Evangelist and author Gerard Kelly talks to Justin Brierley about ‘missional spirituality’, prayer and his ministry in Europe

Poet, author, evangelist and pastor are all words that could be used to describe Gerard Kelly. He wears his many hats with ease, and doesn’t see a need to differentiate between them. Expression and art go hand in hand with worship and evangelism – it’s all part of the fabric of the “cross cultural” mission in Europe that he and his wife Chrissie have been engaged in for 20 years.

He balances ministry on mainland Europe with regular engagements in the UK (including, this July, the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church). Last time we spoke he was leading from the stage at the large Spring Harvest conference in Minehead. This time, we communicate via a laptop video link from, on my side, the not-so-impressive surroundings of a Croydon Travelodge foyer. It seems a far cry from the idyllic setting of the French retreat centre he and his wife have just taken over to train young people in “missional spirituality”. Then again, perhaps the location and mode of communication is a fitting one, given Gerard’s abiding passion for using technology to communicate the spirituality that finds expression in everyday experience.

You have been working in Christian outreach across Europe for 20 years. But you recently had a four-year stint as senior pastor at the Crossroads International Church in Amsterdam – what took you there?

Having worked alongside so many churches over the years, I wanted to experience church leadership from the inside and take on a pastoral role so that I understood something of the challenge of doing church on mainland Europe. It was a steep learning curve, but we learnt an enormous amount about evangelism and missional church for the 21st century.

Most people see the Protestant Church as struggling in mainland Europe, but Crossroads seems to be thriving.

It’s one of those churches where counting becomes pointless once you get past a few thousand people as there are so many drifting in and out. It was extraordinary. Part of the reason was that it was an English-speaking international church. That attracts a lot of local Dutch too as people speak very good English, especially in Amsterdam. We saw a lot of people from all over the world come to faith within our four years there, which was exhilarating.

What drew you back to France?

We’ve always had a heart for France. Our focus is Europe-wide, but we felt God calling us to establish a residential base for this ministry where young people could come to spend time learning and growing. The opportunity to take on this place called Bethany in France came up, and we just knew it was the right place to work from. It’s an old cider and dairy farm from the last century that was developed into a retreat and healing centre by the couple who originally bought it. There’s space for about 20 people. It’s still being used for that, but we plan to develop it further by working alongside young adults in developing missional spirituality.

What do you mean by “missional spirituality”?

We’ve always been involved in mobilising young people in evangelism and Christian outreach alongside local churches. It’s a cross-cultural experience and we’ve always felt that to be an important aspect of the personal growth of those young people. Rather than just offering a year out travelling in Europe – we want to put spirituality right at the heart of it.

Is France spiritually dry terrain?

Yes, but I think so are most places in the UK, to be honest. The challenges are different from planting a church in a housing estate somewhere in the UK, but the dryness is a European phenomenon. It’s a lot more difficult in terms of youth ministry – there are a lot less developed resources for young people and children. Many of our volunteers end up helping in children’s and youth ministry because that’s where the need is.

You are quite a technophile – you use Facebook and you blog, and you’ve also invented something called a “Twitturgy” – what is that?

A “Twitturgy” is a personal liturgy in 140 characters or less that uses the micro-blogging Twitter format to pray. I have a Twitter account but I don’t use it in a conversational way – instead I put up prayers that I’m praying and thoughts for meditation on a day-to-day basis. It’s been an interesting discipline to try to focus your prayers at any given time into 140 characters.

There’s been an explosion in online social networking. Do you think it’s an effective tool for engaging people with the Gospel?

I think it can be. Ever since the invention of fire every new technology has brought with it both opportunity and danger. There’s a danger of people having a whole bunch of very superficial relationships – I encourage my children not to spend all day on Facebook because having a real friend in the real world is sometimes helpful! But there are also opportunities that it has opened up, particularly for every-day-spirituality rather than just on a Sunday. I’ve loved using Twitter because it is a go-everywhere-all-through-the-day kind of medium.

Blogging has become very popular, and there are plenty of Christian blogs about culture, theology and the latest popular preacher. Is that culture helpful?

I blow hot and cold over it. I think it can encourage a culture of rushing to instant judgement, for instance when somebody brings out a book and it’s immediately being commented on in the “blogosphere”. When it all started everyone thought, “Oh great, now everyone can express their opinion on a blog”. But in fact that can be like 20 people in a room shouting at the same time. You end up wanting to establish some kind of order to it. It certainly has a positive side – there are some great theological debates going on in the blogging community.

Your book Spoken Worship is a series of poems you wrote for use in worship – how do people respond to your poetry?

People tend to be very positive. It’s not for everybody – some people switch off and don’t enjoy it. But there will always be some people in a congregation or audience for whom it is very important because it touches them in a way that other things don’t.

Some of the poems almost remind me of Lily Allen’s style of songwriting – there are plenty of references to popular culture, even David Beckham appears. Is it important to you for spirituality to be grounded in those everyday things?

Absolutely. The irony is that we read the Psalms in sombre voices as though there’s something religious about that and miss the fact that at the time they were written they were grounded in very real experiences. I think of a lot of “spoken worship” poetry as contemporary psalms. We live in a beautiful created world full of interesting things and interesting people and they are all part of our expression in worship.

Do we rely too much in worship on the imagery of sheep and shepherds that was more relevant 2000 years ago than it is today?

Yes, probably. I love those images and some of that imagery is very significant. But it’s important we find out what the imagery is actually saying and sometimes the way to do that is to come up with a contemporary equivalent and make the link. But I also love the old language because it has such a long-standing currency in our culture too.

You frequently use images and art when you lead worship. Do you think worship leaders should be more creative in the resources they use?

There’s a medical analogy that comes to mind when a doctor talks about the danger of overusing certain muscles and under-using others. We overuse the music muscle in churches but we underuse the other art forms that go alongside it – the visual arts particularly are not well used in our worship settings. That’s a shame given that the history of the Christian church in Europe is a history of a relationship with arts. There’s a marvellous heritage for us to rediscover. Music is wonderful but I’d like to see it put alongside a lot of other art forms as a much more expressive way of doing worship.

Your latest book, Intimate with the Ultimate, is about prayer. Do you find prayer an easy thing to do?

I’ve never found prayer easy. As a young man I never took to the “quiet time” concept that was forced on me by many people. But a couple of things have helped me to discover prayer. When I was younger I would go for a very long walk every couple of weeks, and I learned how to turn that into prayer. I’d liken it to going home to visit your parents and your dad saying: “Let’s go for a walk together and have catch up”. I developed that kind of relationship with God – walking with a parent and having a conversation. That was very exciting.

Later on both Chrissie and I discovered the 24/7 prayer movement – praying through the night and praying creatively through image and poetry. That too has made a huge difference to me. The strange thing is that like most people, if I take some significant time out to pray, I come out of it saying: “That was such a worthwhile thing to do”, but then I’m still slow to get back into it. I suppose you could compare it to exercise (which I’m not very good at). After going into the gym for an hour people will always come out saying: “I feel so good for having done that”, but they might then leave it for a month before going back again. There’s something about discipline that we resist.

So do you pray because of the effect it has on you?

I think that’s a much bigger part of what prayer is about than is often given credit. A lot of Protestant or evangelical leaders will say that prayer being about oneself is somehow wrong – that it should be about God or other people. But I think of it in relational terms. A conversation, spending time with someone, sharing your heart and being heard are all part of a relationship dynamic. The intercessory side grows out of that. It’s not about persuading God to do something he doesn’t want to do – I abandoned that idea of prayer a long time ago.

Even so, prayer can often feel like a one-sided conversation. How do you hear from God?

When Richard Dawkins says: “you’re only talking to yourself when you pray” I actually half-agree with him. In my experience, the concept of speaking to your deepest self and the concept of hearing from God are very close. How you sense what God is saying to you is a mystery, but I do experience it. I’ve never heard an audible voice or experienced a “room shaking” moment, but I do come away with a sense of knowing what God has said to me, which is a strange thing, isn’t it?

And then you stake major decisions, such as moving to a farm in France, on the trust that you have heard from God?

Yes, it’s massive really. And that’s why I always go back to the fact that prayer is relational. To think that without developing a relationship you’re going to suddenly hear a great call from God to go to Uzbekistan or wherever is silly. You learn to trust over a period of time. You have what might be a hunch, but because you test it and stand on it you discover it turns out to be more than just a hunch. So when the same thing happens again you have stronger confidence that God is speaking. I don’t think it’s possible to trust God in big things if you haven’t learned to trust him in small things. That’s the way it works for me.

What have you learned from your years of ministry all over Europe about how churches develop?

I think every church community has an inherent “missional DNA” – a self-reproducing capacity. I think there is life and the possibility of growth within every denominational expression.

On the other side of that same coin, we need to shut some churches. It’s much better to close them intentionally while we’re in control, than to have it forced upon us by circumstances. We cannot maintain the breadth of ministry that was developed when a huge percentage of the population were regular churchgoers. It’s a painful process but, rather like pruning a plant, they close in order to give the life that’s present elsewhere in the body a chance to develop and grow. The unviable closes in order for the viable to survive.

At the same time God can use this painful phase of the church in a very positive way. I would rather see a creative minority re-engaging with European culture than to try to be a majority under false pretences.

Justin Brierley is a presenter on Premier Christian Radio

This article appeared in the July/August 2010 issue of Reform.

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