Leadership Developments at Grace Church

Grace Church is at an Exciting Moment in History 

We are a relatively young church, having just recently celebrated our 20 year anniversary in September 2023.  We like many other churches have had to weather the storm through the Covid Pandemic, and we emerged somewhat bruised and battered at the end of lockdown after being on line for 18 months with no in person meetings possible.  When we were able to meet together in July 2021, we opened both our congregations again, with Amesbury meeting in the afternoons to enable leaders to be fully at both meetings.

 At the beginning of 2022 our lead elder Simon Redmill felt that the Lord was saying to him that he had “been at this mountain long enough” and it was time to lay down the leadership of Grace Church and as a result, he decided to return to secular work.

 This left Si Sleight and I as the remaining elders to lead the church through the next season until we heard from God who should lead Grace Church going forward.  We decided that I would take the role as interim Lead Elder for this period as I worked full time for the church and Simon has to balance his eldership role with a very busy secular job as a surgeon.  One of the challenges for us was not knowing how long the interim period would last.  Was it going to be 6 months? A year? Two years or more?  It made it very difficult to cast vision of where we were going in the longer term, and so we decided to concentrate on rebuilding what we had.  We concentrated on our Sunday services and on our Community Groups, now transformed in to Life Groups, looking to put in place solid foundations from which we could build in to the future.

 In February 2022 our Sunday attendance was 96 people.  This is adults and children.  Before lockdown we had been over 200 spread between our congregations in Salisbury and Amesbury. Our attempts to re-establish Amesbury were not successful, and with Simon leaving reducing our leadership capacity, we made the difficult decision at the end of 2021 to pull the Amesbury congregation back to Salisbury and to try to build up our Salisbury congregation again.

 The Search Began in Jan 2022

Our search for a new lead elder began at the beginning of 2022.  I initially thought that if I had been 10 years younger I might have wanted to take this role on, but I don’t have 10 years before I expect to retire.  There have been moments as time went on and in the vacuum of no leader forthcoming, I wondered if I should do it for a few years, but I realize that Grace Church needs a leader who can give more years than I have available to build a solid and thriving church.

Senior Leadership TeamT

As we began this interim period, Si and I appointed a Senior Leadership Team to support our eldership team through this transition.  This team started as Boni Hima, David Hazelton, Brian Kimberley and James Haslam.  In August 2023 Brian stepped back to make a work move to the USA and James reminded me that he had promised me an 18 month period of support which had now passed, and he felt he should also step down at the same time as Brian to help him establish a better balance with work and family and also to give time to be more active in the area of Christian medical ethics, particularly around the debate on assisted dying.  David and Boni continue to support the elders trying themselves to find the balance between home, work and church. Thank you to all these men who have given and continue to give their time and service to help lead Grace Church.

 Growth

If we take a snapshot of where we are now, from the attendance in February 2022 of 96, our weekly attendance is now averaging over 180.  For our anniversary meeting, 215 attended, and last week we had 189.  This morning we had 219.  This growth is really encouraging.

 In addition we have revamped our small groups, transitioning from Community Groups to Life Groups with a new oversight structure to give us room to grow through multiplication of our groups.

Growing but Unknown

With the numbers we have at the moment, we probably have the second biggest evangelical congregation in Salisbury, possibly even the biggest as some others have reduced in size.  We also have probably the biggest Christian Youth Group in Salisbury.  Yet despite these numbers, we are completely unknown to a lot of Salisbury.  Just as a snapshot of this, I have officiated at two local funerals since I have been in Salisbury, with two different funeral directors and neither funeral director had ever heard of Grace Church.  If you asked anyone walking through the middle of Salisbury if they had heard of us, the majority would say “no”.  We currently don’t have a building of our own and this holds us back in the development of social action, and reaching the lost across Salisbury.

What sort of Leader Do we Need?

To take Grace Church on to the next phase of our growth we need a leader who has the mandate to lead into the next decade, able to cast vision and to lead us into all that God has for us.  As the elders together share and cast vision under the leadership of a new leader I am convinced we will see our church grow quickly to 300 or 400 people with the potential to go beyond that in the season ahead.  Salisbury needs a big, dynamic, evangelical and charismatic church that will share the gospel message with the people of Salisbury and the surrounding towns and villages.  Our new leader needs to be able to preach God’s word well and he needs to have a heart to share the gospel with the lost. In order for us to grow we need to invest in the development of leaders at all levels across our church community, and our new leader needs to take a key role in that happening.

The Process

As we have searched for a new leader there are several parties involved in this process. The final decision for this appointment is the responsibility of the current elders, but as well as the elders, there is the input from the Apostolic Team, the candidate himself, the Trustees and you the Members of Grace Church.  Let’s explain how these roles have worked in this process.

The Commission Senior leadership team have made our need known across the Commission family and to other Newfrontiers spheres.  They have invited interest and have spent time meeting with anyone who has expressed an interest in the role.  There have been others who have been considered but either it has been felt by the Apostolic Team or the candidate themselves that this was not right for them.  For each person who has expressed interest that can sometimes take several months to work through.

 Eventually, the candidate that I am introducing tp you was commended to us not only by the two Andrews who work most closely with us, but we had involvement in this process from Mark Landreth-Smith, Chris Kilby, Tim Blaber and Guy Miller.

 Si and I have spend time with this candidate and questioned him extensively about his theological stance on different topics, his experience and how he would fit in at Grace Church, and we found that we were very much on the same page on the things we discussed.

We have introduced him and his family to the trustees and to the Senior Leadership Team and all have warmed to them and felt positive about this appointment.

The Senior Leadership Team have met with him and begun to get to know him enjoying a curry together in the weeks before Christmas.

 The candidate himself has felt an increasing call to come to serve in this role and there has been a sharing of vision and heart with the current eldership, and a significant confirming prophetic word.

 Following this process the elders are moving towards making this appointment.  We will first appoint him as Lead Elder Delegate.  When he arrives he would come straight away as team leader, but would not immediately be appointed to eldership.  He would then serve through a 6 month probationary period, after which we would lay on hands to pray him in to eldership.  It talks in the Bible about not being hasty in the laying on of hands, and this gives the opportunity for church members to get to know him, in the same way that we appoint any elder you will get to know him and be able to receive him as an elder.

 At this stage of the process we very much want to know how you feel about this appointment.  On 21st January you will meet him and at that time we would like some feedback from you, whether that be your endorsement that it feels good to you, or if you have any Biblical reasons why you don’t think we should appoint him.  Not liking the colour of his shirt or how he looks is not sufficient to reject him.  Ultimately it’s a decision for the elders with significant input from our Apostolic oversight, but clearly we would very much value your input, so welcome your feedback on how you receive him.  The plan is that he would then begin his role just after Easter.

Introducing David McNee

The man we are commending to you as the new lead elder of Grace Church is David McNee.

Dave, as he is often called, is currently an Elder at Life Church in Southampton, working closely with Chris Kilby.

Dave is a very much a family man.  He is married to Miriam, or Mim as she is often known.  They have two daughters who are twins aged 5, Charlotte and Olivia.

Mim is a Primary School Teacher, and is currently working as a music teacher.  She is a competent musician, a worship leader and has her own leadership gifting.

Sunday 21st January

On 21st Jan, next Sunday,  you will meet them for yourselves and have the opportunity to ask questions in the evening at the Family meeting for members.  Can I ask you please to submit any questions to me by email by the latest Thursday 18th Jan.  I want to put them in some order and sift out any overlapping questions.

So how does Dave fit with our requirement for a lead elder?

God willing, he will have more than a decade that he could give to this role.  He is in his mid 30’s, so he is potentially available for a good season.

What About Dave’s Experience and Gifting? 

He graduated from the University of Southampton with a Masters Degree in Environmental Sciences.  He then went on to work for UCCF. Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, initially in Cardiff.  He was with them from 2011 until 2021.  During that time he worked with student groups across multiple universities to help them with their mission strategies, and then later he was promoted to the role of South East Team Leader, leading the staff team and providing strategic team leadership for UCCF across the South East of England, relocating to Southampton for this new role.  In 2018 Dave was appointed as an elder at Life Church Southampton while continuing his role at UCCF.  Then in 2021 he became a staff elder, going full time at Life Church.

Dave is a man of the Word.  He completed the first year of the Commission Advanced Training and when that was discontinued, he continued his studies with the Commission Masters in Theology which he is due to complete in 2025.  Chris Kilby has said of Dave, that he is Life Church’s best preacher.  We invited Dave to preach here last summer and he came to visit under the radar and preached on a passage from our Colossians series.  I have also listened to some of his preaches on Podcast at Life Church and there is no doubt he has a very good teaching gift.

In addition to pursuing his own theology training, Dave is currently the course leader for Commission’s Diploma level training. 

In his roles at UCCF and Life Church he has been very involved in leadership development, which is a key area we need at Grace Church.

The other string to his bow is that he has evangelistic gifting.  Having worked for UCCF where the major role was supporting students in mission across their universities.

Dave has said to me how excited they are about what God might have in stall for them with Grace Church and they are really looking forward to being here next Sunday 21 Jan).

I hope that you can see from this that Dave is a good fit with what we need for a new lead elder.  I appreciate that introducing a new leader to a church is a huge change and so some of you may be feeling unsettled.  I want to urge you to do everything you can to maintain our unity through this process.  We have begun to gather momentum as a church, let’s build on the foundations we have put down over the last two years and maintain our progress

Let’s  Move Forward in Unity

Let’s work together as co-workers to see God’s kingdom advance in Salisbury.  It doesn’t matter if you prefer one leader or another.  You have missed the point.  Grace Church has been led first by Kevin Bartlett and then by Simon Redmill, and then during these last two years Si Sleight and I have been rebuilding the foundations.  Dave McNee will be coming soon, working with Si and I to build the kingdom of God on the foundations we already have.

Paul sums it up well in 1Cor 31-11 where he is admonishing the Corinthian congregation who picking leaders they want to follow.  It doesn’t matter who planted the seed, who watered it, it is only God who makes it grow.  Each of the leaders who have served Grace Church have done so to serve God, and each of us is accountable to God for that work.  We must only build on the one foundation that has already been laid and that is Jesus Christ.  The cornerstone, the foundation the very reason that Grace Church exists, to build our lives on him and share the gospel message.

I hope that all makes sense and leaves you with a sense of rising faith and excitement?

If you are a member, do make sure you are there on 21 Jan to meet Dave and Mim and to hear their heart in the evening at our Family Meeting.

Let me encourage you to pray about these leadership changes and for the Lord’s blessing on Grace Church.

 This blog is based on the information given out at our Sunday morning meeting on 14th Jan.  This link takes you to the audio recording of that service.

Leadership Developments at Grace Church — Grace Church (gracechurchuk.org)

David Maskell

On behalf of Grace Church Elders

14 Jan 2024