A Day In the Life Of A Senior Minister
By Dave Gilpin
Monday 9th October - A day in the life of a Pastor is not easy you know. Here's a sneaky look into a day in the life of our Senior Minister - Dave Gilpin. Who said that church life in Great Britain was on the decline - yeah right!
5:00am - Wake up, 50 press ups, then down to the cellar for three hours of prayer and fasting before eating bread crusts for breakfast. Yeah right!
6:50am - Alarm bells ring - is it a dream or is it another day dawning? Push the snooze button.Thank God for the snooze button.
6:55am - Not enjoying being disturbed by the alarm and wish that the snooze interludes were 10 minutes, not 5 minutes apart.
7:00am - Get up and ask my beautifully scrunched up wife if she'd like a coffee - like she has ever said no! Say hello to my elongated 15 year old son who has actually been saying a big hello to Jesus (showing me up) but is still short on words. So early on in the day!
7:10am - Shower time - make sure the other shower isn't in full flow as only one shower works at a time. I remember that today is a day of destiny, and will never be repeated in my lifetime. I start to feel like a celebrity in my bathroom - it's working!
7:30am - Head off for department leader's prayer meeting.Real Radio is on in the background - which is good because listening to unreal radio would be stupid.
7:55am - Arrive at the Megacentre. Parents are dropping off their kids for nursery and staff are congregating for another day of conferencing, Megakids, pastoral care , Megalearn and everything else that makes the place tick from day to day!
8:00am - Right - let's talk about the decision people make at the end of each service to give their heart to Jesus. 'It's quite heavy' I say. Most people who are visitors are wanting to discover more about God but not ready to ' cross the bridge', 05 Elton John puts it nowadays. We love a debate about what we should do and decide firstly to ask anyone who may want to find out more about God to pray a prayer asking God to show them more about Himself - even if they think He may not be that real! At least a sincere prayer will give God a sincere opportunity to do something personal in someones life and answer their request!We decided to then pray a second prayer for people wanting to become Christians by inviting Christ into the centre of their lives.Something for everyone!
We all love it. Pressure free services where both the onlooker, the believe and the seeker can get what they're looking for.
9:00am - Oh no - not one prayer prayed in the prayer meeting. No one feels bad though because we've tackled a really important issue. I guess everyone present feels good because we all had a hand in fashioning the future.
9:00am to 6:00pm - People, people, people ... time planning our Megacentre expansion, have some coffee, our future 2000 seater Megaplex, more coffee, our website addition, coffee, our new pastoral carer of the north of Sheffield, lunch, coffee and our new way to resource other churches.
6:00pm - Home. Listen to Real Radio again - praising God that it really is real and I'm not going mad.
6:20pm to 11:15pm - Punch up with son (friendly) offload to wife (OK) listen to wife (feel good doing the right thing), answer the phone,watch the news, (make my own well informed comments!) watch Celebrity Master Chef, have time sat with the Bible and Jesus,think about everything, say goodnight to my wife and son, try to stretch the day out for as long as possible ... then zzzzzzz ... another day in paradise.
Dave Gilpin is the Senior Pastor of Hope City Church, which has congregations in Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle. He also loves to be creative by whatever means - so if he's not painting under his "artist name" Dagarte - he's out filming some footage for his latest idea for a TV programme - or he may even be writing his next book... Whatever it is he'll be doing it with pizazz!