. I mean, I'm from a farming background community, well, background, I'll use that term loosely, from a farming community, let's just say. And we don't often think about these kind of communities. What do you think it, what are some of the challenges that you faced in reaching the farming community? What's that looks like? Have people responded and what were some of the unique challenges? It is surprising actually, if you can start talking
00:05:21
Speaker
to farmers about faith. A lot of them have an inbuilt kind of realization that there's something more. So it's an interesting group of people that maybe almost daily they're seeing animals born, they're seeing the wonder of creation around them. And often there is something stirring that they know there's something more than just this life.
00:05:46
Speaker
So you do find opportunities and I can remember talking to farming friends off the back of just the wonder of creation and the obvious fact to me at least that there was a designer behind it all because they saw the miracles of this world sort of play out before their eyes daily. It's also a world where it is actually tough going and it can be very lonely. A lot of farmers struggle because of loneliness.
00:06:15
Speaker
sometimes go virtually all day and not see another person if you happen to be doing certain jobs on a farm or maybe farming just by yourself. And so farmers are often quite glad to talk if you can get behind the sort of the everything's okay thanks kind of thing and get into life a bit more. And it is often a struggle. It is hard work. You face a lot of problems. There's often financial difficulties. The long hours can put strains on relationships.
00:06:45
Speaker
I think farmers actually are quite glad to have somebody to talk to time to time if you can just yeah be used of God to be in the right place at the right time and of course around farming there's a huge amount of industry as well of all the people who sell to farmers support farmers and everything so you tend on a farm to always have people coming and going which again does give opportunity to to get to know people build relationships
00:07:14
Speaker
and chat about faith.
Pandemic Evangelism Strategies
00:07:18
Speaker
Well, from that farming background, obviously you've now kind of moved on and pastor of Plymouth Stock Chapel down there in Plymouth, Mark. Now, obviously right now, as we record this, not an easy time for pastors and for church leaders. Currently with the pandemic still happening, and although churches are free to meet many, like yours are choosing not to,
00:07:42
Speaker
at the moment. Does that mean evangelism and reaching out has totally come to an end? I know some churches have always gone into survival mode. All they're thinking about is streaming the Sunday morning service. Have you guys gone that route or have you really committed to going, okay, although we're limited, we're still gonna find ways to reach out? And if so, how have you done that in this season right now?
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, so certainly I keep thinking to myself that there is something worse that people are facing than Covid and that's life and eternity without Christ. So people have far more at stake than just dealing with the risks of Covid. So determined to keep going, to keep trying to share faith. But we've had to change. I mean, church basically is for me was about small groups of people a lot of the time, whether it was youth groups or men's groups or
00:08:34
Speaker
Christian unions in schools, that kind of thing. And all of that has virtually stopped. So we've had to find new ways of reaching out. I've learned since last March an awful lot about Facebook and editing like an awful lot of bastards out, getting videos out into the virtual world, both to keep our congregation in touch and being able to live stream our services.
00:08:59
Speaker
but also to be able to push some evangelistic material out to really just get people thinking about Christ. I realized fairly soon that people don't listen on Facebook for very long. You know, people just flick ass videos and things. So I've been trying to make some fairly short videos just with a question to get people thinking and have been trying to send them out.
00:09:26
Speaker
It is difficult in a sense because you can't see your congregation. You don't know who's listening. But occasionally you get stories back of people that have heard or taken in or liked the video when you realize that, yeah, there are people out there listening and hopefully thinking about faith. So that's been one opening we've had as being the online thing that we've gone for.
00:09:50
Speaker
with many mistakes along the way, but we've kept plugging away and hopefully getting better at it technically and in what we do. That's such a great medium, isn't it, of communication, particularly with what you're sharing on those videos that you can just enter into people's homes and their living rooms. What kind of questions were you asking in those videos? And what kind of questions have you found that people have had in your community during this lockdown and pandemic?
00:10:20
Speaker
I think I've tried to touch on things that people will be thinking about, so I've done some on things like suffering and why things like this happen. We've talked a bit about prayer, and I'm just about now to try and do a new series just picking up on the fact that people are praying.
00:10:41
Speaker
We know statistically that people still pray, even if they're not sure always who to or what they expect to happen. So try and pick up on things that people might just be touching on in their own thinking. I've tried to do some along the lines of big questions of life, thinking again about questions like creation, is there a guard and worldviews? Again, just trying to encourage people to get thinking.
00:11:09
Speaker
about their faith or lack of it or where they stand, what they believe and why. So I guess things I've learned from folks such as your good selves about just putting the logic of Christian faith and why we believe what we do and pushing that out there. So yeah, that was the first part of your question, Christie. In what I've been asking, you're going to have to remind me now what second part was.
00:11:35
Speaker
Oh, no, they're great. Yeah, just wondering. I think you already answered it. We're just wondering what kind of questions were coming up from the community. But of course, it sounds like suffering and evil. How can how can there be a good God? Where is meaning and hope in this mess? It sounds like they're quite common questions for everybody at the moment. I think so. I think there is a spiritual interest, isn't there? And it is surprising. I found this in my five years as a pastor.
00:12:04
Speaker
In particular, when you get chatting to people, a lot of people have thought a bit about faith and a lot of people haven't written it off altogether. And if you can just get in there alongside and start to show the reason for what we believe and why we've got this hope, there is openness. And I think that might be even more so during these strange and difficult times.
00:12:29
Speaker
One of the things I also like as well, Mark, about your short videos, and people will not be able to appreciate this listening to the podcast. They need to go and hopefully this stuff is online that you've done. I like the fact you've used your local area. I remember you sending me one of the videos where you were talking about one of these big questions while up to your waist in the waters of the English Channel. I thought it was quite amusing. We don't generally film videos like that here in Scotland because we just end up with hypothermia. For those of you in the South, I was pleased to see that.
00:12:58
Speaker
Mark, you were also saying, I think before we hit record and also talking about the ways that the church is reaching out, you were telling me that one of the other things that the chapel's doing right now, of course, is, you know, COVID has really put pressures on particularly perhaps low income families and families who are really struggling just to make ends meet. And you were talking about a project that the church is involved in to really use that as a way of serving some of those local needs and then building bridges of which you'd have gospel conversations. What is it you're doing precisely?
00:13:28
Speaker
I'm excited about this. It has felt like real frontline stuff and meeting people in the midst of all of this. So there's a project that runs in Plymouth called Feast of Fun, a charity called Transforming Plymouth together. And they are in Plymouth really to try and help the huge inequality financially across the city and to address some of those needs. And they've been running in Plymouth for a year or two.
00:13:57
Speaker
It's like a Bible holiday club held in churches, churches working together, but part of it is providing a good meal for children, and in particular linking with schools to say if you've got vulnerable families, invite them, send the kids along, and during the holidays you can know they've had a good meal. So that was the background of it. This year, of course, that hasn't been possible in that format. So instead, what's grown into a rather large project, about 300 families are being supported
00:14:27
Speaker
across Plymouth with food parcels being taken to them. And it was going to be during the holidays when they're not bedding the free school meals. But because of lockdown and everything, that's even grown beyond that. So in Plymouth Stock, where I live, we've got four churches currently working together. We started in July, collecting huge amounts of food, packaging it up.
00:14:53
Speaker
and chipping it out to people that are vulnerable. It feels like we're hitting the right people because the school's family workers are in constant contact with us. So families, if dad loses his job or mum loses her job through
00:15:10
Speaker
You don't have to wait weeks for the system to kick in. They can just ring us and with the family's permission, let us contact them and we can be there and offer some help. And what's been really great, it isn't just that you're getting food to people and they know that it's the church doing, which is good in itself, but also that I've really started to build relationships with the families I deliver to.
00:15:36
Speaker
And so you start to talk about, you know, how the kids are doing through this and what's going on in their lives. And out of that, then, you know, you start to say, well, can I just hear on the doorstep, can I just pray with you for a moment? And I just want to pray for your little daughter that's struggling or whatever it might be. And people are, you know, some are a bit surprised, but they all say yes. And so you start to pray, or maybe if it seems more appropriate, just say, well, I'll tell the other two or three leaders.
00:16:04
Speaker
We'll be praying for you this month while you go through this thing. And people have warmed to that. And now
Community Outreach & Collaboration
00:16:11
Speaker
that, you know, we phone a bit in between as well and see how people are doing. And wonderfully last week, one of the nuns that I've got to know a bit just said, is your church open at the moment? And I said, well, no, we can't at present. And she said, because I'm thinking of turning to church. My mum did a few years ago.
00:16:29
Speaker
And I've been thinking about it and you know, my heart left because I've had all this grand work of being there showing God's love and carrying heaps and heaps of food around. Suddenly we've got people asking about faith and about Christ. And yeah, so it's very exciting to me to be right out there in the midst of all of this and near to people learning about their lives and trying to show love of Christ.
00:16:55
Speaker
What a marvelous initiative. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Mark. I was just wondering, if someone's listening to this and part of a local church, maybe leading a local church, and they're thinking, this just sounds brilliant. How on earth, though, do I set up a link with local schools in the area? And it sounds like a really huge initiative. It probably involves a lot of people, money. What do it look like for you to kind of
00:17:19
Speaker
go from establishing those contacts all the way right through to those doorstep conversations. We probably had a bit of a leg up because the charity I mentioned, Transforming
00:17:34
Speaker
together handle the actual food side of it in getting hold of the food. Our job as local churches is to move it around and pack up our souls and get them out to people. So I would suggest that maybe locally have a look at what else is going on.
00:17:54
Speaker
a big charity called Fair Share is involved in shipping food down to us. I think it comes from Bristol and into a warehouse. So it's on quite a scale and it goes out and supports food banks and things as well. So there's quite a lot going on in the city. I expect a lot of cities have something, a lot of towns have something going on.
00:18:15
Speaker
And it be worth finding out about the other lovely thing about it is that we've done it as a group of local churches and it again serving together as continue to build what was already good relationships between local churches but they deepened and grown even more as we serve together in this so it's lovely to show the United sort of and.
00:18:39
Speaker
face of church to the local community that way. But I would suggest, in answer to your question, find out what's going on already, and there's probably something, and there may be opportunities off the back of that. And I would definitely suggest working together with other churches to provide volunteers on premises and things.
00:19:00
Speaker
Some great advice in there. Mark, we're almost coming to the end of the show. 20 minutes goes really fast. But I guess one last question I would have for you is, obviously, some of these ways of reaching out and engaging you folks have developed during the pandemic, during the lockdown when things are restricted, hopefully, God willing,
00:19:22
Speaker
We're looking at, you know, within a fairly short time, we're going to slowly start coming out of this and in a few months time be right out of this. Are there things that you've learnt in terms of reaching out during the pandemic and during lockdown restrictions that you think will actually carry over when life returns a bit more to quote unquote normal? Are there sort of ways of reaching out and engaging the community that actually are timeless and not just for this season?
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think both of the things we've talked about, both the online presence and Zoom, probably to some extent, for at least those who aren't sick of it, will continue to be ways that we can reach and, you know, things like house groups that maybe people that had childcare couldn't come to before and now can
00:20:06
Speaker
attend, so we're going to try and keep that kind of thing going. I'm sure the need for the food and the vulnerable family support will continue. But there's other good things that have come out of it. I think there's some people that I've got to know a lot better and deeper through this, both through little Zoom groups that have happened and
00:20:29
Speaker
just phoning some of the older folks in our church who maybe haven't got internet access and things and just spending more time with people building those friendships. I think there are other lessons that we've learned and a lot of good has come out of this that will continue into the future.
00:20:50
Speaker
Mark, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. We've gone from farming to feasting. There's so many suggestions there and just real nuggets of gold for us to continue to enjoy and perhaps put into practice for ourselves. As ever, in these 20 minutes, it's just flown by and there's so much more that we'd love to have asked you about, but thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for joining us on Pap Talk.
00:21:14
Speaker
Well, it's been a pleasure. I'm not sure how much my experience helps people. I feel like I'm only just learning all of this stuff myself, but I guess that's how we learn, isn't it? Sharing together where we're at and the mistakes we make and the like. It's been a joy to be with you both today. Thanks so much for the opportunity.
00:21:31
Speaker
Oh, it's a real pleasure. And we're all just learners continuing to grow in our love and understanding of the Lord. So thank you so much for helping us in that. Well, this brings us to the end of another episode of Pep Talk. Andy and I look forward to joining you again in two weeks time when we'll have another brilliant guest lined up for us. But until then, see you soon. Thank you for listening. Bye.