xactly fifty years ago I was ordained in my home congregation of Duneane as a minister of our Presbyterian church and commissioned as a missionary to India. Within a week I would be on a 3-week voyage to disappear into another world, leaving behind family and friends and Rhoda, my fiancee of one month, who would follow me a year later for us to be married in Bombay. I have used the word ‘disappear’ advisedly, for then there was no phone or e-mail contact. Links with the home scene were decisively ruptured and one gradually became part of another world- of an Irish Presbyterian family of more than 50 missionaries, and of the Indian church and nation.

The Church that one left behind was to all appearances a buoyant and populous church. The Church in the West was still dominant - we were the Church that sent missionaries overseas, fulfilling the commission to evangelise the world. The Church in Gujarat, India, through Irish Presbyterian generosity and vision ran five hospitals, many high schools, a multitude of primary schools with a Teacher Training College, with hostels and orphanages, and supported and organised a large number of evangelists and Biblewomen- a really impressive organisation! Yet the Church body itself was relatively small and weak, lacking in indigenous dynamic, spiritual drive and body strength. There was still no question about who the senior partner in this East- West relationship was: it was the Irish Presbyterian Mission.

One of the things that troubled me during my first months and years in India, was why in spite of such a massive input of missionary personnel and material resources, Church growth was so limited and church life so weak. Was there something wrong with our missionary methods or in our basic understanding of the very nature of the Church? I remember reading books by Roland Allen entitled “The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church” and “St. Paul: His missionary Methods or ours?” that raised fundamental question-marks about the ways in which we had proceeded.

I recall also how in Gujarat we had a guest in our home, Bishop Leslie Newbigin from the Church of South India, who spoke at our Gujarat Church Council, and told us of Church Growth in his Diocese of Madurai. In a rigid caste-ridden society they did not immediately baptise new believers until a group of them were ready to take this step together, and they could begin to see who the natural leaders were. And when in the villages people became Christians, they would gather natural leaders in an area for a day’s training once a month, and give them enough Christian teaching to nurture them and enable them to instruct and feed baby-Christians in their community. So body life was developed and more and more people came to faith.

I remember being greatly heartened by Leslie Newbigin: my modest contribution in Gujarat may have been in mobilising the laity- for example enlisting Christian college students to teach in the Sunday Schools.

We left India convinced of the importance of mobilising people to be active within the Body of the Church. And a later experience of the Holy Spirit in West Church underlined the dynamic given to people through an infilling with the Spirit, different people receiving different gifts according to the Spirit’s anointing and empowering.

I have set myself to write a History of West Church during its first 40 years, but I have got stalled - through too much other agenda supervening- after the first twenty years. However, recently I have begun to read into the third decade, resuming in the early eighties. I have been amazed to discover that within a period of about 4 years we had two massive elections of elders, ordaining and installing almost 40 men and women. As well as that, a very large number of Church Visitors, Sunday School teachers, Bible Class leaders, and leaders for our growing youth organisations were enlisted. Now how was this possible, since we did look for spiritual qualities in those whom we set to work? To a large degree it was possible through the working of the Holy Spirit, through the palpable working of the Spirit in the lives of our members. People spontaneously shared the good things God was doing in their lives and in our midst, and invited folk to our Life in the Spirit Seminars, where we took time to help people to faith, or to firmer faith, and to be filled with the Spirit; and where we kept people together long enough, to enable them to grow in Body life. That’s how our Sunday School teachers knew where to enlist additional teachers; where folk discovered those who had qualities to be elders or to have leadership, and ability to serve, in a whole variety of ways.

It is a joy for us to be in West Church this morning, to see the place crowded with ardent worshippers, and to realise that here the work of the Kingdom continues to grow in the power of the Spirit. It is with a sense of deep contentment, gratitude and joy to see that my successor, Charles, with his family, and the team he has gathered round him, with all of you, are seeing the Spirit at work in your midst, and with plans and vision for strategic growth and expansion.

I wish it were so everywhere throughout our land here, throughout the United Kingdom and Western Europe.

But it is not! Most church buildings are but loosely filled, if filled at all, with greyheads predominating. Happily there are exceptions, providing pointers of hope for the future. Alpha courses, for example, have been used of God, to ignite new life in many congregations and communities. And there is evidence that a godless lifestyle itself has created a void and a hunger in the lives of many. I recently read a new book by Mark Stibbe entitled “Prophetic Evangelism”, that shows us that the power of the Gospel is not diminished in our land and that it is potent and transforming among the young. He speaks of a prison in England, Ashfield, opened in 1999, and accommodating 400 young people between 25 and 21 years of age.

The senior chaplain, Greg Downes tells that they began the work in Ashfield with some trepidation. “In the first week a boy told me that he had frightened some elderly people during an attempted house burglary. ‘I really feel shame: how can I get rid of it?’ he asked me. “I know a very good way,” I replied and told him about Jesus. ‘OK’, he said, ‘I want to become a Christian’. I explained clearly the cost of commitment and that to become a Christian was ‘not a magic prayer’, not the end but the beginning”. “So far, over four hundred young men have committed their lives to Christ. Clearly God is at work in our prisons. The statement of Jesus - ‘the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few’ -could not be truer than in this much-neglected area for evangelical concern.

I often say, regarding the parable of the Prodigal Son- the young men in Ashfield prison know half the story. They know what it’s like to be in the far country. They know what it’s like to experience bankruptcy of life. Now all they need to know is that there is a God in heaven who loves them with an everlasting love and who longs to enfold them in his divine embrace.

You remember the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman; and then how Jesus’ disciples come with food and urge him to eat. But he declares that his nourishment, comes from obeying God’s will for his life, namely to seek and to save the lost. Jesus taught in relation to the Gospel: ‘freely you have received, freely give’. The church needs to take the blessing out of the church and share it with seekers and unbelievers. A man once testified in one of DL Moody’s meetings that he had lived ‘on the Mount of Transfiguration’ for five years.

‘How many people did you lead to Christ last year?’ Moody bluntly asked him. ‘Well’ the man hesitated ‘I don’t know’. ‘Have you saved any?’ Moody persisted. ‘I don’t know that I have’, the man admitted. ‘Well’, said Moody, ‘we don’t want that kind of mountaintop experience. When a man gets up so high that he cannot reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong’.

You remember how Jesus told his disciples: “Look around you! Vast fields of human souls are ripening all around you, and are ready now for reaping. The reapers will be paid good wages and will be gathering eternal souls into the granaries of heaven. What joys await the sower and the reaper, both together!” Jesus told them to pray for reapers to go and reap. When a church in Pensacola, Florida began to pray of set purpose and with determination, they concentrated their prayers, not for themselves, but for the lost. Jesus sent his disciples out with good news for the lost and the poor. But he told them to wait to be filled with the Spirit before proceeding. When, after much praying, the Spirit descended upon that praying congregation, then in a period of 2 to 3 years, more than 140 thousand people were harvested.

It is good for us to know, that in these days, whether in Ashfield prison or in Pensacola congregation, the Gospel has still the power to save. Things can change, sometimes in a relatively short time; sometimes from a negative situation of hopelessnes, when in a secular society, the philosophy of the church is scorned, and the notion of a living, personal God derided as unbelievable, as intellectually antediluvian, foolish and untenable according to the mindset of a modern, scientific age.

I began by saying that 50 years ago, the Church here in the West was perceived as relatively strong, while the Church in many parts of the world was perceived as relatively weak. This I found to be the case in India, but the same would have applied to most of Asia, as well as much of Africa and South America. Now the balance has been considerably reversed. We are aware these days that there are many more Anglicans and a much more buoyant Anglican Church in Nigeria than in England. 50 years ago Yonggi Cho in Korea was beginning his ministry as a pastor of a congregation in war-devastated Seoul - now it has something like a million members, with massive buildings and multiple services each week, and tens of thousands of home groups, each with body strength, devotional fervour and prayer, outreaching in love and faith to unbelievers. We have taken heart already through the fruitfulness of ministry in the Ashfield prison- but something immensely more significant may be found in the top-security prison in Olmos, Argentina, where over a period of a few years almost half of the 3000+ prisoners, have not only been brought to faith, but have been built into a functioning church with pastor and office bearers, where members have been thoroughly grounded in the Bible, where they have learnt the ways of intensive prayer, and great fruitfulness in evangelism.

I began by saying that 50 years ago we went to India where I was much troubled by the weak state of the Gujarati Church. Many of you know that after retirement we returned to India, where we were much encouraged to find a church greatly strengthened and well led, with many young and enthusiastic ministers, with whom we have kept contact since, through correspondence and the sending of Christian books. What thrilled us most was missionary work, much of it carried out by Indian Christians from South India among the tribal people, and the establishment of many small and growing churches. This is what Roland Allen had called The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church.

At the General Assembly this past year, we had Bishop Vinod Malaviya from Gujarat with us. He had come fresh and vibrant from a Special Service in South Gujarat, where they had incorporated a whole swathe of new Christian congregations, the fruit of missionary work, into the Diocese of Gujarat, and had ordained 26 deacons as presbyters, or ministers - a far cry from 1954, something that released joy within our souls. Over a period of fifty years we have seen the ups and downs, the ebbs and flows in the life of the church at home and abroad, on many continents. No doubt much of this happens as a response to the sovereign working of the Spirit of God. There are timings that are in the providence of God. I believe that in the West now, we can again be on the edge of major harvesting. That is, if we have discerning eyes and obedient hearts. Jesus told his men to open their eyes and look upon major harvest fields all around, as exemplified in the Samaritan woman. He told them to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send labourers out to harvest the more-than-ripe crops.

I conclude by relating an incident of a couple of weeks ago, when one night, Rhoda and I were walking on the illuminated Bangor pier. A young man asked us the time, prelude to a half-hour conversation in which he freely expressed his thoughts and longings. He wished he might remain married as long as this aged couple with whom he was now conversing! He wished for an end of violence in people’s relationships, he longed for kindness, consideration, honesty and mutual respect. He wished for wholesome attitudes of heart in our Province. He feared the young people involved in drinking a little distance away and the violence that might erupt from them. He was sad because two of his brothers, one older and one younger, were in prison, one for joy-riding, one for violent behaviour. He was sad because one of his best friends had committed suicide. He was sad for the district of West Belfast from which he had come, because he saw no future there, no hope. He seemed exactly like the young people in Ashfield prison, knowing the emptiness and bankruptcy of life in the far country, but needing to know that there is a waiting heavenly Father.

I thank Charles for giving me a substantial time to speak this morning, and pray for him and you all, that the harvests reaped here in the past may be small in comparison with what you are called upon to gather in, in the coming years. The blessing of the Triune God be upon you all.

Rev. David Bailie

The author

An abridged version of the sermon by Rev. David Bailie at West Church on 28 November 2004, his Fiftieth Anniversary as Minister.

David Bailie started West Church in a house over forty years ago. When numbers grew a purpose built church building was constructed. David retired as minister of West Church in 1998.

As it is our desire to freely share the good news about Jesus, we would encourage you to copy & share this article with everyone you know!

For any further information contact the church office.