I thought call from God was 'wide' of the mark!
At Banbury Community Church, Simon Lawton and the leadership team are focused on community outreach, raising leaders and equipping members to share their faith. But all this came after life threw Simon a big curveball
Simon Lawton with his wife, Julia
As an Elim pastor through and through, Simon Lawton never expected God to call him to an independent church. Yet he has spent the past two years helping rebuild Banbury Community Church after Covid.
The move to Banbury came after a testing 14-month wilderness season, Simon explains.
Having pastored churches in Crewe, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the West Midlands, he and his wife Julia were looking for new roles.
“I’d stepped down from my last church between lockdowns and thought another job would come quickly, then everything shut down.
“I had opportunities in other Elim churches but nothing felt right, then I felt God tell me to ‘go wider’.
“I didn’t want to! Elim is my tribe and I wanted to stay there, but I looked around and was attracted by Banbury Community Church. After several months of me resisting it became clear God wanted us to come here.” Having joined BCC in September 2021, Simon set out to rebuild, re-equip and re-empower the church while addressing some structural issues.
“One focus has been getting more people into life groups and training people up,” he says.
“We did the Wellbeing Course last January and Gavin Calver’s Unleashed course in the autumn.
“We’ve also been encouraging people to share their lives and faith outside church so we did LICC’s Fruitfulness on the Frontline course and got involved with the Isaiah 61 ministry.”
PRAYING THROUGH
Prayer has been central to rebuilding church life, he adds. “We’ve instigated half-hour, pre-service prayer each Sunday, and monthly prayer meetings for the church and for life group and other ministry leaders. “We pray for unchurched people by name and have a monthly prayer walk around Banbury. A team prays for Julia and I daily, and I stop and pray several times a day for key areas of church life.”
BCC has seen many answers to prayer through this, says Simon, not least when praying for certain roles to be filled. “We’ve been blessed because God has attracted or raised up people who’ve been an important part of the rebuilding process.
“One couple moved here from an Elim church in London who’ve been a massive help – preaching and hosting meetings.
Another from Coventry have been a great blessing and we discovered we had an Arab-American Bible teacher in our congregation who has been an incredible blessing too, along with his family.
“Another young woman asked, ‘Pastor, would you like me to do video news on Sundays?’ We now pay her to do all our media and design and she leads our youth ministry too.
“We’ve empowered and released quality people from within church into ministry and raised up worship leaders, preachers, hosts, kids church and life group leaders.”
ELIM NETWORK
Another big step was the church’s decision to join the Elim Network. While BCC has long valued its independence, Simon discovered people were already engaging with the movement via Elim Sound’s courses and conferences and Elim’s chaplaincy team, so joining the Network was ‘a natural development’.
“It’s a massive amount of work to be an independent church with all the legalities around safeguarding, GDPR and the like,” says Simon. “Because of the Elim Network, we don’t need to do that by ourselves.”
Looking ahead to the coming year, another area he is keen to develop is outreach. For 20 years BCC has run a furniture recycling base in the centre of town, Faithworks, which supplies mattresses, cutlery, bedding and more to families in need.
But where once people delivered these to homes and connected with struggling families, this was lost when deliveries were outsourced. Simon is working to change that.
“We’re trying to move from simply showing the love of God through helping people to connecting on a deeper level again,” he says.
“When you meet and pray with a young mum in her new home who’s had to leave her partner and is desperate, with no carpets and furniture, that’s so important.”
Similarly, at the Hill Community Centre on one of the most deprived estates in Banbury, Simon is aiming for a more outreach-based approach.
“There’s lots of activity going on and plenty of Christian staff, but no Alpha, Messy Church or anything else that’s clearly Christian.”
As with Faithworks, Simon is up for the challenge of changing this.
“We’re loving and helping people, but we’re trying to develop this so our outreach becomes more of a gateway to the kingdom. We’re encouraging the church to engage more with Faithworks and the community centre and we’re making good progress.”
Pray, wait, trust
For 14 months during the pandemic, Simon and his wife Julia navigated a wilderness season – the story of which inspired his latest book, Pray, Wait, Trust: what to do when life throws you a curveball.
The couple had stepped down from their previous church, expecting to find new jobs within weeks. But then Covid struck.
During this time, Simon felt he heard God speak.
“The day after I stepped down I saw an image on Instagram which said ‘Pray, wait, trust’. I felt God say, ‘That’s what you have to do’,” he says.
“We held on to those words. One day I was thinking about them and prayed a simple prayer: when I’m praying help me to wait and trust; when I’m waiting help me to trust and pray; while I’m trusting help me to pray and wait. There appeared to be a powerful synergy in doing all three.”
Having prayed this time and again Simon felt inspired to write a sermon and blog based on it. Then he heard God speak once more.
“How many people have been in the same position, where life has thrown them a curveball? Your experience will help them – put it in a book.
“We had some dark and difficult days during those 14 months of no salaries and waiting for the phone to ring.
“It’s like that for others – they’ve had a bad diagnosis, their partner has walked out, they’ve lost their job, someone has died or they’re waiting for the fulfilment of a promise or prophecy and wondering what’s going on and where God is.”
In the book, Simon explores prayer, waiting and trust, and in the fourth section encourages people to be expectant.
“I was struck by David saying in Psalm 5:3 ‘in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.’ Being expectant that God could move at any time is really important as we pray, wait and trust in life’s challenging seasons.”
This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.
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