00:00This is David Dickinson, who is currently the leader of Central Church Belfast.
00:05It's featured quite heavily in the General Assembly this year.
00:09David, you've been on a 10-year journey.
00:11You were originally led worship in Corn Money Presbyterian Church,
00:15and now you lead a church of around 250 members in Belfast City Centre.
00:22Can you tell me why did you go on this journey, and where is it going to end?
00:28I can probably tell you a bit more about this, the first and the second.
00:32We went on this journey because we had an increasing burden and an ache for the city centre of Belfast.
00:39We had run courses and initiatives in the city for a number of years
00:43and seen a large number of people respond to those initiatives.
00:46People coming to faith, getting renewed in faith, finding a faith maybe they'd had as a child.
00:52Off the back of that felt a real burden for where would they belong,
00:55and what would a church in the city look like,
00:58as all we had really known in those years were dwindling churches in the city centre.
01:03So it began there.
01:05And that road has been long.
01:07It has been winding.
01:09But as we find ourselves today as a church that has grown,
01:12not just wide, but deep,
01:14people who really want to live out the way of Jesus here in the city.
01:18And you're currently going through the process of,
01:21you're going to be officially ordained by the Presbyterian Church.
01:24You're going through some training,
01:25and the church itself is going to be officially adopted as a Presbyterian Church around about October.
01:31That's quite a journey.
01:32And can you tell us a little bit about the congregation?
01:34What's the makeup of the congregation?
01:36Yeah, the congregation now is a very diverse, vibrant group of people.
01:41I guess as we all have watched Belfast change, so too has our congregation.
01:45It's a very young congregation?
01:48It is. It's very young.
01:49It's, I mean, about 75% of the congregation are between 18 and 35.
01:53A lot of students around us, a lot of children and young people.
01:56And the mix from Protestant and Catholic background?
01:59Majority of people coming to us would have been coming from a Protestant background,
02:02although we do have a significant number of people who have come from a Catholic background too.
02:06And again, it's quite a mix, working class and middle class type people.
02:11Yeah, we have people from every background, every ethnicity.
02:16All mixing in into one fellowship.
02:19It's a very unorthodox route for a Presbyterian Church to come about.
02:23What do you say to that?
02:24I would say that we would like more of that in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
02:29It has not necessarily been the way that we normally do things,
02:32but I think it's been a pathway that's been in response to things God has done and how God has led us.
02:37And clearly from the General Assembly this year, there are a lot of eyes watching what you've done
02:42and seeing what can be learned for other parts of the Church.
02:45Is that a fair comment?
02:46I think that's fair.
02:47And it would be my hope that Central acts as a real encouragement for those inside the Church
02:52who have a vision or passion or dreams of planting churches in other places, areas of need.
02:59I think it also acts as a real encouragement to the outside world that the Church is not dead.
03:04It is very much alive.
03:05The Church is a real encouragement to the Church of the Church of the Church of the Church of the Church of the Church of the Church of the Church of the Church of the Church.
