Essentials
Art, Cars, Coffee, Mission, and Mental Health.
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- Written by: Rev Adam Gompertz w. Rev Dr Chris Porter
A Chat with the Scribbling Vicar
Psychiatric nurse and car designer come historic car artist, Station Chaplain to Bicester Heritage, pioneer missionary, and minister to the classic car community through the REVS meetings and REVS-Limiter online group, the scribbling vicar Reverend Adam Gompertz talks faith, mission, and mental health.
Chris: Moving from nursing to car design, ordination, and now as a pioneer minister is a rather large series of shifts. How did that come about?
Adam: I grew up with parents who were vicars, but like a lot of vicar’s kids I didn’t really think of ministry, and ended up getting into the car industry via a long and protracted process via psychiatric nursing. Once I was in the car industry it was prompted through a period of redundancy in the 2008 recession. There wasn’t an angel standing at the end of my bed with a flaming sword, saying “It’s you, it’s you.” Rather it was more that we started looking and the doors kept opening. I was accepted for the selection course— which I liken to the SAS except with more cake and less diving through windows. But between selection and hearing back, I had started at Rolls Royce Motor Cars and really had to make a choice. But at that point I had no pioneer leaning at all. I thought I would be a vicar in a country church in rural England and that was it.
While in the car industry, I had a sense that when you went to theological college you left your old life at the door and walked into a new life and suddenly turned into a priest. The problem is that I could never leave the cars behind. I never quite fitted in that way. I still loved the cars, and the whole scene. During college I started reading works on missionality and church, like The Shaping of Things to Come, and that blew my mind. The picture of what ministry could look like, and what ministry needed to look like in the age in which we were living. From then on, I started thinking rather than walking away, what could I do to go back into that community as a priest. That really started my thinking.
Chris: The automotive industry and classic cars tends to be a far more diverse space than what we see on a Sunday. How did you end up being a clergyperson in that space?
Adam: When I went and did my curacy, in a very wealthy area, the vicar said you are going to have to deal with people driving around in Ferraris and Aston Martins, and I was like “sure, fine, no problem.” Back in 2014 I asked him to do a car show in the church. We had 28 cars, opened the church, served food, and made sure everything was free so that people didn’t think we were after their money. At the end of that someone said to me “you know this is only going to get bigger” and I thought “this is it, we are done;” but sure enough we doubled in size each time we held it. Yet it was tough to grow relationships with an annual event, so we moved to a monthly Cars and Coffee meet in Shrewsbury. That first REVS group has just grown from there, and quite naturally I just fell into this pioneer role as God opened the doors bit by bit.
I had spent quite a bit of time in my teenage years trying to marry having a faith and being a car fanatic. Can you be both? Because I thought that surely cars are very materialistic. Over these years I have come to a position that, yes, you can do both; and perhaps in the church we should stop dividing ourselves up into our work life and spiritual life etc. I feel just as called on a Sunday morning to be in a carpark peering into somebody’s engine bay as I do in a pew. I think it’s a by-product of our evangelical underpinnings, where we see God purely in terms of church, but He is out there doing stuff and calls us to join in; often in the most surprising places.
I have just as many encounters with God around cars as I have anywhere else. Because cars give space for a community to walk with people through the highs and lows of life, and for me that is my calling. Not so much to preach at people but called to walk with them, weep when they weep, and to celebrate when they celebrate; all with the perspective of God’s kingdom.
Chris: How have you found the reception of your faith and reflections on faith in such a secular space?
Adam: When I put things out, like a Fuel for Thought, there will be people in the group who are way off the spiritual radar, others who are curious, and others who are onboard. The challenge then is how do you talk about Jesus in a way that people won’t switch off,
but a way that puts it in their language. One of the things with REVS that I felt called to ask was “what does the kingdom of God look like in a car community?” For me, that is one of the key questions that I go back to. Aspects like radical generosity, compassion, healing, forgiveness, and wholeness. What do they look like in the car community? The Fuel for Thought reflections seek to do that, and to meet people where they are at.
Church language just doesn’t work in this space, people are so unfamiliar with it, or have a simplistic one-dimensional understanding. Instead of typical church language we talk about “rust,” and “restoration,” all grounded in the car stuff that we know and love, and from there we can ask questions.
It’s what Jesus did, taking the language of fishing, planting seeds, building houses—the language of his every day—and applied the gospel to what people are familiar with. With REVS we do a “Carols by Carlight,” and use metaphors of journeying, like the Pilgrim Tour along an ancient Christian pilgrim route in North Wales. I liken it to being bilingual, speaking the language of our host culture, and being familiar with the church and theological language.
Chris: One of the challenges with car culture is that there is often a self-reliance, a stiff upper lip, and people don’t want to talk about their struggles. How have you seen REVS speaking into that space?
Adam: I think that initially it is rooted in my own walk with mental health, in that I have struggled with anxiety and depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder for around 25 years now. It has become part of our life, as a family, and we have learnt to manage and live with it. Part of my ministry came from sharing that story, and from the fact that after a major breakdown I have had the sense of God restoring me bit by bit. I just started telling my story.
Psychiatric nursing gave me an awareness of mental health, but it was my own story and God’s restoration that really promoted it. REVS really is a story of God’s restoration, it’s not a story of my own ministry, because several years ago I really thought that I was on the scrapheap.
Telling my story was the first stage, and then meeting others with a similar story, paired with a general cultural willingness to start talking about mental health. COVID and lockdown certainly had a knock on effect with people’s mental health and gave space for talking. The REVS-Limiter online community itself was borne out of our shared lockdown frustration. Charlotte—my wife—asked me one day why I was grumpier than usual, and I said, “because I can’t get the car out and meet with others,” so she suggested taking it online. I remember thinking that if I get a few people watching along it would be amazing, and by the end of the first event we had almost 3000! We made sure we talked about mental health, offered prayer, and finished each event with a prayer of blessing. REVS-Limiter doesn’t hide faith away, instead people know that as a vicar I am probably going to mention Jesus at some point, and people are open to it.
Chris: The Barna group recently found that 42% of those in ministry have considered quitting in the past year alone. Pioneer ministry is often seen as this super high stakes environment. How has the REVS ministry been a blessing to your own mental health?
Adam: Like any kind of ministry, it has its demands, and it sometimes feels like we are just making it up as we go along. Some things work, and you are amazed; then other stuff won’t. There is a great deal of introspection, which comes with ministry anyway, but heightened because this is new and different, and a sense of wanting to do things right. All things which play into my anxiety. Here the artwork that I do is great, not just as a tool for starting conversations, but also to switch off and refresh myself. But I have to be careful with my art, that it doesn’t just become another ministry tool and kill my enjoyment of it. There is a challenge with having refreshment so close to ministry. It really takes some discipline, especially as the ministry keeps expanding.
Chris: What advice do you have for others who want to engage in pioneer ministry?
Adam: You can do the same with anything. People who run groups which are all geared around baking bread or making stuff to eat, others doing stuff with animals. Dog walking is a massive way to meet people and becoming a community of some kind. In some ways I am not doing anything radical or different, certainly not from Jesus did. I’m just doing it in a different context. With REVS we talk about being community, we aren’t a car club, but a community that is open and welcoming and allows people to celebrate their own piece of car culture. Just trying to model the kingdom of God in this space.
When I was first thinking about REVS, a friend of mine advised me to be straight with where you are coming from. Because there is nothing worse than going to something and finding that you have been pulled into something else. The bait and switch of “come watch a film… oh it’s a film about Jesus.” People know where I am coming from, and who I represent. Sometimes that busts their ideas about what a vicar represents. With REVS-Limiter we say that there will be faith posts there for you to think about and reflect on, if that isn’t your thing just pass on by, but there might be something to engage with. Being up front with it leads to things like being on a podcast and having the hosts open up about their own faith journey, or others praying for people who are struggling or have had their car stolen. We need to take faith into people’s lives and go be where they are at rather than expecting them to be where we are at. Like mental health it is all about just being honest and saying, “this is me.” When you are in that space, then get people around you. For so many clergy there is a sense that they are the only ones who do ministry. Particularly within some of our more middle-class churches we have inherited this model where people come, sit, and go and that is all their involvement. Actually, that is not the church that Paul was talking about or that Jesus started, where people came, got involved, became an active community, involved in every area of life. We have made it very personal and private, with the vicar doing all the ministry. It is little surprise that many get to the point where they just can’t keep going on like that. Certainly, in the UK we have significant clergy burnout, as there is no one to help and support. With REVS I was getting to the point where I realised that the ministry needed more than just me to be involved. I have a very good group of directors around me, who are keen to release me to do the bits that I am good at and know me well enough to support my mental health.
Adam Gompertz is Station Chaplain to Bicester Heritage, and @revslimiter on Social Media
Editorial Summer 2022
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- Written by: CHris Porter
In early 2022 the US based Barna group released a study which found that in 2021 42% of Christian workers have considered leaving ministry early, up from 29% in 2020. Preliminary indications for 2022 show this trend continuing. If COVID was the pandemic that brought the world to its knees, then burnout and mental health is the same for Christian ministers. Indeed, many studies have found that those in helping professions—including ministers— are often worse than the general public at managing their own mental health and stress levels. This is only exacerbated by a perception that the church—and church workers—need to be self-sufficient and self-feeders for effective ministry.
While some church initiatives—such as spiritual direction, supervision and mentoring—have been introduced to address these challenges, many have only seen them as another imposition on already busy ministries.
This issue is firmly focused on encouraging Christians to consider their own mental health as we engage in ministry.
The lead articles come from less traditional ministry environments. The first from an interview with English Pioneer minister Adam Gompertz about his ministry engagement and mental health strategies.
The second from Queensland Uniting Church minister Ralph Mayhew about his life-giving photography and Youtube pursuits.
Spiritual director Fiona Preston, and pastoral supervisor, Joel Kettleton have brought their disciplines to bear on burnout, to give some insight into support that is on offer. While Samuel Crane reflects on the benefits of peer mentoring—which returns in a book review. Finally, Fergus King reflects on John 3 as he has walked with traumatised ministers.
The book reviews all focus on mental health, and sustenance in ministry. I pray you will find this issue edifying
CHRIS PORTER, EDITOR
Essentials - Summer 2022
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- Written by: Chris Porter
Essentials Summer 2022 pdf (8MB)
Essentials Spring 2022 pdf (4MB)
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Essentials Autumn 2022 pdf (4MB)
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Essentials Spring 2021 pdf (3MB)
Essentials Winter 2021 pdf (3MB)
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Essentials Autumn 2020 pdf (4MB)
Essentials Summer 2019 pdf (8MB)
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Book Review: Be Thou My Vision by Jonathan Gibson
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- Written by: Hilton Jordan
Gibson, Jonathan. Be Thou My Vision: a liturgy for Daily Worship. Crossway Books: Wheaton, Illinois. 2021.
If you, like me, have struggled with focus, freshness, and a framework in your private time of prayer and Bible-reading (or quiet time) then “Be Thou My Vision - A Liturgy For Daily Worship” by Jonathan Gibson may be just the tool you are looking for.
“Be Thou My Vision” is essentially 31 days of gospel-shaped liturgy borrowing heavily from the gospel structure of the services in the Book of Common Prayer 1552 … but with a wonderful variation. The variation is that most of the prayers don’t come from BCP but from a great variety of writers from church history.
The ‘contributors’ to “Be Thou My Vision” include saints the likes of: à Kempis, Ambrose, Anselm, Augustine, Baxter, Bucer, Calvin, Chrysostom, Edwards, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Great, Luther, and Patrick; as well as Church of England saints, such as: Cranmer, Herbert, Johnson, Taylor, Toplady, Wesley, and Wilberforce.
The author, Gibson, a Presbyterian pastor and Cambridge PhD, was struggling with his private worship during the COVID-19 lockdowns. An Anglican Australian friend recommended he apply himself to compiling a resource that others could use, and the product of that is “Be Thou My Vision”.
The basic structure of each daily liturgy is: call to worship, adoration, reading of the law, confession of sin, assurance of pardon, creed, praise, catechism, prayer for illumination, Scripture reading, prayer of intercession, petitions, the Lord’s Prayer.
There are also a treasure trove of appendices which provide: musical tunes for the doxology and Gloria Patri; the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Shorter Catechism; the M’Cheyne Bible reading plan; the collects from BCP 1552 (many of which date back to the early church); and an author and liturgy index.
“Be Thou My Vision” is a feast of spiritual feeding as the different contributions are not only theologically profound but they are also thoughtfully, creatively, and sensitively combined. It is considerately prepared so that each daily liturgy is able to be completed in approximately 20 minutes (even the Athanasian Creed is wisely broken up across three consecutive days). In addition it is beautifully presented in a box with a cloth-bound hard cover and three differently coloured bookmarks.
“Be Thou My Vision” does, however, have a few ‘weaknesses’. For example, the language used is the original English or English translation, which can be hard going for some, yet with American spelling. The variety of authors from different church ages means that the expression is quite a mix of quaint and sophisticated, of dense and pithy. I also occasionally find myself distracted by a minor theological quibble, such as the beatitudes being presented as law or encountering descended “into hell” - rather than “to the dead” - in the Apostles’ Creed.
“Be Thou My Vision” is an enormously helpful resource for private worship which could well revolutionise your quiet time or, at least, breathe new life into your time alone with God. Although the book is presented as a resource for personal or family worship, I would only recommend it to adults and especially to theologically mature readers.
Hilton Jordan is Senior Pastor of RAFT Anglican Church in Rowville, Victoria.
Preaching Resources
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
If you're looking for preaching resources may we recommend the following:
Expo Preaching
EFAC's Expository Preaching platform. Here you will find a range of sermons by EFAC members. You are welcome to add your own sermons provided they use expository methods and on the condition that you provide either a full text or at least a detailed outline of the sermon in the Message Text section.
Australasian Academy of Homiletics
The Australasian Academy of Homiletics brings together teachers of Homiletics across Australia and New Zealand for the purpose of studying the place of preaching in theological education, discussing and sharing ideas and methods, and fostering scholarly research in Homiletics and other related disciplines.
Useful for articles on preaching
The Centre for Biblical Preaching
Our mission at the Centre for Biblical Preaching is to encourage and foster expository preaching and teaching in local churches throughout Melbourne, Australia, and in other countries, by providing workshops, conferences, seminars, and mentoring for preachers.
We strive to be a training centre that effectively equips churches throughout Australia and the rest of the world in expository preaching. This vision is founded on the conviction that the first and most important mark of a healthy church is faithful exposition of God’s word.
The Centre arose from the unique and ground–breaking partnership between St. James’ Old Cathedral in West Melbourne and the Church Missionary Society—Australia.
Book Review: The Sexual Reformation by Aimee Byrd
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- Written by: Elizabeth Webster
Byrd, Aimee. The Sexual Reformation: Restoring the Dignity and Personhood of Man and Woman.
Zondervan Academic: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2022.
Aimee Byrd’s take on Song of Songs is a lot less risqué than it may seem, or is it? Byrd ventures through this oft ignored - because we don’t know what to do with it - part of Scripture to try to give us a new way to look at the relationships between genders. Her aim is to show the intertwined nature of male and female voices in the story of God and call the church to reconsider the way it has limited the voice of women over the centuries. She does so without being heavy-handed, though sharing some of her own personal struggles in using her voice in the church sphere. Byrd is calling us to go beyond the mechanics of the egalitarian v complementarian debate and get to the heart of the matter, the love of God for all his people and his desire to see them flourish.
She does a fantastic job of relating each of her posits to the whole story of Scripture tying her ideas through Genesis to Revelation, wanting to explore a renewed understanding of the dignity and personhood of each gender. She wants to get away from defining genders based upon roles and move towards a new, or reformed, understanding of what it means to be men and women. For someone who already subscribes to the idea of mutuality between genders, Byrd’s take was refreshing. She’s not trying to tell us what we can or can’t do, but rather, encouraging us to find value in our biological sex, something that the world around us is currently breaking down.
Overall, the book gave me a fresh understanding of the Song of Songs, showing the different ways to read it, and encouraging a broader look at the beauty of the language held within, without getting caught on the erotic nature of some of the text. The book seems to say, it’s time for the church to stop feeling uncomfortable in these conversations, and try to step forward and encourage healthy conversation around gender and sex.
While anyone with a good biblical knowledge can probably get around it, I would recommend a read through the Song before you venture into this book.
Elizabeth Webster is an Assistant Minister in the St Hilary’s Network, Melbourne.
Bible Study : Luke 5:1-11
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- Written by: Adrian Lane
Fishing with the Words of Jesus - Luke 5:1-11
Jesus is standing by the Sea of Galilee, otherwise known as the Lake of Gennesaret, and he’s teaching the crowd the word of God. But the people are so eager to hear the word of God that they are crowding around him, pressing in upon him and pushing him into the water!
So Jesus comes up with a wonderfully creative solution, which is going to help him in more ways than one. There are two fishing boats moored at the water’s edge, one owned by Peter and Andrew, and the other by James and John. They’ve been fishing all night. And now they’re cleaning their nets, which are laid out neatly on the beach – cleaning them of all the bothersome bits of reed and shell that’s got caught up in them. Depressingly, they haven’t caught a thing.
Jesus gets into Peter’s boat and asks him to put out a little from the shore. Then Jesus arranges himself in the boat and teaches the crowd from the boat! And now he’s protected from the eager crowd by the lake’s moat of water between them!
And so the first thing I’d like us to notice from the passage is how this crowd was hungry for the word of God. They were pressing in on Jesus, eager to hear his every word. And I want to ask us this, “Has our attitude to the word of God become ho-hum, has it been blunted?”
I’m so grateful that when I first became a Christian I was taught to get into the habit of reading the Bible every day. And I’m so glad to say that God has helped me to do that. And it nourishes me. If I miss a few days, I find I’m missing something, just like not eating the right food. It doesn’t matter how you do it – whether you listen to it on your phone, or read it together with your spouse or a friend, or whether you read The Big Picture Story Bible with the kids in your life or, like me, just read a chapter a day in a Study Bible. Just make sure you’re being nourished regularly by the word of God.
After Jesus has finished teaching the crowd, he turns to Peter and says, “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” “You’ve got to be joking!” thinks Peter, “We’ve been up all night and haven’t caught a thing! We’ve just cleaned the nets and tidied up the boat! (Those of you who’ve been boating know how long that all takes!) We’re tired and smelly and hungry…OK! Because you say so, and only because you say so, we’ll do it.”
And we all know what happens! They catch such a large number of fish that their nets begin to break and they have to signal to James and John to come out in the other boat to help them. And they fill both boats so full of fish that both boats begin to sink! There are fish everywhere!
And when Peter sees all this he realises that Jesus is like no other man. Only the Messiah could have known all this. Only the Messiah could have prepared, timed and organised all this. And Peter realises that Jesus has done this as a lesson for him. And when Peter remembers his hesitation and grumpiness he falls at Jesus’ knees, amongst all those fish, and says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Just like Moses in the desert with the burning bush he realises he’s in the presence of God! And he’s not worthy to be. Indeed, he’s so unworthy that he fears for his very life. Jesus’ holiness is about to consume him. And so he begs Jesus to get away from him!
What a turnaround! Just a few moments before he’s been keeping the boat steady as Jesus taught the crowds. My hunch is that he was feeling rather pleased with himself, rather smug, in that up-front pole position. This wasn’t the first time he’d met Jesus. We learn from John 1:35-42 that Andrew had introduced Peter, his brother, to Jesus a short time ago. Andrew had been a disciple of John the Baptist, and one day John the Baptist had pointed out Jesus as he was passing by and said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” And the first thing Andrew had done after discovering Jesus was to find his brother Peter, telling him, “You won’t believe who I’ve found! We’ve found the Messiah!” (that is, the Christ). And now this massive catch of fish after an empty night has lifted the veil on Peter’s eyes and he’s believed. He’s realised he’s in the presence of the long-looked-forward-to Messiah, the very Lamb of God.
And I can’t help asking you, “Has your life been turned around by Jesus?” Sure, he’s a great teacher, a great healer, which is what the crowds saw. But he’s so much more than that! And are we game to pray that God would open our eyes to who Jesus really is?
You may have a sudden realisation, like Peter, or you may be more like Andrew, who was obviously a seeker. But in Jesus’ presence we too should fall at his feet. Indeed, all the time, every day, we too should fall at Jesus’ feet.
But then Jesus says to Peter, “Don’t be afraid; from now on, you will catch people.” And Luke tells us that those first disciples of Jesus pulled up their boats high upon the shore, just like at the end of the season, left everything, and followed him.
Wow! Luke wastes not a word. He is crisp and straightforward. And he is obviously challenging his listeners and readers to do exactly the same thing. If it is good enough for Peter, Andrew, James and John, those first disciples and apostles, it’s good enough for us.
When Jesus finished teaching the crowd, he hadn’t really finished his sermon, had he? He may have dismissed the crowd, and they probably went off to get something to eat, thinking that that was the end of their day, but he wasn’t finished with those four men. For them, the most powerful, the most memorable, the most important part of the sermon was yet to come. You see, when Jesus said to Peter, “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch,” he was giving them one massive illustration of what the rest of their lives were going to be. This was to be the end of their fishing career – fishing for fish, that is. And this was to be the beginning of a whole new life when they’d be fishing for people.
And they were going to catch plenty! You only have to think of that crowd at Pentecost, with people gathered from nations right across the world, when about 3,000 people became Christians after hearing Peter’s first sermon. Peter the fisherman!
But first they had to be trained. And that training was going to be hard work and dangerous. And it was going to be focused, because they had left everything – their families, their businesses, to learn how to be fishers for people. Indeed, they spent the next three years with Jesus learning how to fish for people, as he taught them with his word.
I don’t know if you’ve thought about this or not, but when you catch fish, they die. And these first disciples also died, when they themselves were caught by Jesus. They died to their old life, their old values. But then they went into training for a whole new way of living, instructed by Jesus’ words. And when Jesus gave them his Spirit, they were given a whole new eternal life, so much more wonderful than their old life.
What are you fishing for? A nice home and family? Financial security? A quiet life? These are often gifts of God, but are they our Number 1 priority? If we give our lives to Jesus, like those first disciples, he will catch us up as well in his great rescue plan and make us, like them, fishers for people.
Now the great thing about a fishing boat is that there are all sorts of jobs! And there’s a job for everyone! You need people to maintain the hull, and the sails or the engine. You need people who can navigate, steer and keep watch. You need people who can cook. You need people who can sort, clean and store fish. And, of course, you need people who can actually catch fish! All those jobs, every job, works towards catching fish. Indeed, there’s no space on a fishing boat for anything else. It’s not like a cruise ship, where you can just relax and let others do the work!
And it’s exactly the same with God’s church. Even our church buildings remind us of this. They are upturned boats – we’re all sitting here in the nave, the Latin word for boat, and the planking on the ceiling reminds us that we’re all in the same boat. And we’re in the business of fishing, whether it be in Banyule or Regional Australia, with Bush Church Aid. We’re in the business of fishing for people, of making followers of Jesus, through the words of Jesus.
Now, being a disciple is costly. It’s expensive and it’s dangerous – we will get persecuted. Those first disciples left everything to follow Jesus. They saw their Lord crucified and they were persecuted themselves as they took the news of eternal salvation through Christ to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. But Jesus tells us that those who lose their life for his sake and the gospel’s will save it.
Are you, like the crowds listening to Jesus by the Sea of Galilee hungry for God’s word? Has your life, like those first disciples, been turned around by God’s word? Have you become, like those first disciples, a fisher for people? Let’s pray that God would work in us, as individuals, as congregations, as a parish, to make us hungry for his word, to turn us around by his word, and to train us to be fishers for people through sharing God’s word.
Adrian Lane serves as the Victorian Regional Officer for the Bush Church Aid Society and has previously served as the Warden for the Mathew Hale Public Library in Brisbane.