Part of the two-year training we did with Rick was to attend a three-day Bootcamp. We were honoured to have this training in Southend-on-Sea with Steve Barber and Steve Nicholson from America.

 

Wait a minute? I made a full circle! I remember those days in 1994, after my time on the Ranch in California, when the Lord arranged for this lady called Jean Dawkins to pick me up from the airport and take me to her home in Southend-on-Sea. I remember the Scottish home group leader telling me: The Lord told me about you. You being here is no coincidence and He said, ‘This is your home’. I remember meeting up with Steve Barber and I asked him if he had any plans or knew of anyone planning to plant a church in Yeovil. “No”, he said.

 

But little did I know that by the time the Vineyard in the UK was ready to send us out to Yeovil, Steve Barber would be the newly appointed Church Planting Coordinator for Vineyard Churches UK & Ireland, and he would know all about us and our plans to plant a Vineyard Church in Yeovil. God is in the minutest of detail.

 

It was great to gather with many other church planters like us, all bright-eyed and excited about starting the biggest adventure of our lives. On one of the days, Steve Nicholson asked us: “How many of you usually find yourself in church or a home-group thinking ‘If this was my group or church, I wouldn’t do it this way’?” I dropped my head in embarrassment, thinking how I loathe it when a person from the front put people (me) on the spot. He was waiting and under pressure; I owned up and raised my index finger high enough for him to see. He started laughing and said: “That is how you know if someone is a church planter.” When I looked up, I saw most of the others raised their hands. We received only the best teaching and information during those few days, to prepare us for the next number of years ahead of us.

 

They warned us that our leadership will be challenged for certain. All of us were ready, wondering how and when it would happen. But you cannot be completely prepared for it. When it happened to us, it was in our early years, sooner than we thought. It is only after the effect that we remembered what Steve Nicholson said. But the most wonderful thing of all is that it isn’t our church. It is God’s church, and if we are willing to consult Him and spend time in His presence, He will give us wisdom, enabling us to overcome the battle.

 

Most of the church planters were heading out from their churches with a team. Some had already been living in the area for a long time and had gathered a circle of friends to help them. I remember Steve Barber said it is much easier to plant a church if you have a team going with you. I asked Steve Nicholson about it later, and he said you can do it on your own, but you will have to add at least a couple of years to your timeline. We had a tough time getting things going. During a conversation, Hendrik asked me if I'd take a team with if I had to plant a church again. I thought about it and said ‘No’. I’ll go at it alone again because you learn so much more when you have only the Lord to lean on.

 

Being accosted by challenging people didn’t happen on only one occasion. We quickly learned to get on our knees as soon as possible. The Lord was faithful and taught us first, to hear His voice and to obey Him, and then how to deal with these people.

I remember one year, as we regularly gathered and prayed together at our weekly intercessory prayer group at church, I thought of the saying “Less is more.” I thought yes, yes. I know it is true. The following Saturday morning was our monthly Saturday morning prayer meeting, and one lady said she had a picture of an architectural plan of a house. It had a lot of alterations done to it. New rooms were created, some walls removed, and doors changed. Eventually, the house became unusable. I immediately thought of the words I had thought of “Less is more”. Then someone else had the word ‘deadwood’ and he thought of how trees and shrubs are much healthier when all the deadwood is removed.

 

Immediately I knew that God was trying to tell me something. He was referring to our church and all the pressure we put ourselves and others under. I received a steady stream of e-mails and calls from other charities trying to do things, and the church serves as an ideal venue to gather an audience for advertising and recruiting helpers. We decided to go back to basics and answer the question, “What did the Lord call us to do?” Was this what we signed up for? The answer is to ‘Love the Lord our God with all your heart and with all our soul and with all our mind.’ And to ‘Love your neighbour as ourselves.” Matthew 22:37-38.

 

And that is what we went back to. I went to our church calendar and wiped out all the special programs we had organised, Curry nights, Breakfasts, Cheese and Wine evenings. We went back to basics. Church on Sunday was church again. It is not a place to advertise or to promote. It is a place for us to come together as a church family to worship our God, listen to His word, minister to each other and right in the middle of it all was to have tea and coffee together and love each other.

 

I don’t know the impact (if any) it had on the church, but it cleared my mind and my heavy heart from all the muck and allowed me as a leader to enter His throne room, empty-handed to love Him with all my heart. I remember the worship teams committed to sing songs of thanksgiving every Sunday, and months later, we felt the presence of God again without warning.