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Interview with Gary Clarke

A relevant church – to win a hurting world

Gary Clarke, senior pastor of Hillsong Church London, was one of the most eagerly anticipated speakers at this year’s be:one conference. A born thinker and team strategist he has harnessed his God-given gifting as a culture-creator to build a strong, vibrant, 21st century church in the heart of our capital city. The Hillsong London congregation – renowned for its contemporary worship music – is currently meeting in the Dominion Theatre in London’s West End, with plants in Leatherhead (Surrey) and Paris. It was established in the ’90s, and under Gary and his team’s visionary leadership it has boomed from just 100 people to around 7,000 each weekend. A diverse and talented leadership team now facilitates four services each week and invests time and energy in reaching out to the fashion, media and business industries. With a focus on cells, parties and outreach – more than just traditional pulpit-ministry – Hillsong London is also committed to making a difference in Africa through its work with child sponsorship charity Compassion. AoG GS Paul Weaver invited Gary to speak to leaders at be:one about the bricks he has used to build up a colourful, exciting and soul-winning church. JOY caught up with Gary at the conference to find out more about his church and ministry.

JOY: Gary, great to see you at conference this year.

GARY: Thank you. It’s great to be here. And an honour to be invited. If people can learn and glean something from me to help them build a great church, then that’s great.

JOY: Why do you think this conference is so important to AoG?

GARY: A healthy church across this nation makes for a healthy nation! And this conference is part of building that healthy church.

JOY: What exactly would you define as a healthy church?

GARY: I think healthy church is typified in Ephesians. Paul is speaking and says: the church, you see, is not peripheral to the world, but the world is peripheral to the church. The church is the vehicle through which Christ speaks, acts and brings his presence.

JOY: That’s a great concept – so is the church to lead the way in society?

GARY: Yes. We need to grasp that God’s plan is that our church should be central to society and from that he flows into communities. So the church is not to sit on the outside of things. We gotta just ‘be’. Instead of trying to have a voice, we’ve gotta just ‘be.’

JOY: Just ‘be’?

GARY: Yes, we’ve got to be present and effective. We’ve got to be a place where God can speak, God can act and God can bring his presence. Then I think we don’t have to strive, or be anything we’re not; we just need to be ourselves and relevant in to the world we live in.

JOY: Can you give us four qualities of culturally relevant churches?

GARY: Sure ...

• Be heaven’s welcome home mat: I think that when someone walks into church, they should get a sense of ‘welcome home.’ Well, welcome home to what? To what God’s got for us – a secure home.
• Be generous: For the church to be effective, we need a prevailing attitude of generosity. I have this saying in our church, taken from the Good Samaritan. First we had the Priest and the Levite. They said something needs to be done, someone should do something. But the Good Samaritan said something needs to be done, someone should do something – and it might as well be me!
• Be relevant: Relevance is important if we are going to be effective as churches. To be relevant means to be contemporary. And often we dismiss being contemporary as a fad, or being modern just for the sake of it. But being contemporary really just means being relevant to the time in which we exist. Not to be relevant to yesterday’s time, or even relevant to tomorrow’s time – but to the world in which we exist now. So stylistically speaking, we need to be relevant to today and the trends of today, to connect with people where they’re at. For instance, music. Music has always been a part of the church. But yesterday’s music is only relevant to those who wish to think about yesterday. Right? So music has always been a part of God’s plan. But it’s got to be relevant to today. Not even tomorrow, cause that’s tomorrow’s church. It’s gotta be now. And I think in our efforts to be relevant, we don’t need to be edgy. Because the truth is we’re quite conservative in the way we do things. And that’s quite deliberate, because I don’t want to be a cutting-edge church in London, because a cutting-edge church is about tomorrow. I want to have a church for today, so that we’re relevant for people living today’s life. I want someone to be able to walk into any of our churches and think: this is relevant to me, today!
• Be in-touch: In ministry, we need to appreciate the values and needs of our generation, Generation X. Our generation’s biggest influences today are family, friends and media. In postmodern thinking, family is a big ideal – most of our generation comes from a dysfunctional family. Friendship is another thing. So if there’s not a strong friendship culture in our churches, the thing they value isn’t there. And another area which is of value to postmoderns is media. It’s what they listen to. We need to learn how to use types of media to communicate, because that’s what people will trust, and listen to. You know, people today will better listen to a face on a screen than often someone speaking to them face-to-face. So we have got to learn how to embrace media, to try and get our message across. I believe if we get to grips building this kind of church culture, we can truly be a presence for Christ in our world.

Interview by Phill Dolby, Published in Joy Magazine, May 2006