One To One With P-J Smyth

PJ SMTYH P-J Smyth exploded onto our platform at Brighton several years ago! He has since moved from Zimbabwe to church plant in Johannesburg and is a popular and dynamic speaker in many contexts including Newday.

NR (Nigel Ring): P-J, tell me a little bit about yourself.
P-J: I was raised in a Christian family and was born again at the age of six. When I was fifteen I made a definite recommitment to Christ and that was a very meaningful moment.

NR: Were you baptised in the Spirit at the same time?
P-J: No, that was when I got to university. I think of my life in distinct phases: things I learned from God in my teenage years, things I learned in my university years and then a phase when we planted our first church.

In my school years I learned obedience to Jesus, modelled by my parents who moved us when I was thirteen, from the UK to Zimbabwe to go into missionary work. In my teen years I learned how to lead and preach because I went on a lot of high school Christian camps, led by my father. Then at the University of Cape Town I came to see the beauty of the local church. It took me six months in my first year to become theologically convinced of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but when I did, I soon got baptised in the Spirit and began gradually to speak in tongues.

NR: Were you part of a Christian Union or a church in the city?
P-J: At university, I went to ‘His People' church which was flourishing right next to the campus and that was how I saw the local church in action for the first time.

NR: How did you meet Ashleigh?
P-J: At high school in Zim, and then we married immediately after leaving university and became high school teachers.

NR: What was it like living in Zimbabwe?
P-J: I loved it! It has only been in the last decade that the country has gone through the most gruelling, socio-economic time. I had seven years leading churches there before I went to Jo'burg three years ago. The situation in the country made it a wonderfully shaping time but also very challenging, particularly with the racial and economic difficulties.

NR: What is your church planting experience?
P-J: After teaching for several years, we wanted to plant a local church. We could hardly spell ‘church', but in 1997 twelve friends agreed to give it a go with us and we put out 30 chairs on a Sunday night in a school hall. By the end of the year we were gathering 300 each week. It was not a church as we now understand it; more of a centre for worship and preaching. Wonderfully, after a year, we bumped into Newfrontiers and spent the next two years turning the existing crowd into a more New Testament-style local church.

NR: How did you meet Newfrontiers?
P-J: Our first contact was Ben Davies in Bracknell. Our paths crossed because of two brothers, one in his church and one in ours. Ben introduced us to Simon Pettit and other South African leaders and our relationship grew from there. By about 2001 we were a large church of about 1,000 but things were getting difficult politically and we were thrown out of the Government school we were meeting in. We ended up going five different ways in the space of three months! Remarkably, it worked and all those churches are still going. Actually, one merged with another but they have since planted out as well. That catapulted us into the apostolic scene of helping and planting local churches.

NR: Are there any particular lessons you learned from that experience?
P-J: The main one is that God is faithful in unique situations to do unique things! I wouldn't recommend a church going five different ways so suddenly, but it created a robust and missional people almost overnight.

NR: How did you, and now Scott Marques, help people to be so buoyant and faith-filled in such a difficult political situation?
P-J: The environment in Zimbabwe challenges people; it is all or nothing! Jesus was ‘all' not ‘nothing' and they are imitating him in difficult circumstances. They are outward looking, and are serving by helping to plant churches and by their amazing example of godliness in the face of real hardship.

NR: Tell us about your family life.
P-J: I have a wonderful wife who loves God and loves me, and we have got three boys, aged four, seven and nine (Sam, Ben and Jack) who bring us great joy. They are a wonderful handful and we enjoy family life, attempting to be a family on mission together. If you asked any of my sons why we moved to Jo'burg, they would say it was because God told us to!

On the subject of children, Ashleigh and I feel that the primary Biblical command to them is to obey your parents and so we focus on that. We go for first-time PJ2

obedience that is cheerful, with a good attitude. Then there is the Biblical exhortation, ‘don't exasperate your children', so, equally, we
try to have a very buoyant, upbeat faith
and laughter-filled home, and approach to life. Also, the reality is that they are watching how we follow Jesus. So, we try to follow
him with our whole hearts, believing that it will rub off on them and they will feel that
putting God first is normal Christianity.

NR: How do you bring covering and headship to your wife?
P-J: Ashleigh doesn't much like risk or change - my perfect foil! Our move to Johannesburg caused the biggest marital moments of our fourteen years of marriage! God spoke to both of us about leaving Zimbabwe but I felt it should be Johannesburg, Ashleigh felt it should be somewhere nicer! We had nearly a year of complete disagreement. Ashleigh would say that God used that year to teach her submission to God and to me, and I know that God used that year to sort out my motives. So that was a really excellent year of marriage, albeit challenging!

NR: How did God speak to you about Johannesburg?
P-J: Like Abraham, we were very definitely told to, ‘Go!' but didn't know where! God used Simon Pettit and Stephen van Rhyn to help me see that I have a gift for planting in a big city. Johannesburg is the biggest one in Africa! It was a progression including prophecies and counsel of other treasured friends and leaders. Also, once at Johannesburg airport, I saw a huge signboard, ‘You can visit the whole world from Johannesburg International Airport,' and I heard the Lord whisper, ‘This is the place for you!' I felt God say that it was a great place to be on world mission with the rest of our Newfrontiers family.

NR: What are the particular characteristics that should define a church in a large city?
P-J: You have got to love the city. Jeremiah 29:1-10 has become a real flagship passage, where God says, ‘Love the city, pray for it, get involved.' With big cities you love them or hate them. It is vital to embrace the potential they have - the entrepreneurial spirit, the finance, the pace of life - and harness that for the gospel. We have been influenced by Mark Driscoll and others who speak of ‘upstream' influence. Rather than the church being ‘downstream' and trying to pull out of the pollution that is in the river, get upstream and influence culture and decision-making so that the river isn't so dirty when it gets further downstream.

NR: Johannesburg is a city of many cultures. Is there some particular group you are focussing on?
P-J: It is cosmopolitan, and virtually impossible to focus on only one group. You have to develop a way of doing church for black and white, rich and poor, young and old. Having said that, our primary places of influence at the moment are in the ‘yuppie' Northern suburbs and the university campuses.

NR: What is your philosophy of planting onto campuses?
P-J: I'm happy for a congregation on a campus to be a pretty narrow age band at first, but students grow up! Something we are trying, with some success, is to have our Sunday meeting just off campus, and we are doing that in Gaborone (Botswana) as well, to make it more accessible for the outside community to join us.

NR: I believe you have recently purchased a new piece of land? What is your vision for that?
P-J: It is eight hectares on a major road. It cost us £1,000,000 and we are thrilled to now own it. Owning your own property, if you are a growing church in a major city, is essential. In Jeremiah 29, Jeremiah exhorts the exiles to build houses and engage in the city and we feel that by having our own premises it will help us to do that.

NR: What will you do with all that land?
P-J: We are not sure but just don't want to buy something too small. We don't know what God has got for us, but this land has huge potential!

NR: Following last year's conference in Brighton, the Baptist Times said of you, ‘Most churches in the UK are organised pastorally. What P-J has done is to form a church that is apostolic in its very being.' Can you expand on that?
P-J: We believe in the apostle, the evangelist, the prophet and pastor-teacher but we see in 1 Corinthians 12:28 God declares the ‘firstness' of apostleship. When Paul planted churches, his gift went in first. The nature of the apostolic gift is foundation-laying and it provides a base for the other gifts to operate. If you are building a house, you don't get the carpenter or the electrician in first, you get the foundations in. The pastoral gifts along with the other gifts find most freedom and success working from an apostolic foundation rather than preceding it. If you start with the pastoral gifts you might get a very pastoral church, but if you start with an apostolic gift you will get a prophetic, teaching and pastoral church, and also a missional church. The apostolic gift is expansive and breaks new ground. You start with that, then the pastors come and help care, train and teach the new converts. The apostolic gift is missional.

NR: I have noticed you are very diligent in taking hold of messages you have heard preached and applying them intentionally. What is your philosophy?
P-J: I have been most diligent when I have been exposed to brand new large apostolic truths that I felt I missed. Ten years ago, when I first heard Terry on ‘grace' for example, it was such a fresh revelation that I thought I really needed to immerse myself in it!

I repeatedly listen to messages and then, once I have a grip on them, I begin to preach them.

I have preached the ‘grace message' over the years, and now it feels more like mine and less like me passing on what Terry teaches. I am very aware that I am standing on truth received from God by other men as well as my own direct revelation from God.

NR: Last year you spoke at Newday, the young people's conference in the UK. You and Ashleigh were great hits! What is your vision and passion for young people?
P-J: Scott of the Antarctic, when recruiting for his mission, didn't say it was going to be well-paid and fairly easy. He said, ‘We might never return, gruelling conditions are assured, it is going to be very costly.' Thousands applied! When we preach to teenagers what Jesus did, which is, ‘Lay down your lives!' people respond! I am very nervous of an essentially ‘man-centred', humanistic gospel that teaches, ‘Come to Jesus and you will have all your problems solved!' I think it is, ‘Come to Jesus because you have many problems but lay your life down, put him first and get on his mission rather than him getting on yours.' We need to be preaching the gospel of sacrifice.

NR: As Scott headed down to the South Pole, I am sure he met many penguins! I think that word is relevant to you?
P-J: Yep! Scott Marques (who leads our churches in Zimbabwe) and Colin Vincent (who leads worship in our church) and I formed a Christian outreach rock band at high school and university called ‘Penguins in Africa'. God used that time to teach us and grow us in evangelism, boldness and in fearing God more than man - we often played in places where we weren't particularly popular.

NR: I remember once sitting on a plane next to a woman and discovering she had been saved through that ministry! Would you share with us what you read in your personal walk with God?
P-J: I enjoy the Bible more than any other book! John Wesley said, ‘We must be men of one book - homo unius libri.' I find the Holy Spirit opens it to me for myself as well as opening it to preach to others. I tend to blitz read on different subjects, so I have just finished a blitz on the sovereignty of God in several books. Previous to that I felt God impressing prayer on me and so I read biographies and more textbook-type ones on prayer. That is how it works for me.

NR: How do you handle personal prophecy when it is brought to you and allow it to direct your life?
P-J: I value it greatly! Some words confirm things very quickly in my heart and will embolden me to take action. Other words I might be more cautious about, so I will put them on the shelf and allow time to confirm them. Then I will begin to act on them.

NR: Finally, can you tell us about your heart for the poor and what you would expect as you plant a new church?
P-J: Johannesburg has some very wealthy areas and other distinctly poor areas. We are geographically a long way from a very poor area such as a township. But we believe that planting local churches is the best form of ministry to the poor, so currently we have a congregation in the inner city and umbilically attached to that is a pre-school for the underprivileged. We are also working into two other poor areas in a small way. My hope is that we will end up planting churches in them. There is a gospel imperative to look after the poor. Working it out in the kind of city that Jo'burg is, is quite interesting!

NR: Thank you for sharing so openly with us.

One To One With P-J Smyth

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