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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
William Taylor: What to do when the denomination around you is imploding?
It is difficult times in the Church of England.
Having previously publicly betrayed his ordination and consecration vows - the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby - has now resigned over his handling of a safeguarding matter, following the release of the Makin report.
The Church of England is tearing itself apart over sexuality.
There are more apostate bishops than faithful bishops in the English House of Bishops.
And there is now a massive group within the Church of England called The Alliance, representing 42% of the denomination’s attendance, basically pleading to the house of bishops to repent.
William Taylor has served since 1998 as the senior pastor of St Helen’s London. Taylor is paralleling the difficult times faced by Evangelicals today to those faced by the Apostle Paul at the time of writing the pastorals.
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It is the pastor's heart. And Dominic Steele. And William Taylor is our guest. He's the rector of St Helen's Church at Bishopsgate in London, one of the leaders of evangelicalism in the United Kingdom. He's in Australia speaking at four major conferences over the Christmas break.
Speaker 1:How do you keep a church fit for purpose in the midst of difficult times? And it is difficult times in the Church of England. Having previously publicly betrayed his ordination and consecration vows, the Archbishop of Canterbury, justin Welby, has now resigned in disgrace over his handling of a safeguarding matter following the release of the Macon Report. And the Church of England is tearing itself apart over sexuality Bishops well, there are more of them that are apostate than faithful. And there is now a massive group within the Church of England called the Alliance, massive group within the Church of England called the Alliance, representing 42% of that denomination's attendance, basically pleading to the House of Bishops to repent.
Speaker 1:And how could one possibly persuade a young man who's seeking to give their life in full-time service to the Lord Jesus that the Church of England is a good place to fish from? And among all of this is William Taylor, who has served since 1998 as the Senior Pastor of St Helens London, flagship of evangelicalism in London and William. You have been there a long time and I remember even before you were rector there were people saying the Church of England as a whole was a basket case. But just take us to your pastor's heart and what's happening with your heart as you look at the denomination in such a shambles.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it is tragic because really there is so much that could be done in the Church of England. But at the end of the day I think our responsibility in the local church is to keep the local church faithful to the scriptures and faithful to what God has called us to do. And in some senses you know that remains throughout. And in my earliest stages in gospel ministry I spent a lot of time training uh leaders within a congregation, in the pastorals, and I think the pastorals is just the place to go to have one's heart, as it were, attuned right in a time of great uncertainty. And you think of, you think of two timothy, with everybody deserting the Apostle Paul in the whole of Asia.
Speaker 2:And you think of 1 Timothy, with so much compromise and uncertainty, and I think that's always been the place where I'd want to go to make sure that I'm kind of staying straight and stable in gospel ministry.
Speaker 1:And so how do you do it? I mean, I would just think, staff meeting after staff meeting, you'd be thinking of focusing on the latest catastrophe, but you're saying no, no, focus on what the Apostle Paul is saying.
Speaker 2:I think so. I mean, I think you've got to be real and realise the situation that you're in, and so you know we are in a denomination and if and as the denomination becomes more and more apostate, then you have to take appropriate biblical steps. I mean, it's really interesting that the end of Romans, which is a letter designed to see the church in Rome focused in supporting the Apostle Paul in ministry in Spain, so it's kind of, in that sense, ministry evangelistically geared. Right at the end he says that people will come in teaching different doctrines. And how are you to cope with that? To keep the church online, missionally and evangelistically? Avoid them. And so I think the Bible does. And you get exactly the same in 2 Timothy avoid them. So I think the Bible, god, does give us instruction on what we're to do in situations like this. But to give over every staff meeting to talking about the Church of England, honestly that would be a complete waste of time.
Speaker 2:So we are developing a clear strategy as to how we will respond in certain circumstances and situations and we're clear on what the big picture is in terms of keeping biblical ministry in the city and in the city of London and further afield. But the daily business of gospel ministry continues and I think again, the pastoral is a great place to go. We're told what to do there.
Speaker 1:Well, let's just dig in there for a moment and have a look together at 2 Timothy 4. And I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who's going to judge the living and the dead because of his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season, out of season, rebuke, correct, encourage with great patience and teaching. That's our job. Yeah, for the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine according to their own desires, will not tolerate sound doctrine according to their own desires, will not multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. I mean, that does sound like you.
Speaker 2:It is, and interestingly, I mean when I was at theological seminary back in the late 1980s this particular issue, I mean I think it's so difficult for those who struggle in the area of same-sex temptation to same-sex attraction. It's so difficult that that is the issue, because it's such a kind of visceral struggle for people who are battling in this particular area. I always like to say look, we're all sexual sinners, every single one of us. You know, you don't speak kind of six miles above contradiction or not engaged in the battle as a pastor.
Speaker 1:And you are doing. I mean, I remember meeting a young woman at St Helens when I was visiting there one day who herself had a significant battle with same-sex attraction and being encouraged in the midst of your ministry to be a faithful follower of the Lord Jesus and walk faithfully with Christ. And you have got a ministry going on there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah I mean there are numbers of people and have been both on the staff and in the wider congregation who are tempted in the area of same-sex attraction. There'll be so in many, many churches. But within that battle within the denomination for teaching God's truth on these matters has been going on since 1988. So it's been a constant throughout the last 30 years of my kind of gospel work really. But in that setting, I mean, here is the Apostle Paul, and I think you've got both 2 Timothy 2.2, which gives you one very clear strategy when you're facing conflict and division. You know, teach others to teach others. You know what you've heard from me to faithful people who will be able to teach and train others. So that seems one key plank in the strategy. And the other one is do the work of an evangelist that you've got there um in in verse five, sober-minded, endure suffering and do the work of an evangelist fulfilled or discharge your ministry. And so I think um in in all of this to keep our clarity in terms of gospel proclamation. That's what we're about. And then training of people who are going to be able to teach others in due course is also what we're about and we keep that front and center.
Speaker 2:As well as the personal charge, you know it's our charge as pastors. I remember talking to dick lucas as my predecessor at St Helens, who was there for 37 years, and we were sitting. I was about to start a sermon series in 1 Timothy and we were chatting about 1 Timothy and he just turned to me and said that is your charge, william, it's your charge. He was pinned to the back of my seat. But that's right, that's our charge. You know to look to ourselves, to watch yourself, to guard your faith and doctrine closely, to be an example to the flock and a whole congregation in the work of evangelism. That's what's going to keep the church for the next generation as we keep on reaching out with the gospel and teaching people in the gospel.
Speaker 2:And then am I training people to be the next generation, as it were, of people who are going to lead in gospel churches, in whatever denomination or whatever kind of polity they happen to?
Speaker 1:find themselves. So has it slowed down? I mean, I'm just thinking about, with so much fire going on around you, have you been able to keep your focus, and how is the process of raising up the next generation of gospel minister and raising up the next generation of Christian?
Speaker 2:I mean I'd love to talk about both in those in separate blocks, if you're happy with that, and I think in terms of outreach and evangelism. No, I really don't think it has. In fact this is purely anecdotal, but in the UK at the moment, I think there's a whole generation who have kind of tasted their parents' skepticism and not really satisfied with it, and are looking around and I mean you've seen the sort of Justin Brawley material.
Speaker 1:We're going to get the campus leaders on here in a couple of weeks' time because I'm hearing that we've had more converts at Sydney Uni and the University of New South Wales this year than in living memory New South Wales this year than in age in living memory.
Speaker 2:You know, and I sat next to a lad I was speaking actually in a Mitsubishi factory down with Paul Harrington, in one of the church plants down there in Adelaide, and sitting down right in front of me in the kind of meet somebody in the meeting session. This young lad had read Jordan Peterson, then therefore read Carl Jung, was thinking what is the nearest thing to the good things that I'm hearing here? Jesus, surely, and had come, and this was his second, third week in church to find out what Jesus had got to say. And I think that's all anecdotal, but I do think there is something going on at the moment.
Speaker 1:So my observation for… and with young men particularly, do you think?
Speaker 2:I don't. I think in England you would say the most difficult group to reach would be white anglos in their 50s and over. You know, skeptical, they are a people group that it's really hard to reach. With the gospel it just seems that they're they're children, they've tasted kind of the new atheism and so forth I don't like the taste.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't like it, but they're looking for something else and I think that gives us. And they don't have quite this. They don't quite know what it is that their parents were skeptical about. Yeah, so I think in our churches we have focused um over the last 20 years or so, a lot on kind of event evangelism, um, and what we've tried to do in St Helens is, if you like, refocus on personal evangelism. Now I think the church as an evangelistic unit is absolutely essential and the language of a church being the plausibility structure for the gospel. You see it at work in a church. So I'm not trying to undermine event and that sort of thing, but are we as strong on our personal evangelism and working one-to-one with people in sharing the gospel? So we've worked very hard at that as a church and we've also worked very hard at training people evangelism at a much lower level.
Speaker 2:Do you remember all the old dialogue events that we used to have?
Speaker 2:So a few years back we said we are going to train every single small group to hold their own dialogue event and we've got probably 200 small groups at St Helens and we trained every single small group leader to be able to give a short five-minute gospel presentation and this happens every year. Now that we have a week or a fortnight where we stop our small groups and every group will host an event at which they invite their friends, that's been extraordinarily fruitful, so that you've got both one-to-one and small group and then event. I think if you just focus on the event, it's kind of like an upside-down pyramid. You're not putting the weight where it needs to be. If we train a whole church in confident personal witness and outreach, then when you put on your event or when you've got an ordinary Sunday I say an ordinary, it's never ordinary, but we've got a Sunday meeting People have got friends who they want to bring along and they know what to do with them and what to say with them.
Speaker 1:And what about the raising up for ministry? Because I mean, I remember I think when we were talking at the GAFCON conference in Kigali last year, you were talking about a number of trainees coming through but less choosing to step up for Church of England ordination.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. That's right. So historically we would have sent sort of three to five, sometimes five to ten people through to college every year, and they weren't all kind of out of St Helens. They might have spent some time with us, having been nurtured elsewhere, but they would go from St Helens to college. Now I mean, maybe one might go, but they're just not prepared to go through into theological seminary. They might go to FIEC, trainee Christian leaders, and they are going for training, but they are remaining with us in service and with other churches in service as they train and then we're commissioning them formally and publicly at the end of their training.
Speaker 1:And you had one of these services. The other week we did, we've had two.
Speaker 2:We had one in 2023 and one in 2024. The much more public one was the 2024 one, but what I think that is encouraging about that is that there is now a pathway that has been established. These guys have been on formal selection panels. It's been done in a recognised way within our network of churches.
Speaker 1:So it's the beginning of the setting up of a process to approve people for ministry and authorise people for ministry.
Speaker 2:And all seven of them have stepped in. So the great question I take I'm, I, my, I take my hat off to these guys because, um, it's a big thing, you know, this was four or five years ago to say, okay, well, I'm 22, 23, 24 and I'm going to commit myself to this process, but I've no idea what's quite what's at the end of it, because we haven't quite worked it out yet. Well, thank the Lord that at the end of the process there was a commissioning service. People from across the alliance were there and were prepared to speak openly in support of it, and every one of these individuals has gone into paid gospel ministry in a complete cross-section of ministry positions.
Speaker 2:So very, very small church with a much more sort of struggling congregation. Somebody's gone to one like that. Somebody's gone somewhere right outside of London, up in Derby. He's doing a great job there and his senior pastor just contacted me the other day saying thank you so much, he's doing such a great job. And then a couple of them have come to our churches, but there have been jobs for them at the end, which I think is what people worry about, and the plan is for these, or some like them, to be ordained.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they will be ordained in 2025, for sure.
Speaker 1:Right, because I did read of this service that you had and some people critical of it, saying you kind of were all staying exactly within the lines of Church of England expectations or something like that, but when you ordain them next year, that will be a group of you saying we have no confidence in the Church of England ordination process and so it's now necessary for us to set up our own process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. I mean that has to be the case. I mean these guys effectively have been publicly recognised by groups of churches and they are working across those churches in public ministry. Now we call it a commissioning, but you could call it lots of other things. I mean, it's effectively what's going on in hands being laid on Timothy, for example.
Speaker 1:I mean well, but the words will be ordained for word and sacrament.
Speaker 2:I mean, when it happens next year, they will be ordained formally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, but it will be… and that's really part of the setting up the trajectory to setting up the informal province that you're talking about Absolutely talking about. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And all of this is contingent on whether or not the bishops determined to set up a separate structure for those who want to remain within the Church of England to operate within. If they set up a satisfactory structure and make what we call provision, then a service like this won't be necessary. But my observation is that to date, the bishops have wanted to hang on to their own power rather than serve the churches, and so they're very unwilling to let go of their power. And I think it's a great, great shame, because if they were prepared to cede, you know their perceived power and allow… which is really the power for licensing, isn't it it?
Speaker 2:is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. I mean I take it for you. I mean, here am I. I worry about who will come after me, you know, and yet the bishop over me is a good guy, you know, and you must worry about succession at St Helens.
Speaker 2:Well, it depends how old you think I am, Donny.
Speaker 1:Well, I think you're older than me.
Speaker 2:Okay, fair enough, yeah of course we're thinking about that, I think.
Speaker 1:And not just, I mean, you're in a much more secure position than many other churches. You're absolutely right. And I mean, where am I? I've invested time in building a building project. I've invested time in buying houses a house for this church. I'm leaving the place in a better property position than I found it, and but why would I do that if I'm going to give it to a?
Speaker 2:heretic. So we are very clear as a church leadership that our goal is to secure evangelical ministry in the City of London and beyond, and we're very, I think that that kind of aim is well chosen in what it doesn't say and what it does say. Our goal above everything else is to secure evangelical ministry in the City of London.
Speaker 1:So you've left the word Anglican out of that sentence.
Speaker 2:I have.
Speaker 2:I mean, I happen to think that the English Reformation is a really good expression of kind of reformed theology and there's a difference between the English and the Continental and I happen to prefer the English Reformation.
Speaker 2:So that's why I like Anglican as a sort of way of doing things, but for that reason. But we have left the word Anglican deliberately and we've left Church of England deliberately because our goal is to secure evangelical ministry. But it would be, I think, foolish in the extreme just to put your hands on your hips and flounce off immediately when there is still and some people will say, okay, well, fair enough, you're living in cloud cuckoo land and maybe. But I feel we must give it our best shot. And my encouragement always to people who say well, look, stay in for as long as you can so that we have our best shot at securing provision. Because if we secure provision, then for churches like ours that have very strategically placed buildings, they are a huge, huge gospel bonus, and that's not true for everybody. So we've got multiple church plants now all over London and further afield and many of them aren't meeting in Church of England buildings at all and I can quite easily see them saying actually no. No, we don't need any of this.
Speaker 1:we'll go and join one anglican mission, england or or whatever I see, or something, yeah, whatever one of them, one of them has right.
Speaker 2:And uh, the bishop said, well, no, I, I insist on being there for the installation of the successor. And the successor said, well, I'm not prepared to have you there. And so he said so. So they said, well, okay, fair enough, we won't be Church of England in that case. Well, I mean, that's a very interesting plant, that church plant, because when we planted it I was met by lawyers and the incumbent of the parish in which we planted it, which was in a separate diocese, and I went to say we're starting a church in your parish. She was there, as was the lawyer, and the bishop warned everybody, because they owned a lot of land there, not to take us, take the plant on board. Could they come back in? So they then came in. They came into the diocese for five years or so. Now succession has come and the diocese has said well, we insist that the bishop is there for the installation.
Speaker 2:And we said, well, I'm sorry, but you're a heretic, we're not going to have you there at the installation. And the result is they've left again. They've left the property, no, no, they've kept it because they're meeting in a school. Oh, okay, right, I think if you've not got that issue, you may be a little bit more fleet of foot and some people on conscience will say actually no, I've had enough and I can't go on. Well, I don't want to kind of de-church them or anything like that. No, no Good on them.
Speaker 1:That's their decision and they will go and meet wherever they meet and they've left the church and we should not fall out um over over those kind of decisions. But do you think the um? Uh well, sarah malali and those kind of people just think, um well, they're never going to leave, we'll just put up, we'll just keep making it harder for them.
Speaker 2:No, I think they think we are prepared to lose 10 percent. We'll just put up. We'll just keep making it harder for them. No, I think they think we are prepared to lose 10%. Keep going, well. I think well. I mean, I know they've said that they are prepared to lose 10% at either end. Right, and therefore, if we leave, I don't think that's a particular, I mean, it'd be a concern for them, but I think they've already, as it were, factored that in.
Speaker 1:But when you see now 43% of the population of the Church of. England is represented by the Alliance. That would be just devastating. You'd be very, very foolish indeed, and are you seeing any signs of a walk back from them?
Speaker 2:not yet. Um, I mean, what is interesting is, you know, there are five of the 42 diocese who have a membership of 70, uh, 50 of their membership are 70 or over. And then there's a further two dioceses where 49% of their membership is 70 years old or over.
Speaker 1:So everyone younger is with you.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. There are five dioceses in the Church of England where you know over 50% of the membership of that entire diocese is over 70. So you just sort of think, if you do wave goodbye to the 43% of the church, most of whom will be the younger end, it will be extreme folly. But you never know what the House of Bishops might do.
Speaker 1:So it does look like these ordinations will go ahead next year early next year sometime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the plan is for us to have these men ordained. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:And I think you were telling me that it will essentially be a moment of well group defiance of the Church of England Episcopacy or a moment of group. We've lost confidence in your. I mean really like that church was in that school hall. We don't want you, we don't trust you to the bishop.
Speaker 2:I think that's right. I mean, I think you know somebody once put it to me in military terms. I don't know why they did that, but they said you know that the church leaders are like battalion commanders and they have completely lost confidence in the generals. That may not be a metaphor that works for you, but I think I can understand it. The guys on the front line who are leading the churches have lost confidence in the House of Bishops on so many different levels. You know, you can just open your newspaper this morning and you can see that the levels at which um and the different levels of which there is no confidence in the leadership um coming from the house of bishops and um, if they're not prepared to make provision for active and effective gospel ministry, then we have to take it into our own hands. Now it's a lot easier for us to do that at St Helens Than the guy who's on his own, than the guy who's on his own.
Speaker 2:But I do think that we have to do things which make it then possible for others, then possible for others. And other people are doing the sort of things which five years ago, you know, some other churches did and was considered to be completely outrageous. And now other churches are picking up, and my encouragement to every church leader is you must do something. You must. Just writing a letter is not enough. You've got to do something to distance yourself from a house of bishops that is heretical.
Speaker 2:Now it's not like Sydney. We've got 42 dioceses, so you're just one diocese. So we've got 42 dioceses with 42 different bishops and different settings, so what one person does in one diocese might be different to what another person. And then you've got churches, some of whom only have their church wardens with them. Some of them it's just the incumbent, the senior minister, and others it'll have the church wardens and the church council, but not the congregation. So what I'm wanting to encourage people to do is to do the most strong thing you possibly can do, and for us it has been okay.
Speaker 2:We're going to break partnership with the House of Bishops. We'll stop giving them any money at all, except for safeguarding and the kind of central provisions they make. We make a little contribution to my housing, but we don't pay anything else in terms of our costs anymore to the centre. So we stop paying money. We make a little contribution to my housing, but we don't pay anything else in terms of our costs anymore to the centre. So we stopped paying money. We've broken partnership with the House of Bishops and we remain under them for safeguarding, but we are now training and commissioning our own gospel workers for public ministry across our congregations and across congregations of many other churches. Now what?
Speaker 1:about the church planting. Has that slowed down or is that still happening?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, funnily enough, during lockdown we started a new congregation. I mean, it was completely a result of lockdown Because we couldn't have all the kids um in church and you had to meet in family units. One of the um buildings was used for um families with their children around them, and towards the end of lockdown somebody came and said well, this is going so well, let's keep going. Why don't we keep going? So um, it was rather. It's a rather wonderful thing. There's now a new family congregation, but this time last year. I mean we've always sought to plant churches.
Speaker 1:I guess in around about 2001,.
Speaker 2:I sought to turn St Helens into a church planting church and that took about a year to work through as a church family and since then we've been planting churches as vigorously as we can. And this time last year we thought, come on, it's high time we got kicked off again, and so we are planning two church plants in the next two years, one this coming September 25. Where's that going to be? Well, we hope it'll be in somewhere in south, in our southwest London. Right, yeah, that's very specific, I'm not going to tell you more about that.
Speaker 1:You've got more public negotiations to take place. There's a little bit more negotiation.
Speaker 2:I think it's been very in our church planting work it's been really important for us to realize that really what we plant is the seed of God's word and that's the biblical language. But what we do is build churches. I don't mean with bricks and mortar, but the language is building the church. And so we've tried to help our church planters see themselves as church builders and I think that's helped us a huge amount. When it comes to all the training side, they're not just kind of pioneer, kind of rugged individuals who branch I mean there's an element of that to it, obviously but actually the senior pastor, the teachers in the church, are there to build the church. And if you build senior pastor, the teachers in the church are there to build the church. And if you build it right, then there'll be a huge amount of ministry of the planting of the word going on. So that's been a big lesson for us, I think, over the last 20 something years.
Speaker 1:But with all this crisis going around, the church planting is still happening.
Speaker 2:That's the key thing, yeah for sure and the structure into which they will come. Who knows? At this stage, you know we're not quite sure yet quite what they will be Right.
Speaker 1:So, whether or not they plant in a dead Church of England building or into an Amy structure or an Anglican mission in England.
Speaker 2:structure yeah, that's right. So I mean we have kind of, uh, at least two models. So we we have something we call because we're a city center church and there are always people leaving for you know stage of life reasons we have what we call church trickle, where we will nominate a number of churches that we think, and we're in partnership, would really benefit from you going into certain A small number, a small number, and so we will say here are the four churches.
Speaker 2:Now one of them is an FIEC church. In the current four that we've got at the moment, they're not all Church of England churches.
Speaker 1:They're Bible churches. They're.
Speaker 2:Bible churches, I mean the whole denominational thing, I think, is you don't find denomination in the Bible. You find local church and gospel partnership, and so what we're wanting to do is trickle some people across and there are these four churches at the moment that we're working on, but at the same time take then 40, 30, 40, 50, 80 people and start a whole new church family.
Speaker 1:What happens when you retire? How does? What's the process for choosing the next minister?
Speaker 2:you know, yeah well, every church um has nominators, like you do here In England. We have patrons and they have a say, but at the end of the day it's the congregation that needs to kind of….
Speaker 1:So at that level the bishop's just a secretary.
Speaker 2:No the bishop actually has a say and has a part in all of that, and that's why them making some sort of provision is absolutely essential because if you're going to be say, avoid the false teacher, you can't have the false teacher.
Speaker 2:Be the person who has this exactly, and so if they don't make, the more they fail to make provision, the more we will preserve evangelical ministry in the city of London becomes significant. I mean that becomes significant anyway, but the more the weighting of that, matt, in terms of the weight of that, wording becomes very significant.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming and talking to us. William Taylor has been my guest. He is the senior minister of St Helen's Church at Bishop's Gate in London, and I guess the thing we remember is do the work of an evangelist preach the gospel in season and out of season. My name's Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
