CEP SEASON THREE EP: 05 - DEREK SMITH
In this episode, we explore with Derek Smith, who is the lead pastor at Kings Church in Bolton, UK, all about:
Multisite Church - its strengths and weaknesses
Developing new leaders - finding the genius in others
Transition - how to do this well
We hope you enjoy it.
SHOW NOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT
CREATED BY AI - SO NOT 100% accurate.
David Mckeown 0:00
Hey welcome to the church explained podcast, conversation degree your leadership and build your Church today we're joined with Derek Smith away from Bolton. We are welcome Derek. Yes.
Derek Smith 0:13
Thank you very much it's it's actually snowing in Bolton Wow as we speak, you know such to let you know.
Nathan Benger 0:21
Come on, come on. Well, little bit about Derek Derek leads kings Church, and they are in Bolton. But also in Wigan Blackpool, Salford gate said, and they also have a Persian compass. I think we've got all that right. Derek, you did? Listen,
Derek Smith 0:39
you did that. Well, I'm thinking of giving you a job. You did
David Mckeown 0:44
things right. He's open for offers. Yeah.
Nathan Benger 0:48
But he also is a avid Bolton wondrous fun, which means nothing to most of our audience, but they used to be in the Premier League. And Derek, my first question to you is, have you ever eaten a Wigan kebab?
Derek Smith 1:03
I have eaten many Wigan kebabs over the year hence the size of my belly Yes, we can keep up for all those listening to the southerners and not educated in really Mitchell in start cooking is basically pie at between two pieces of bread. We call we call them in this bom bom kicks in North of England. So it's a pie on the Bob. That's the weekend kebab.
Nathan Benger 1:32
Or a pie pie on a carb, high on the cup.
Derek Smith 1:35
You got a copy? Okay, you can Yeah, we call it a bomb cake in the Northwest.
David Mckeown 1:41
And for the rest of the world. Hey, just pretend you haven't heard that. We'll be
Nathan Benger 1:46
searching Google for a Wigan kebab.
David Mckeown 1:50
Yeah, fantastic. Hey, well, it's great to have you with.
Derek Smith 1:53
Can I just say for all those of offended for the south of England, please still come to your work and let you in here. We do want you to
David Mckeown 2:01
welcome to the conference. Yeah. Hey, Derek, let's find out a little bit more about you then tell us a little bit about your story. And your sort of faith story and maybe even your sort of journey in the ministry?
Derek Smith 2:12
Yes, I was born in Bolton. I've lived there for 57 years about in 1965. And I became a I had no Church background, became a Christian as a 19 year old. And very quickly, will probably within the next 12 months after becoming a Christian felt a sense I wanted to do something for God, but didn't really know what that was. And as to whether I've been called into ministry, I clearly have what if it wasn't a Damascus Road experience for me? It's been years and years, we've kept saying yes to God, where, you know, I was a Christian a few months. And he said, would your move some chairs? So I said, Yeah. And then he said, would you run the tuck shop as a youth? And I said, Yeah, then they said, would you come on the youth team? And they said, Yeah. And then they said, Would you lead the team? And then I said, Yeah, then would you like to do some formal training? Yeah. Would you like to be a campus? youth Pastor yet? Without being assistant Pastor? Yeah. Would you like to be an executive Pastor? Yeah. And then I felt God asked me do you want to be a senior Pastor? I said, Go on, give it a whirl. So really, it's been it's been 30 odd years of just kept saying yes. And so I don't know if I set out to be a campus Pastor or a Pastor, or a senior Pastor. I just set out to serve God. This is where I've ended up.
Nathan Benger 3:41
Yeah, amazing. Derek, would you just for the listeners, explain a little bit about your family, and also give us a little bit of context around Bolton and the kind of area Bolton is.
Derek Smith 3:54
Bolton is a big farm industrial town in the north of England is one as population it's one of the biggest towns in Western Europe. And in the amount of people that live here, this Quadra million people live in Bolton. It was a key part of the Industrial Revolution. So it has lots of mills and so right from like late 60s 70s, it was in decline after the 70s the 80s into the 90s within decline. And then like lots of places in the north of England, it's hard to kind of rebuild repurpose. So Poland is a very beautiful place. I love it. It's got a lot of multiculturalism. We have 80,000 Muslims in Bolton, generally from the India Pakistan region, so South Asia, and it's a great place. It's very multicultural. It's coming back. It's finding its feet. It's a great place to live. Yeah, it's it's a good place and I love it. And I've lived here for 57 years. So I must Want something about
David Mckeown 5:00
yourself and your family? Tell us a little bit about your family.
Derek Smith 5:05
Yeah, I have one wife and two children. My wife Georgina works with me. She kind of senior classes or the Church with me. And then our two children. Abigail is 30. She's a solicitor, and she works in London but she allegedly lives in Coventry. And she commutes so they, she's married. They've got a little girl who's six, seven weeks old. My first granddaughter, and then I have a son, who is is 26 and he is an area manager for Aldi in around the Hemel Hempstead shore, he's just recently turned a new job. So he's moving out. So we are empty nesters. Hallelujah. It's taken a long time. But we mean judging in the run of our own house, we can eat when we want. Watch what we want on television. So that's good. Yeah, that's, that's, that's my family.
David Mckeown 6:06
That's why you're smiling so much today. That's what they tell us a little bit about. Obviously, you've mentioned you are the senior leader for kings Church. How long have you been in that role? What's What's that, like? Tell us a little bit about that? Well,
Derek Smith 6:20
Kings is 17 years old, from scratch. We, myself and my wife and two other couples, both kings in 2005, November 2005, we started, we started in my son room, moved to a little coffee shop, moved to a library, then we moved to a Tennis Centre. We've been in schools, we've had him talk from both Sunday and midweek, about 25 different venues. That period of time. And the first few years, probably first five years, were quite slow growth. It probably took us five years to get a regular 60 people on Sunday. And then the next five years, we saw real good growth. So it took five years to get to maybe 60 people. And then the next five years, we got to three or 400 pretty quickly. So I don't know particularly what we did differently. I think it coincided with me going full time which was which was helpful, because I could work on the Church. During that time. I always felt in my heart I wanted to have a multi site Church because for really for two key reasons. One is it gives more opportunities for ministry. And secondly, it's the best way to to evangelise I think is to plant a Church and to grit to build a great Church. It's read your influence and spreads your impact. So we five six years ago, we started our second campus in Wigan. And then we started our third campus in Blackpool. And then our fourth campus was our pushing campus. And then our fifth campus was letters campuses just before lockdown, which was get sad. So we have five campuses in Bolton, so we call it six campuses. We are just working on what we do know moving forward through the campuses. And where we want to go and what we want to establish is tetanus probably two years to recover. After COVID. We took massive hits in COVID. We just moved into a huge building involving an old industrial mill them to ignore but that was a big hit moving into corporate financial patch. Recall from that. I have some good campus pastors, and they are relate into us. And a campus Pastor is it's it's far easier, I think, than running an independent Church because you don't oversee the finances. You don't oversee the preaching programme. You're there in your campus to replicate the vision of the whole thing. So how I word it without being disrespectful to my campus pastors because they're all brilliant, is my campus pastors are not there to be an they're not there to be the independent voice that then to reflect the voice of the organisation. And it's working really well for us. It allows people to come and do ministry for all the right reasons. So a campus Pastor spends time on preaching, teaching, and pastoring people and all the other stuff that you don't go into ministry for like governance and HR and risk assessments and financial planning and budgets and spreadsheets. We do all that centrally. So the campus Yeah, this campus pastors can get on with what they want to do. We run everything centrally from Bolton, so that's the model. We haven't got it perfect. We're learning every day, how to get a bit better. We are committed to the model. We know it's not for everybody. What It worked well for us.
Unknown Speaker 10:02
Great. I wonder, I wonder just on that whole campus Pastor thing. Interesting, obviously, you saying you're not being like an independent voice, but being your voice taking your vision. So how would you help your campus pastors to do that effectively, you know, in the everyday running of Church and campuses?
Derek Smith 10:25
Well, our campus pastors meet every Wednesday, I've just come out of a meeting a couple of minutes ago, we met for a couple of hours to pray, talk about stuff. So we meet regularly together. We also meet regularly individually with me and Georgina, where I go through stuff on the Sunday ministry, because I decide what we preach on across all our campuses, and I decide who preaches it. So although things are still run centrally by me, but when I want to decide what's going to be the next teaching series, I will pull all the campus pastors together, and we will discuss how we put that together. So we'll put what I call it a synopsis, the synopsis of what we're preaching we'll put together. So the next one we're doing, we're currently doing a January series called as for me, from Joshua 24, verse 15, where Josh was set to the nation. As for me, and my house will serve the Lord. So we're doing a four week series on that. And then we're gonna go into an eight week up until Easter discipleship series. So on Thursday night, this week, I've got the campus pastors coming together. And we're going to discuss right what what do we think of the priorities in discipleship? How are we going to do that, and then they'll have some input in that. And then then the synopsis will be written up. And then synopsis goes out to the campus Pastor, or whoever's preaching it. And it's kind of guidelines of what we're looking for, they can then bring their own flavour to it and put their own illustrations in, as long as they don't deviate too much. And just use it as a heading, and then go and preach something totally differently. Well, then I listen to every few weeks, I listen to a couple of podcasts from a campus pastors, to make sure that they're in line with the whole thing. But it takes a bit of time, because campus pastors, the challenge for them is, and we're working on this all the time is, I don't want them to feel like they're preaching secondhand vision, where it's not really their revelation that preaching my revelation, which is true, but we work hard to get collaboration in the text. So that when we do preach it, and I think most the time we get it, right, the campus pastors when they appreciate their feel as part of them, they have an ownership of it, and they get what we're trying to say. But it's, it's, it needs work, it needs constant attention. But what I think the benefits are brilliant, because all the campuses are hearing the same things. So it just helps, it really helps. And then we, you know, we put multicampus stuff on media and things that help bring it all together. We're currently doing 21 days of prayer and fasting. In fact, I think you're doing that at IKON at the moment, I was talking to Paul, a few days ago. So a devotional goes on every morning on one of the thing, the theme of our 21 days is closer. So talking about being closer to God, closer to our calling, closer to one another, closer to the Church. And we're kind of doing that culminated on the 29th where we're gonna have a big worship and prayer night multicampus pull everybody together. And then and then bring it to a conclusion. So yeah, we're working on it. We think, I think as a senior Pastor, more senior pastors, you know, working, we live in a perpetual state of stress, and that things could be better. And that's what I'm always trying to do get things better. But it's, it's, it's going good. And I think we we were kind of 70% on how I would want to run it. Great.
David Mckeown 14:07
Well, so Derek, you mentioned just about the fact that you've been in different locations 25, you've mentioned, and you've moved into your current location. I wonder if you could just share with our listeners a little bit about the story of that, because obviously, it's a little bit different than maybe some churches would do. So maybe we share a little bit about the story, what you've got there, and I guess around some of the fear that's needed to really make that happen.
Derek Smith 14:36
Okay, we were in a building about 800 metres down the road from where I'm currently sat in the mill. Our main hall could hold about 350 comfortably. We had an office from offices, we had some small rooms, and we had a bit of a coffee area. It worked brilliantly for us till we got to about 300 people on a Sunday. And then it started to creep because we were having 90 to 100 children as part of that, and we hadn't got the wraparound stuff, parking was a bit of a problem. So we were looking for a venue and hadn't found anywhere. And then the landlord came to us because we rented the venue and said, I've sold the building, you've got three months to get out. So we we just couldn't find anywhere, we couldn't even find anywhere temporary. So we took a huge step of faith and moved into a mill, a derelict mill that is only about 100 metres away of the road. But it's massive. It's a huge industrial site. And we moved in far too soon, we had no electricity when we moved in, we had no flushing toilets, when we moved in, we just had a big man hall that would just carpeted the heating didn't work. It just was such a massive, massive, massive challenge to the Church. But we knew we had an alternative. So we moved in, we just felt we were maybe getting there. And COVID hit and just took the wind out of our sails. In order to get this new building, we would have to rely a lot on renting it out for conferences. And that was canned over COVID for a year and a half, which cost us around 400,000 pounds in lost revenue. So you can imagine the incredible challenge it was. And so the last couple of years is COVID. We'll be building back after that, what the building will give us eventually, and we've got a brilliant coffee shop, it's all put that lots of people come in from the community every day. That's something that's open just about eight weeks ago, and it's been brilliant evangelist to we've opened a community grocery that now we have two and a half 1000 families registered with us as a Church. And we feed them on a weekly basis, which is a great blessing. That's brilliant for Lincoln into events. Because they're on our on our database, or when we have events we invite into it. So it's a great way of building to Church, we have a kids clausebank on site. We have lots of initiatives that we're doing. We have counselling on site, we have life skills courses, we have men's nights, women's nights, we have different things happening during the week. So it's given us a massive venue to grow in. But it will probably be we'll probably be building it for another two or three years. Yeah. Because the size of it is immense. If there's any millionaires watching, that have loads and loads of money and don't want to deal with a give some to IKON. Well, then there's a little Church of the road Cabo that we would really like some help with. Yeah, so that's basically where we're at. And I'm certainly now it's a it's a it's a brilliant God given thing. But it has been incredibly heavy to carry. Because of the finances of it, and the stress of it. But I just feel deep down, and I have bad days and good days on it. But I just feel deep down this is I've got to push this through. I feel I feel I've got a bit of a gift of fear for it. And I'm holding on to that when I don't want to don't necessarily feel it. That God You got us into this, you'll get us through it. Buildings, you know, buildings or buildings out there. They serve division. They're not they're not division, but they serve division and this building is was derelict for 35 years. And now he's alive with people. So yeah, he's got
Nathan Benger 18:41
amazing. Now amazing. You mentioned there, obviously, some of the challenges that you've faced over the recent years. You mentioned that gift of faith and live in other things that have helped you kind of stay motivated when you fit those challenges. And, you know, even motivating you people around as well, the the staff and the teams that are seeing that as well as seeing the struggle with it.
Derek Smith 19:07
Yeah, I think by by nature, a boat about blood and we just get on with life. We don't mess about we get on with it. And I think my nature is you get up on whatever the day is going to be like you go at it and you get on it and you put your head on the pillow at night and you think other other made progress today. So that's my, my nature. I know everybody's not wired like me. And so I've had to keep my staff motivated and focused on the vision. So I think that's been a massive thing that if you don't motivate your staff to carry the vision, they'll just die in the details and they'll die in the quagmire of of everything that life sucks you and I did I did a funeral last week, and it was a gentleman that died in it. Church did his funeral. And it was a natural funeral. So he was buried in a woods for palm, the Moors or the boat. And it was absolutely pouring down. So I'm stood at the side the grave, and I've got me well, he's on my suit. My well is about three inches, I mean more than everybody else is in Modoc, to the web, beyond their shoes, and it's raining. And as you said to the people around the grave, I just said before we say our final goodbyes to Adrian, this is what I want you to do, I want you to look at the moment that you're sinking in. And then I want you to look up and look at the beauty of the trees that in a few months will blossom, and flower. And this will be a beautiful, beautiful forest again. And I said it's like that in life. You know, you can spend all your life gazing at the mud that you're sinking in. Or you can lift up your head and look at the potential of what's coming. And I think that's the key responsibility that I'm carrying at the moment is to keep my staff keep the Church motivated, in what we're doing, where we're going, and not let people just get engulfed in the day to day, Church challenges, hassle programmes, budgets, lack of budget, because if you just look at that, if you just look at that, your head will go down, you'll lose the vision. And, yeah, it's important that in in doing, we don't lose the vision.
David Mckeown 21:27
So, so just thinking of that direct, and what are some of the practical things you do? Like just to keep the team inspired to keep the Church inspiring amidst the challenges that you're maybe facing? What practical things can you offer our listeners?
Derek Smith 21:42
I think you've got to tell the story. And you've got to keep telling the story. You know, so, you know, when when it gets hard and, and when we're struggling for finance. And when we're, you know, maybe stuff is challenging in the Church, we know to keep reminding, we're feeding two and a half 1000 families a week. They're coming to the Church for help. They're not we're to bottom cancel, because they can't help them. They're coming to God's Church for help. To tell that story. You know, we tell the story of us. It's growing and growing and growing. We have a youth club we bought and run by a private organisation that have a multi million pound turnover, that don't reach them at the young people that we're reaching. And we've got a youth Pastor that's employed two days a week. So you tell the stories, you tell the story, how many is getting baptised how many people are engaging with the Church? You know, during lockdown, we bought a new building for Blackpool campus, they were meeting in a hotel and because of lockdown, a Church came up for sale. And we bought it. So even in all the trails, there's some great breakthroughs. And I think what you got to keep doing is you got to keep giving the headlines what God is doing, keep telling the stories, keep modelling people who are getting their breakthroughs. They help people keep believing keep attached to the vision until people don't drown in the process.
Nathan Benger 23:10
Yeah, amazing. Amazing. So you mentioned that you've been in, you've been in ministry for a few years, Derek, and, you know, you're only 29. So you've done a few years.
Unknown Speaker 23:22
But like most leaders, and you mentioned it there in terms of the building, but I guess over the span of your leadership, you've had moments where it's been exhilarating, you've been on kind of the mountaintop, and then also times where it's not been so great. And so, like just thinking of your leadership journey, what what would you want to know, back then that, you know, like at the start of your journey, that you know, now that you know someone who's starting out on this leadership journey, maybe starting a Church or being a campus Pastor, whatever it might be, what would you wish you knew back then that you know now?
Derek Smith 23:58
I think, I think the nature of faith is its base sure of what we hope for and certainly what we cannot see. And I think the nature of faith is always risk. The nature fair is always believing what we can't see and be unsure of what our hopes are. If I if I was talking to me, when I launched out vacuum ministry, I'd be saying, Listen, pal is going to be okay. You just got to keep going. You've got it. You see the promises of God over a lifetime, not over 15 minutes. You know, some people want the promises of God over two weeks. It's, it's take me 37 years of ministry, to see the promises of God on some things. So I'd say play play long haul. Don't Don't do quick fix. There's no such thing as a quick fix in the kingdom. And you know, and I think planet Church It's long haul thinking that, you know, their lungs are gonna outlive us. They're going to be thriving while I'm gone. And so I think I will just put courage and faith in people and not not to be so focused on timescales. You know, of, we've got to update by next week, I think God's God's got a timescale of his own. And, and God wants things done that is strong. He wants things done that are resilient. So I just think that says, I probably say something like this, slow down, enjoy the journey, smell the coffee, try not to get frustrated. It's all gonna be okay. You've just got to keep getting up, keep doing the right things. Keep believing God, keep loving the people, keep your heart right before God, don't don't drift into frustration or manipulation or trying to get your own way. Just trust God and keep going. Great.
David Mckeown 26:07
Great. Awesome. Yeah, amazing. Yeah. So just thinking of some of the stuff you do with younger leaders, how do you prepare them for ministry? What are you doing for those? Maybe not just younger leaders, but maybe leaders coming through in your setting? How are you getting them ready for what they're about to do? Whether it's, you know, in a paid role, or whether it's a volunteer role?
Derek Smith 26:29
Yeah, it's funny, you know, I've had a bit of a problem, the last couple of years, I've had a bit of a slight switch in my thinking on this. I know think you cannot make somebody a leader that God hasn't made a leader, you can only horn what God is doing, is that preachers, you know, I've been preaching courses for 30 years, I'm at the point now where I can't make anybody a preacher. I can, if somebody's got a gift, I can help them hone it. But it's either it's either a gift God has given you or it's not. And that's where I've come to. So I think for our young leaders, or any leader that's aspiring, I would want to say that level of faithfulness in what they're doing in the local Church, I want to see them loving God and his house and his people, I'd want to see them do it for free. before we ever go near a salary, I'd want to see them giving and serving and praying. And then after that, when I observed that I would probably invite them to come alongside MOROSS the Church to come to some special events that we put on, for leaders to teach this stuff over to them. I would spend some time with them and say, What kind of what kind of leader are they? What's their, you know, what do I think that capacities are the leaders of 10s or 50s of hundreds of 1000s? You know, what are the primary gifts? I think what I'm quite good at, there's lots of things I'm not good at guys, believe you me, but one of the things I'm quite good at is I don't beat people up for the not. So some of my campus pastors. You know, I won't give any names, but one, you know, some of our campus pastors, Dr. Pastor, teachers, and they love pastoring people and teaching the word. They're not visionaries, they're not evangelists, and I'm not going to beat them up, because that's what they're not, I'm going to celebrate what they realised that's a gift they're bringing to the Church, other campus pastors that are very evangelistic, you know, very get out there, we believe the 99 to go for the one. But I'm not going to beat them up because they may not do the best discipleship, pastoral structure, I try and find out what people are, I'm trying to help them be better at what they are, I think you can, you can always give attention to your weaknesses, but your weaknesses are always probably going to be your weaknesses. So we're not going to spend a life working on our weaknesses, we're going to spend the best part of our life soaring with our strengths. And, and I will give attention to our weaknesses, as long as they're not moral. If the moral weaknesses, then that needs that needs attention. But if they're just things like they're not really good at admin, well, let's teach them give them a basic, you know, admin lesson, but let's not you know, try and make them the administrator of the year let them fly with what the gift dinner. So I think it's about identifying, pulling alongside, listening to them, finding out what their hopes and dreams are, and then trying to steer them in a process. You know, we're not here to make everybody the same. You know, leadership training is not, you know, it's not a sausage factory where we're producing everybody looks the same sounds the same acts the same, but we're trying to help people find their genius. And you know, you guys IKON you guys know, there's, you've got lots of different people, and some people are genius in one area are pretty poor in another. And that's okay. That's okay.
David Mckeown 29:57
Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah,
Nathan Benger 29:58
no really good. Just thinking on that, obviously, you know, you know, I love the thought of you don't beat people up for what they're not. And, you know, thinking, you know, you just gave the example of some of your campus pastors, would you then be intentional on who surrounds them in terms of that? So, you know, you example, someone who's a great Pastor teacher, well, then when there's, you know, some big invite evangelistic event that they're looking to do, would that then be intentional as a Church to go okay, and this is the person who's going to come and speak at it or do whatever? Yeah,
Derek Smith 30:34
I'm certainly thought, you know, the guy who leaves one of the campuses who's very evangelistic, but not not really incredibly Biblically literate. I've helped him by booking him on to some academic training in the, in the area of biblical literacy. So just to help them I also that teams that we're developing around them, we try and get them the kinds of people that they're not to work with them. So the team than them can help them. But equally, I mean, we just do something creative at the moment, because several of our campus pastors are two of our campus pastors are nearing retirement now. And we also want to open some new campuses. So what I've done is, on the fourth of Feb, I'm doing a campus pastors recruitment day, I'll put it on social media, and I'm just throwing it open and said, can I spend the day with us? If you're interested in ministry? Whether it's no, sometime in the future, whoever you are, from whatever background single or married, if you want to just come and spend a day with us learning about what we do what kings is? Yeah, let you know, come and spend a day. We'll see where that takes us. And I've done it kind of just to see, you know, does God want to bring anybody to us, that may be out there that I've not recognised? And it's really interesting, because the some of the people that booked in quite interesting. And I'm wondering if God is bringing people, so it was for some of our new campuses that we want to launch and also some replacing some of the passages that are in the next 1218 months, you're gonna retire. So we're just open to what God wants to do, and open to the people God wants to bring to us. And at the end of that, because I think there's going to be 2030 people there, I may say, you know, we're going to keep you in our thoughts. But it's not your time, I suppose it's a bit like a football academy, where we're just going to get set up, and we're going to say, you know, you're not ready for the first team. But we're going to put you in the second team, and we're going to monitor you are, you know, you're you're not really ready, you need to really work on your fitness, or you need to work on your athleticism or whatever it is in the context of ministry. But we're going to keep our eye on your I'm not going to help you to possibly to possibly get there. So yeah, that's what we're up to, over the camera, the stage in my ministry, where I'm prepared to give a few things ago. And and say, I've not done this like this before, I've been a lot more deliberate before, but I'm just going to throw it open and see if God's gonna bring us some wildcard relationships that we can adopt into our family and become integral to what we're doing at Kings.
David Mckeown 33:21
Yeah, that's, that's very interesting. And maybe a little bit of, as you say, Derek, a little bit innovative. Maybe some people haven't tried it that way before. So it'll be interesting to see what happens on the fourth of fab. And he turns out and how that works. I just think just thinking even for yourself, then obviously, you've talked about some of your campus pastors that have certain needs, they're thinking of stepping back or retiring at some point. Well, what about for you, then as you're maybe thinking of the future, I'm being careful what I say, because I don't want to see your accident tomorrow. But as you think of the future, like, what's the legacy you want to leave? And how are you preparing the hand on what you've done to somebody else, because it's gonna be handed over at some point. So may not be next week, next year. But it's got to be in your mind. So I wonder if you could share, just share a little bit about that. Because it does seem to be a big issue with a lot of churches at the minute they've no one to replace them. They're not thinking about it. And not just here in the UK, but across the world, people are facing this issue. So where are you with that?
Derek Smith 34:26
I think I think here's the big issue and classically, in our country, particularly, but I think in lots of places in the world, what's happened is a Church has grown because of the leader, and then the leaders last or the transition hasn't worked, and it's common done. And we've got to we've got to do better than that we've got to have consistent regarding the change of leadership, consistent growth. And that's why I think in this country, we've not significant probably one or two in London, but not numerically significant churches. You know, we think about Churches a couple of 1000. Well, there's 65 million people in our country. So, you know, we need to start thinking about churches in the 10s of 1000s. In, you know, in all over, I think I've always tried, and the future we'll find out how successful I've been understanding that the Church is not my personal business, I started it, I was the first one to give him the offering. I was the first one to preach on Sunday. But this isn't my Church. This is God's Church, it doesn't belong to me. It's not my personal business. I, it's another man's bride that he has entrusted me with. There was a day when I started it, and there will be a day where I step out of it, and give it to another man or another woman. And I think I'm okay with that. I think what you've got to do, I've tried to keep myself fresh. I've tried to keep myself useful to the kingdom of God. So that when the day comes, where I think, I don't want to do this anymore, or I want to change my role, that I'm still useful to the kingdom of God, I, I run the northwest area for Assemblies of God. So I cover 66 churches in the kinda Greater Manchester, Merseyside area. And so I'm kind of coordinating the ARG for those 66 churches. So that's been a good outlet for me. But at the end of the day, I'm a local Church mom, and I want to build God's house, I have. I'm 57. And I'm going to do this for as long as God asked me to do it. I think what I've kind of made a deal with myself is when I'm 60. And three years, I'm going to go to the trustees. And I'm going to say, I want you to decide if I'm the man to take this forward. And every year, we will, we will have that conversation. When it comes to the point where either I steal all their fields, and I'm not the person to take it forward, then we'll talk about how I step out. I would like, I would love to come to a point where we appointed the senior leader, and I step into a secondary role to serve, whether it's travelling around the campuses, training young leaders, just being the father of the house, or like statesman in the house, where I can travel a little bit more, maybe do more, representing kings, and helping with funding and things that are. But yeah, I'm not for that I intend to be preaching and full on till the day I die whenever that is, when I'm 57, I feel I've got another good 20 years in. But that that will be 20 years as a senior Pastor. I will I will metamorphosis my role at some point. And you know, if the trustees come to me in a few years and say, We just think you've lost your edge a bit, would you think that we need to look at somebody else? It's not my Church? And I will, I will really, really consider that. And if I think that's the best for kings moving forward, then then that's what's going to happen. So yeah, it's on the radar, we talk about my trustees and my team. I'm not no plans to go yet. Because I think we were still in quite a vulnerable position with our new building and some of the commitments we've made. But we won't be there forever. We're going to get to a place of more stability. And I want to I want to hand this over financial in a really good place. Numerically, I feel and you know, don't hold me to this, you know, because goals, our goals are not written on tablets of stone. But I would like to hand this over at 20 campuses, with 4000 people attending. That's kind of my benchmark now with six campuses with probably 1100 people attended. So we're a long way off where we need to be. But if you're, if I retire and there's 18 campuses, well, I had a goal. I had a goal so I'm not holding myself to it, but it's just kind of a kind of an idea of what I'd like to do.
Derek Smith 39:58
One of the most excited And what in ministry are live generally? I'm moving my boat one to zero at the moment. We're in the semifinals, the Papa John's trophy, when the playoff position. So I'm excited. I'm really, I'm really excited that where we as a Church think we're a very interesting place as a Church. We haven't been this route before. There's a lot of there's a lot of projects that are coming into my world, I think well, that's interesting. So I'm excited about the potential of creative ministry of the next few few years. Yeah, I think those two things are things exactly me at the moment.
David Mckeown 40:40
And thinking of your top two book recommendations, what would you recommend people to read outside of the Bible? Of course,
Derek Smith 40:47
I'm currently reading emotionally healthy discipleship by peach, bizarro, I think it is. I'm only a few chapters in. Well, that's a really, really good book. And last night, I just started reading a book called resilience by Mark Benton, but I'm only on the first chapter. So it's basically a study on the Timothy. One Timothy, two Timothy, so it's a bit early to tell. It's a good start. So those are the two books that I'm currently on with at the moment.
Nathan Benger 41:19
Great. What's your favourite meal of choice?
Derek Smith 41:23
That changes depending on my mood. I do like to go curry. Yeah. Well, you know, there are days I'm in the mood for Chinese. Yeah. Swing Sour Chicken.
Derek Smith 41:38
The I do like a good stare. Yeah. So you know, a trip to Mila Carter occasionally, what? are a good a good fit, but me and my wife are foodies. So we like to go out to nice restaurants. That's kind of that's kind of what we do. And or drink. I don't spend a lot of money on other things. recreationally. But we do like to eat out.
David Mckeown 42:03
Right? Yeah, I like that. And final question is maybe you've answered this already is what do you do to stay fresh in life?
Derek Smith 42:12
I mean, my wife a very, very different is a wonder we've been married 32 years to be honest and still happy. Because she's she's quite introvert and we'll sit with a book you know, she's happy with that. She loves crowds but she's happier on on where I need to act. I relaxed by doing something different not by doing nothing. If I'm doing nothing on board, so when we go on holiday, I can't sit by a pool for two weeks that would just that that would be worse than being overworked so so for me like sport is a massive relief. So I go jogging occasionally and running. I love watching football I love watching will be a lot more sports. So sport is a great outlet to me. So sometimes, I just got gone to the park and watch amateur football. I love any level of football, whether it's Premier League champions league, or, you know, the Boston Public. I don't really mind that just like what's the sport. I like eating out. Relaxing. I like stimulus. I like seeing things like walking. I like going to new places. I like travelling and seeing new places. So yeah, I'm a bit of a doer. So if I've got a day off, I want to go do something. I don't want to lay until dinner, and then watch Netflix. All day. That's not really what me you know. Yeah, I have to do something to keep fresh. And you know, read integrate, were keeping well I am inquisitive as well. And I would say this is underrated. Keep asking questions. keep learning, keep being inquisitive keep keep just wanting to know why things work. Keep asking people that do stuff. I think the minute we start asking questions. It's it's the beginning of the end.
Nathan Benger 44:07
Now so good. Well, Derek, thanks so much for church explained podcast. You can find Derek on social media, Instagram, all of that but also you'll be able to search kings Church Bolton on the web, and you'll be able to go on the website there to see all that they're doing. That's it for the church explained podcast just want to remind people that there are loads of resources available at IKON dot Church forward slash open they are free resources. And also wherever you're consuming this content, please subscribe, leave a review and also share it with people that you know will be blessed by this but that's it for this episode of The church explained podcast and we look forward to seeing you next time.
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