Andy Constable - Ministry In The Schemes

In our sixth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Andy Constable, pastor of Niddrie Community Church in Edinburgh and a Frontier Shepherds speaker, to talk about the schemes, Scotland's poorest communities. Scotland has healthy churches in its richer areas, but in the schemes the churches are dead or dying, and Christians are too comfortable to move. Andy tells how a London student ended up under Mez McConnell at a church with, from a student's perspective, nothing to offer, and how Niddrie holds word and deed together without sliding into pietism or the social gospel. Fruit comes slowly there: a woman thrown out of the kids' club came back twenty years later and was saved. A line from Andy's new book on addiction surfaces near the end: behind every single smile is a story of wicked rebellion.Learn more about the Frontier Shepherds conference at newgenevaacademy.com00:00 - Introducing Andy Constable00:46 - Ministry this time of year: the church weekend away02:05 - Niddrie Community Church: a century of gospel presence in a scheme03:11 - The UK class system and working-class ministry06:43 - From London to Edinburgh07:16 - Meeting Mez McConnell and a church with nothing to offer12:21 - Word and deed: avoiding pietism and the social gospel17:28 - The long game: a conversion twenty years in the making19:55 - From intern to pastor: Mez's training model22:45 - A training church: indigenous converts, three plants26:50 - Christians too comfortable to move27:46 - 20 Schemes: 18 churches in 13 years31:30 - Whole-life discipleship at Niddrie36:29 - Loving people, not just books39:24 - Addiction and the Local Church43:57 - "Behind every single smile": respectable and unrespectable sins48:14 - The Ragged School of Theology52:09 - Frontier Shepherds this September