A Host Pastor’s Perspective on RP Missions
October 31 2011
David Fallows served as pastor of the Wishaw congregation from1992 until 2005, when he returned to his home country of Northern Ireland to minister at Kilraughts Reformed Presbyterian Church.
A swarm of different thoughts buzzed around Pastor David Fallows’ mind when Matt Filbert approached him about hosting a short-term mission team from the United States. His congregation in Wishaw, Scotland was small, so the prospect of hosting an energetic group of college students was both exciting and somewhat daunting.
It wouldn’t be hard to put the team to work: there was painting, remodeling, repair and landscaping work to be done around the church building, and it would be great to have extra hands on deck for Holiday Bible Club. The church had a mile-long to-do list that was hard to manage in the everyday busyness of life, and it would be a blessing to have students come specifically to meet those needs. But hosting such a group would also entail a significant amount of work on the church’s part—everything from planning work schedules to arranging accommodations. But despite the potential challenges, Fallows’ answer to Matt’s question was a resounding yes. He knew that the trip could have a powerful ripple effect, touching lives and building the kingdom for years to come.
“It was an honor to be there at the start of this new initiative, which I saw as one that could be a great blessing to those who would come and to those whom they would meet in the course of their work,” he says. “In particular I saw it as being a good thing for the children growing up within our small congregation—it would help them to see something of the worldwide nature of Christ’s Church.”
This wasn’t Fallows’ first experience with the short-term mission model. Before entering the pastorate, he had served on several week-long mission teams organized by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland.
“I was very much in favor of short-term mission teams and saw them as a means by which young people could grow in their faith as they exercised their gifts and worked together as a team on focused projects,” he says.
As he planned activities for the RP Missions team to Wishaw, Pastor Fallows had three specific goals:
1) To create a variety of opportunities for communicating the gospel by word of mouth.
2) To assign practical tasks that would make a visible difference to the church property
3) To make new contacts in the community for the congregation to continue after the team’s departure.
According to Fallows, the experience went above and beyond his expectations. “It is one thing to create opportunities and another thing to take them,” he wrote in the 1997 edition of Summer Mission in Review. “The team did what they were asked to do and there was clear evidence of them having applied themselves to thinking about the best way of doing those tasks. It was not just a matter of getting the job done—everything was done well—the most was made of every opportunity.”
The team threw themselves into the work of improving the church building inside and out. In addition to serving the congregation, they had the unique opportunity to share their testimonies at local primary and high schools. A number of children they met at the schools came to Holiday Bible Club at the church, which drew about 50 new children from the community. About 15 parents came to the closing event, and since the building was located in the center of town, there were many passers-by who noticed the activity.
“It was good to be in the company of enthusiastic, hard-working young Christians,” Fallows says. “The practical work that the team did in and around the church building was much appreciated by the congregation, and being a small congregation, the presence of an additional seven people at our worship services was an encouragement in itself.”
In fact, Fallows recalls that after the team left, the church members’ only complaint was that it would have been nice to spend more time with them. He took that as a pretty good sign that the trip had been a success.
The team went above and beyond in meeting Fallows’ goals for their trip, but the Wishaw pastor gave them something, as well. “I wanted them to make sure that they were looking to the Lord to work in all their labors rather than trusting in themselves. I sought to teach them the supreme value of studying the Scriptures as the way by which God shows us what to believe and how to live. I wanted them to go home from their trip with a commitment in their hearts to serve the Lord Jesus Christ within His church wherever He might lead them to be in the future—seeing the church as being at the very epicentre of Christ’s focus.”
The success of the 1997 RP Missions trip paved the way for many more teams to come to Wishaw. In fact, the church hosted a team every year until it merged with the Airdrie church in 2005.* These experiences blessed the church as a whole, Fallows says, but had a particular impact on the children. “There were a few children who came to church for several years without anyone else from their family attending, and the visits of mission teams were something that they always looked forward to.”
But with all the benefits the team brought to his congregation, Fallows believes that the long-term effects of these teams are most clearly marked in the team members themselves. “That is not meant to minimize the value of their work,” he explains, “but rather to acknowledge the wonderful way in which God uses these team experiences in the hearts and lives of those who have given themselves wholeheartedly to their task of serving and proclaiming their Lord and Savior.”
