Jeremy Marshall challenges the current evangelical status quo
In 1854 the novelists Charles Dickens and Mrs Gaskell each wrote best sellers (Hard Times and North and South).
These books exposed the extent to which England was divided into two halves with separate lives and cultures.
The same is true today in English evan-gelicalism. According to recent estimates, some 80% of evangelicals in England are in London and the South East. Another startling statistic is that over 80% of churchgoers have a degree compared with only 30% of the UK population.
The working classes and the North are massively under-represented in evangelicalism. This is mirrored by an overwhelming imbalance of resources. In the South, there are many large evangelical churches with extensive staff teams and multi-million-pound building programmes and, in the North, we find smaller churches who can at best support one pastor. While of course there are affluent areas in the north and poorer areas in the South, nonetheless poor churches in the North tend to be starved of resources
Challenges and encouragements
In the North, major conurbations such as Bradford or Middlesbrough have very few evangelical fellowships while cities such as Oxford and Cambridge have many. There are additional challenges for churches in deprived areas due to poverty, family breakdown, many transitory asylum seekers and many Muslims who have little or no contact with friendly Christians.
This is, of course, a generalisation and it is important to recognise that there are many encouragements in the North. The North West Gospel Partnership, for example, has been a pioneer in establishing collaboration between evangelical churches, both free and Anglican. If we look at the M62 east-west corridor there are in all the major cities flourishing evangelical churches, something that would not have been true 20 years ago. Some university cities such as Newcastle, Sheffield, and Manchester have numerous vibrant churches.
Brute facts
Even allowing for this, though, the position in deprived areas in the North is weak. Steve Kneale, a pastor in Oldham, the most deprived town in England, says ‘The brute facts are these: British evangelicalism is overwhelmingly white and middle class, our churches are centred on more affluent areas of the country and we are extremely poor at reaching the working class and deprived.’
Certainly, if we are going to reach the whole nation for Christ, we have to ‘do something’. What do church leaders in these areas want?
Finance and people
Money is one thing. Steve Kneale says ‘Churches in deprived communities tend to have the least income and the greatest financial needs. Yet funding and support routinely goes to wealthier, more affluent churches and those churches, hoovering up what resources exist, seem reticent to share it with churches in deprived communities.’
But it’s not just money: also vital are people willing to move into these areas and either work in the church or join the church as committed members. This is important, as one of the main challenges is that no sooner have people been converted than they move out. Steve Kneale notes in Oldham that the majority of Iranians who become Christians then move away. People moving the other way could be young graduates or ‘empty nesters’, but right now it seems that such people tend to move to large churches in the South.
Ian Williamson, who is pioneering a new church in Middlesbrough, points out that: ‘There are two different problems. One is a lack of people willing to serve the working class … the other is excluding the working class from ministry, mission and training. Both problems stem from having a majority culture make the rules’.
This sidelining of pastors from the North and from deprived areas (something which is mirrored with pastors from ethnic minorities) also means that church planting can be challenging. Many of these places need plants, but sometimes decisions about where to plant are made by people from outside and locals feel ignored. We need to raise up a new generation of indigenous pastors and church workers from those areas, who understand their needs and can be effective ambassadors to them.
Training for ministry
Evangelical training historically has tended to focus on university (often Oxbridge) graduates. Courses are frequently academic and the pastors who are produced mainly seem to go to London and the South East or to large cities with big student populations. Additionally, most of the best known evangelical seminaries – Oak Hill, London Seminary, Union – are in the South.
Ian Williamson recalls: ‘When I started my theological training with the Yorkshire School of Christian Ministry, I felt like a fish out of water and after the first day I was ready to give up and go home. I come from an unchurched background and the majority of students there had been raised in the church and were already involved in ministry and preaching. I’m not academic, yet the other students were all degree educated and some were from Oxford and Cambridge. All had a good grasp of Reformed theology and my only previous theological training was reading Everyday with Jesus. Everyone there seemed to be wearing a fleece and corduroys: I was wearing my gym gear from the local MMA gym. I stood out like a sore thumb, socially, physically and intellectually.’
Gap in the market
There seems to be a gap for a residential centre offering a flexible range of courses, designed especially for churches in deprived areas, tailored to their needs and serving such churches. Ian Williamson says: ‘These courses need to include experienced, indigenous workers to teach on their faculties so that learners have a more contextualised view of their mission into working-class cultures.’ Steve Kneale agrees: ‘It is necessarily going to have to involve speaking to working-class people and those ministering in deprived communities to work out what they need (and a radical approach to offering something that is not currently being offered).’ An example of what’s being considered is an English base in the North East for the Ragged School of Theology, currently being run north of the border in Niddrie by 20 Schemes.
Serving in the North
Where could God be leading in the future in this area? Bill James, for example, is the Principal of London Seminary and is keen to see ways to serve the North. He has been working for a while with various evangelical churches and leaders in the North to see what kind of support such churches want. Consultations have taken place and such a venture will only make sense if local churches want it, design it and own it. In the last few years, a joint venture with a leading evangelical mission agency was planned, as well as a separate chance to buy a wonderful building in Yorkshire, but neither materialised.
Bill says: ‘We can see the need, which is for an institute designed by and led by pastors in the region, with training tailored for the particular requirements of deprived areas and given by pastors from those areas. It needs to be thoroughly evangelical, but also practical and ‘vocational’, where students are based in a local church and, like a teacher training for a PGCE, they can both do theory and learn on the job’. If you are interested in either being part of such an effort to establish a northern training base or providing support of whatever type, please contact Bill via Londonseminary.org.
The last word
I leave the last word with Steve Kneale ‘(This) is a problem because vast swathes of our country are heading for a lost eternity in Hell because we have failed to reach them and are largely unwilling to go to them and plant churches to reach them … unless we are actively praying about sending people into deprived communities and providing new and contextualised training for those from deprived areas, we can’t be that surprised if the Spirit never leads us to do it.’
