Missionary Rally 2007
Friday, June 15th, 2007
“Obviously the Presbyterian Church don’t have men of the stature of Samuel McCollum and Andrew Quigley”
Stevie and John eagerly anticipate things getting started
Approximately 400 people turned up at Ballyclare Presbyterian Church for the 2007 Missionary Rally on Wednesday. The sermon was by Andrew Quigley, who started by speaking of the debt both he personally, and the RPCS, owed to the RPCI. As research, he had read through the minutes of Synod and the Covenanter Witness for the past 50 (!) years. From his research, Andrew identified a discernable pattern with regard to addressing church growth, which had four elements, and had occured in three distinct periods since 1959. He said that there was no doubt that this pattern had, by God’s grace, produced real fruit, both in new and established congregations. However, he then posed the question – are we content with this cyclical pattern?
In Scotland in 1994, things weren’t too bad on the face of it, with worship services still taking place etc – however the body life of the church was non-existent. Andrew then spoke for the rest of the time on 3 key elements of how Christ had turned things around in Airdrie and in some of our own congregations: God, Members and The Lost.
The audio for the talk is not available online, so it’s good that there were loads there on Wednesday. For those who missed it however (unlike Peter who wants it to be known that “never in all my life have I missed an event, sacred or secular, in order to revise”) all may not be lost, if you know what I’m saying.
The interview
David Fallows then interviewed Andrew and one of his elders, Sam Bell. Among the questions, David asked Andrew if the Airdrie session would be prepared to give advice to sessions who wanted help in seeking to work through how to actually move forward. Andrew said that the Airdrie session had discussed this and would be delighted to come over 4 times a year for a period of 5-7 years to work with any sessions that wanted help, stressing of course that they didn’t have all the answers.
After this, Harry Coulter spoke about the Eastern Presbytery’s plans for work in East Belfast. On Friday 12th October there will be a meeting at Cregagh Community Centre where (the Rev. Prof.) Robert McCollum will preach and more information will be given as the Presbytery seeks to develop a work in that part of Belfast. Prayer meetings have been planned for the last Mondays of June, July, August and September at 7-7:45am at the Blysthwood Shop on the Woodstock Road. Those who can’t make it were urged to pray locally.
Drum-ore / David ‘drums’ up support for [insert your own ending]
Many people then stayed behind for the supper, where people queued for hours to be able to shake hands with Andrew. Eventually people began to disperse, and the Ballyclare congregation (the RPs, not the ones with stained-glass pictures of Jesus) could reflect on a superbly run three days of Synod, in weather which ranged from so much heat that they gave out free bottles of water and put in fans (not like the SOAS, the other sort) on the Monday night, to torrential rain on the Tuesday. Anyway, they hosted it all superbly, and they’ll be a hard act to follow. Indeed, it would be almost impossible apart from one factor – Synod 2008 is in Faughan.
But for now let’s remember what we heard this year:
“We need to say that it is unacceptable for 75% of this church not to engage in the corporate life of prayer in the church. It can’t be acceptable. How can Jesus take us seriously? You need to think about having the prayer meeting at a different time. You need to say to them, this is something that we do. We feed on the Lord Jesus Christ in word and prayer. It is unacceptable that for the past 50 years, 50% of the members have not been at the evening service.”
It’s not about brow-beating. And it won’t be easy. But it’s got to be changed.
