1) Please tell us your name, where you’re from and which church you are a part of?

I’m Paul Cross, pastor of the River Church which is a church plant in Orpington, Kent who for the last ten years has been known as Tim’s dad.

2) What’s your day job and outside of that what are your hobbies and interests?

For the last 3 years I have looked after Knockholt Station between 6am and 10.30am each weekday which gives me the rest of the day to lead the River Church. Other than that I love the people of the church and like watching sport particularly cricket.

3)Tell us your claim to fame or something about you others wouldn’t know?

I have two claims to fame. At 14 I won a radio 1 competition and had my name read out by Noel Edmunds and at 17 I had two personal net sessions with regular Australian test cricketer Ian Redpath. Unfortunately I then never played cricket again seriously as I got saved and could not find the time.

4) How did you end up in a leadership role and what’s your greatest challenge at the moment?

In 1992 I was made redundant as a building site manager, re-trained as a Further Education teacher but still could not get a job. Then a United Reformed Church about 7 miles away, where I occasionally preached, asked me to be their pastor. After 6 months of uncertainty and getting nowhere we decided it was right so we moved to St Paul’s Cray with a house to live in but no regular income. However God met our every need as a family and I was able to be mostly full-time in the ministry for the next 11 years proving that if you have the call of God He will provide without a regular income.

We decided it was right to move on in 2005 and again had to trust God for a house, a new church, somewhere to meet, an income and a role. He provided all and 17 of us started meeting in a school portacabin and called ourselves the Ramsden Family Church. However in 2008, again sensing it was time to move on, the Lord graciously provided a council run youth centre with much better facilities to meet in and we changed our name to the River Church.

My greatest challenge at the moment is to see our core membership of young adults develop into church leaders in the coming years.

5) Tell us what you’re reading or listening to at the moment? (What is inspiring your or what is God speaking to you through at the moment?)

I often listen or read transcripts of sermons by Mark Driscoll as I appreciate his contemporary approach coupled with a strong scriptural base. I also appreciate books by Tim Chester, the latest being “Everyday Church” , for the same reasons above although I wish he had a greater charismatic emphasis and just recently I have been reading again some of Charles Finney’s lectures on revival.

 6) Can you tell us what God is doing at the moment in your local church?

Our church is a good place to be at the moment as we are having some good worship and prayer meetings, challenging preaching and people seem happy being together. Yet we recognise that we need to become more consistent in evangelism so we are taking the following steps to readdress this balance.

1. The Lord has been speaking about using spiritual gifts more
2. We have seen that prayer and sharing the gospel must go hand in hand in the same way that artillery complements foot soldiers in battle so we are a praying church and want to be more of a witnessing church
3. We are planning to do some street witnessing as a team of particularly men in the next couple of weeks
4. We are going to be re-visiting some homes we did a door to door survey with in the near future
5. We hoped to appoint a youth worker to head up the outreach to the youth of our estate but we are yet to find the right person. If anyone is interested then please contact me.

7) What is your vision/ hope for the future of the church you are part of?

The strapline of our church is developing people in Christ and our goal is to see people turn into authentic men and women of God. However our church is planted in the midst of a council estate and we see we must reach out to those around and we hope in time to see more and more local people coming to the Lord. To that end another goal is to have home groups spring up on the estate in local people’s homes.

These things are not mutually exclusive as it will only be as we develop people in ministry will we see people saved from the estate and we want to see them in turn develop into Christian leaders

 8) Do you have any wisdom that you would share with young leaders?

Young people who aspire to leadership should

1. Develop a routine of daily prayer and bible reading becoming dependant on the Lord
2. Ask the Lord to deal with them over “questionable” things in their lives
3. Become given to your local church leadership and do whatever is asked however trivial it seems
4. Talk to older men in the Lord and form a close bond with at least one.
5. Go through with God in your secular work learning His lessons and the balance between work, family and church
6. Read around the things that interest you
7. Take very opportunity to minister the word of God both inside and outside of the church.

An article by Paul Cross, guest speaker at PFG 2010.

If you were to ask me the best Christian book I have ever read I would say “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” by Jim Cymbala. In chapter 6 he imagines a basketball game in Madison Square Garden where in a short space of time your team is getting hammered. The coach calls a time out and as you huddle one player says “Isn’t this fun? We get to play in Madison Square Garden” while another admires the gold trim on the uniforms and another waves to his aunt in the stand. Jim challenges us to imagine what the coach would say if his team acted like this? I don’t think it would be very polite! He then likens the match to the state of the church today in its inability to observe the real state of the world rather than the fantasy situation where we can believe we are doing well. He concludes “It is high time to wake up and look at the scoreboard”

What is your church’s true scoreboard showing? How many lives have you seen saved and transformed this year? These are questions we should be asking ourselves rather than hide behind the weak platitudes of “well, we are sowing seeds” or “God is doing a deep work that we cannot see”. We would all be pretty hungry if farmers produced no fruit even after one year of cultivating the land yet we can be content to accept minimal growth and believe it is due to outside circumstances or even, if we are honest, God.

As I consider these questions in our small church plant in St Mary Cray, Orpington I have become convinced that answers do not lie in formulae or church-planting techniques or new strategies although if they are God-given they can be helpful but in something more fundamental. Do we see church as a goal or is Jesus our goal? Many of you attending Passion For God will be second generation christians i.e although you have made responses to God your experience of Him is perhaps not as clear as those of your parents who came out of the world or dead church situations. I believe this presents a real challenge, for to you church can seem like something to attend or do or organise or grow rather than a dynamic expression of your love for Jesus who has revolutionised your whole life.

If PFG means anything it can only radically affect your church when you are radically affected by God’s grace and until that happens church will be “something” rather than a living organism that cannot be developed using the world’s methods. “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” is about how God uses simple, heartfelt praying to transform people yet even that can become another method if we are not careful. What I am talking about is when you and I get down before God and say “Here am I. Let me serve you with everything I’ve got” and are prepared to let our love for Him make job, family, church or hobby have a secondary place. The love of the Lord Jesus Christ must inflame our hearts otherwise the church will keep losing and we will deceive ourselves into thinking it is okay as we’re comfortable and going to heaven.

My hope and prayer is that PFG will make a difference – not just at the weekend or in the following month – but perpetually as the need for people on fire for God is desperate. We who have received so much should be in a position to make a real difference to our communities, families, friends and churches for the need is great. Not our need, but the need of those around us who do not know the Lord. Please come with an attitude of humble trust that the Lord in His great mercy will kindle an eternal flame in all our hearts. To quote John Wesley “Give me 30 men who love nothing but God and hate nothing but sin and I will change the world!”