Archbishop Justin Welby in conversation with Nicky Gumbel

it is a significant day for the world's Anglican community of around 18 million people incoming Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will find himself facing some difficult challenges Downing Street confirmed the right to Reverend Justin Welby who is currently a Bishop of Durham as successor to dr. Bishop will be will become the hundred and fifty sheep of Canterbury Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed bishop well-briefed appointment via Twitter the next Archbishop of Canterbury was officially unveiled today say he was utterly optimistic about the future of the Church of England which the church that together enables people to do the right thing a formal installation of Justin well the increment of the 150 parts where she would countable something in this said this is what you should be doing [Music] he's the spiritual leader of 80 million Anglicans around the world he's the hundred and fifty of Canterbury he's also a great friend and were thrilled that Caroline is here his wife is here they have five children they're an amazing family and a wonderful man and we're very honored that he is here with us right now would you give a warm welcome to Justin Welby [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so Justin what does it feel like to be Archbishop of Canterbury bit less overwhelming than this what does it feel like to be vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton I don't know well then we're in the same place so Justin just tell us I mean that that in Froman service was amazing you had everyone there you had the Prime Minister the Prince of Wales the leader of the Opposition every leader in state and it's all about you you knock on the door and it's all about you what's going through your mind at that moment rather like now my mind went more or less totally black okay but I think the key things was in terms of in terms of what I was praying it was that it wasn't all about me because it's actually all about Jesus because the whole point of the thing the whole point of the thing is that it is all about Jesus that's what matters and I think when I was I had some fun that morning I went for a run earlier that morning and the cameras were just setting up and they hadn't switched on and so I ran past them I could see the frustration on their faces because they'd missed the shot but the I think as I was praying that morning while I was running I was thinking I was praying most of all for that ability and reality of Jesus to to be present in that service and day for him to be the focus of that and that was it was a very overwhelming occasion it went past really quite quickly and we had some drumming as you saw just up there and the faces of some of the people there were very interesting when that happened it was good it was fun I really enjoyed it and you had this 10,000 people turning out to pray yes apparently it was a bit more than that I thought it was 10,000 it was apparently 12 and a half thousand feet Greg says amazing we did five days before the installation and I went to five cathedrals who were incredibly generous in opening of the Cathedral stopping all their normal events which two weeks before Easter was was a big thing to ask and they did it was brilliantly organized by the staff at Lambeth and and by the cathedrals and by beat Greg and his team at 24/7 and we just said to people the archbishop is going to be there in the Cathedral each of the five cathedrals just he'll be there for six hours come and pray with him and we didn't give them full set ways of praying we gave them a number of options everything from children's activities through a labyrinth through prayer walks through all sorts of things silence adoration of the Eucharist all everything you can think of just drawing on all the riches of the great Christian heritage of prayer and spirituality and Pete's say I think it was either Peter O'Brien a few days before said I think it's going to be really exciting I think we'll get three or four hundred people at each place and we had nowhere did we have less than two thousand and it was just amazing and people it wasn't coming there was a wonderful moment in chit chester cathedral when they spoke came up to me i was wandering around trying to look like an archbishop but not really succeeding as i mean I had a cassock on which for those of you who don't know these things is a long black dressing-gown and and this person came up to me and said I've heard the Archbishop of Canterbury's here today so I said yes years and he said is there any chance you could introduce me to so I said well yes actually I'm feeling a bit sort of you know I said yes he's actually it's me and he said [Applause] let's just go back in your life a little bit to your to your to your childhood it's because your mother was the PA wasn't she to up to Winston Churchill did you ever meet Churchill yes she took me to tea with him she worked for him from I think it was 49 to 55 and about 1961 I guess it must have be it's one of my early memories I went to tea with him because I didn't know how great he was but I knew this was quite special and we sat and had tea together so yes I did meet you extraordinary doesn't tell us about your journey of faith how did you come to faith in Jesus Christ well you had something to do with it not very much I don't think just you well you you were a very disruptive influence to my non-christian life [Laughter] I caught up to as you remember because you were there at the time I I came up to I went to Trinity College Cambridge where you were there and almost everyone I met was called Nikki remember that Nikki Lee Nikki Hills Nikki Wells was added I think Queens you I'm sure I've missed a couple few more a few my went to one I went to a party in your rooms on one occasion everyone apart from me was called Nikki it's very unsettling but it made remembering names very easy and and while in my year between school University I'd been teaching in Kenya and had shared a small house with a Christian and he I was very impressed with him we'd his quality of life was very striking and he read his Bible father and I every morning and I read the only other book in the house which was baggert on the English Constitution which I thought had been less boring than the Bible and once I'd read that three times I gave up and read the Bible and then I came back to England and after at the beginning of my second year at university it's a long story but cut it very short I went Nicky Hills took me to a talk at the Christian Union which was staggeringly boring and it just shows God's bigger than us really doesn't it because I remember being very bored and then we went and had some supper together and he explained the cross and what Jesus had done for me on the cross I think that's just one of the key things for people that Christians the the moment when you understand that what God did for us not what he calls us to do for him the key moment is what he did for us because that's the transformative point and at the end of it he we finished talking about this and he said well so what do you think and and I said well I think I ought to pray so we prayed together and asked Jesus to be Lord of my life that's that's how it started anyway and it was Justin how did you meet your wife Caroline I was always about a year later or two years I can't remember two years yeah she can't remember either one year one year and sandy Miller was accurate at hella Trinity and Caroline's sister went there knew him and took her along to a home group he was running and he gave a Gospel address and Caroline became a Christian and I saw sandy a few days later and he said all there's this girl called Caroline who's just gone up to Newnham College in Cambridge could you keep an eye on her so in a spirit of pastoral sensitivity which has not got much better I asked her to a dinner party with 11 men and her and she came back afterwards as well so that that wasn't as much for disaster as it might have been but and that's how we met and we started going out a few months later and got married a few years after that and you started out life as a Bible smuggler and that right well not exactly started out like we the first summer we after we were married we were thinking about what to do for the summer holidays we were living in France at the time I was working in business there and we just had this this real sense of call from God to be involved in supporting the church in what was then the communist dominated Eastern Europe and so working with the group in Holland they lent us not open doors but something similar they lent us a an old Renault camping van that had a false floor and you slid back apart there was a little electronic moto electric motor and you put a hairpin into a panel in the wall little hole in the wall and of the van and a little panels lid back and then you could get the Bibles out knew you could carry about a thousand Bibles between the two so we went one to two years running in the summer holidays first to what was then Czechoslovakia and then second year to Romania and use as you say you were working in the oil industry and that was a few years you worked in the oil and you're now on the parliamentary commission for banking standards so you've got this this kind of business light but just say a bit about that time and what how important that was and and what you learned about leadership during that time I think I had the I I worked for very good people on the whole and I learned a lot from them in terms of being given responsibility very quickly and be expected to get on with it in terms of how they delegated and trusted me to get on with it and that taught me that modeled a very good model of leadership I think in terms of very good team working particularly when I we came back to England I was working in a UK old company and running the money side the Treasury as it was called and we had a very close team it's one of the best teams I've ever been in and that really it was such fun as you know where you are and and it's such fun working with a good team of people and I think that was part of it also just being in a world where almost no on the vast majority of people were not Christian believers and the challenge of working out what being a Christian meant in that world was hugely hugely important and taught me to value just that that everyone has a vocation everyone is called to be a Christian disciple wherever they are it's not just for people with you get or don't and it was during that time Justin that you faced a major tragedy in your life I said you have five children because you had six children just to talk a little bit about that and the impact on you of that well we we were posted back to the UK from France by my employer in the summer of 83 and our daughter Joanna had been born on November the 5th 82 and on the way back the car that Caroline was being driven in which had Johanna in it crashed and she was injured and that was a Monday and she died on the Friday she was in intensive care and it was an extraordinary period in a number of ways it was obviously indescribably painful and there'll be many people here and watching online or at the other sites who also know what that feels like but he was also a time when both of us still remember that there was more of a sense of the presence of God than almost any other time in our lives and the reality of God's love and so it was this extraordinarily intimate relationship with God of weeping and praying at the same time all our friends like you and the people at Holy Trinity Brompton and at our church in Paris were praying like mad for Jonah to recover and she didn't and we then came back it was just after John Wimber had started coming we came back and found HDB was absolutely full of people who were deeply committed to the ministry of healing so that was quite a challenge as well and I think one of the things that was most striking though was the grace particularly when sandy took us with a group of people to Anaheim to meet John Wimber at a big conference that autumn the grace that he showed and his brother-in-law actually praying with us and the absence of putting pressure on us and they're just leading us into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ rather than telling us that such-and-such should have happened or we should have done this or our faith should have been different or any of the classic terrible things that people say it was we were deeply surrounded by love and most of all very deeply by the love of Christ who sustained us through that and it was unbelievably painful it's still a pretty rare day when I don't think about Joanna and I think that's true for most parents who've been through this and yet it's never to think about her without remembering the almost tangible way in which Christ held her and us and holds her still talk a little bit about your time a day - because you're a pastor you were you're on the PCC just about those years it was very exciting I think John Collins first of all John Collins was the vicar and then sandy Miller and the church was growing very very rapidly and I think one of the blessings of that and I think it's one of the things we need to remember a lot of people here know very well I've had I suspect most of them which is one of the reasons you're here it is natural for churches to grow and as we what was clear there there were many struggles I mean I'm sure you remember we were trying to work out what was going on and what God was calling us to and we all come with particular models in our mind of what a church looks like but God shapes those models he takes us and with great love he takes us I think one of the things that I find so amazing about Jesus is he never he never says get into the right place and I'll meet you there he says I'm here with you and I'm gonna take you to the right place and I think looking back the experience of leading a pastor I water responsibilities I remember 4050 people meeting every fortnight and in home groups the other fortnight and seeing more and more people coming seeing people come to Christ seeing just and being responsible for the organization of that there was a sir minor day job of running the finance of an oil company and it was just but it was the encouragement I mean there were some pretty tricky times and it was it was very hard work we had a young family but God was at work and the church was growing and I think that's where I learned that church growth is natural and what we can expect and we should be optimistic about the power of the Spirit to bring people to Christ but it's also very hard work if anyone thinks that it just comes to you on a plate you're kidding yourself it's about take up your cross and follow me and I think htb the the brilliance of the leadership and I'm always grateful to Sandy and to you and John Collins was the toughness with which they led but a toughness wrapped in love I don't if do you remember you may not have been in that meeting the time when John Collins casually threw out he said you know when the fire of the Spirit dies down a bit and I I've always found there's one certain way of renewing the power of the fire of the Holy Spirit of God within one and it was to a number of pastor it leaders I don't know if you were there and we all leant forward thinking here's the quick fix and he said prolonged fasting and prayer during that time you went forward for ordination you put your name forward for ordination and you were turned on and the bishop said to you I think of the thousand people he'd interviewed you were the least qualified person to be ordained in the Church of England and he wasn't quite as positive as that [Applause] his exact loads where I've interviewed more than a thousand people for ordination and I can tell you don't come in the top thousand so encouraging isn't it to think of those 999 they must be amazing leaders what was that like this must be so disappointing and it was a huge relief I I was you know hey I was in a great Church and I was loving my job things were going quite well we had this sense Caroline and I had this sense that God was calling us calling meet ordination and us as a family into that life and I was really very hopeful that they would turn us down me down and in fact when I got to my gym I bought was a call akkem you go for this residential interview at the end of the process two years down the line you go for this interview three days and the last interview was with of the three days was with a bishop who was running the panel and his opening question was why do you want to be ordained so I said I don't so looking slightly baffled he said so what are you doing here it's a reasonable question so I said I can't get away from it he said what would you do if we turn you down and I said I'll go back to London and take my wife out to the best meal I can afford to celebrate you did eventually are you adelaida yeah but if he eventually are you were clearly you were ordained well I hope so because otherwise we have faith a church problematic Constitution you went to work in Warwickshire new I don't use and think you said these were some of the toughest years of your hardest work yeah I was ordained at Coventry and became curated All Saints children's cotton in Nuneaton which was a wonderful place but very it was during the recession at the beginning of the 90s it was very high unemployment urban priority area as it was called then and it was a really tough area and our children were going to the local schools and we were very embedded in the community and it was just the most enormous learning experience because the church wasn't growing much it was great but not a lot it was so different from Holy Trinity and everything was different and we just learned and learned and learned and learned and the people there were very patient with us indeed sometimes and sometimes not and then we went on and I was went to a parish in Mid Warwickshire called son James now them various standard normal market town there were about 40 people going to church it was wall-to-wall Book of Common Prayer which is great service but not always wall to wall and I and I the first service I took there there were more people paid to be there than the were there voluntarily which in the end is not a successful means of church growth if anyone's thinking about that and we learned he we were there seven years and the church grew a bit and we were again we just learned and learned and learned and learned and it's the basic disciplines of prayer of making sure that evangelism is always at the top of your list but of doing the stuff that you do in the community in love persistently and without giving up so you know the normal things of two or three funerals a week of weddings and baptisms of seeing people of pastoral care and at the same time of seeking to transform the church you had the nickname mr. alpha didn't you during that time well we did a lot of Alpha courses there was no church hall so we did them in the house and we discovered we could get 46 people for dinner into into our front room but only if they went in and out through the window which they did and we basically just did lots of alpha and one of the very striking things it was two things a number of people came to Christ he gave the Christians their confidence in their faith to be able to talk to others and bring them along and there was that growing sense of expectancy and of the reality of a relationship with Jesus Christ as being at the center of the life of the church one of one of my colleagues there one of the church wardens said to me on one occasion if Jesus isn't at the center of the church we are simply rotary with the pointy roof and rotary is a great organization but and which I support but it isn't the church and we're not rotary because we're centered on Christ from there you went to Coventry Cathedral where you involved in a lot of reconciliation work particularly in Nigeria and while you were involved in that your life was sometimes under threat and I think there are occasions when you rang your wife Caroline and said this is a goodbye call yeah I recited this melodramatic I said I don't think I've got this one quite right I think was one of the phrases I used yes there was there were a number of occasions I think three where it it was certainly very uncomfortable indeed and about another three where I discovered later that we'd been very well protected such an understatement Justin I have read that a young militia leader told his accomplices to take well be out and shoot him his life was saved when a local elder spent half an hour pleading on his behalf that sounds a little bit more than a little bit uncomfortable yeah it was a little bit uncomfortable but they were talking in the local language so being a very sensitive and intuitive person I realized the body language like the guns was not positive it wasn't probably not very positive but I didn't quite realize how bad it was still a bit later that day and then we spent the night waiting to see if you there just go the following morning how do you do and that is fear that is real fear how do you deal with fear in your life and at the time I get much more nervous going somewhere like that before I go once you're there you're usually too busy to be that frightened I think that night I do remember though I had a convenience set with me and celebrated communion quietly and spent a long time in prayer just wanting to make sure that if it didn't go right the accounts were clean as it were that you know I sorted things out of it read as much as one can I think fear fear is dealt with by grace I mean I find coming up here and doing this extremely fearful to be honest but it's what I'm aware of is it's not who we are that matters it's who Jesus is that matters and to quote someone from the 19th century Christian leader in Scotland we are what we are before God and nothing more that's Mary with Chaney and that is so true and that deals with fear because it's all grace it's all grace and if we're obedient and take up our cross and go with Jesus to be absolutely honest the rest is really his problem you went on to leadership positions the Dean of Liverpool then Bishop of Durham talked a little bit about Bill Hybels was speaking earlier today at a meeting and say the key is vision and I know that wherever you've been you've always had a very strong vision and talked a little bit about that and what what is when you had these roles what was the vision Liverpool was wonderful is for wonderful wonderful years running the cathedral there and the vision was very simple it came to me again when I was running my mourning and praying and it was summed up in a short phrase which is the cathedral should be a safe place to do risky things in Christ's service and I think it's that was a sort of given and we worked with that and the vision was a clear proclamation of who Christ is and a deep commitment to transformation of society and then you work at the machinery of that which is the bigger the organization the more more complicated it is I think in Durham again it was the vision was about taking risks we need to be a risk-taking church there is no safety in Christ there's absolute security but there's no safety and we have to make a big difference between knowing that we're in his arms and knowing that he calls us to do risky things and this is so the vision is about being a risk-taking church and finding ways of liberating people to be risk-takers in the current service of Christ so now I mean the vision that Church of England has it's three very clear goals of growing the Church of reimagining ministry and of the common good and within that my own emphases of my own personal vision is of a renewal of prayer and the religious life which is why we went praying before the installation of reconciliation of the church being reconciled I mean this isn't amazing and all these people gathered here and online and at the other sites is an amazing thing because it speaker you quoted that first from John 17 Jesus prays that we will be united so the world may know reconciliation within the church it's how the world will know that Jesus is truly God that's what he says that's not what we say it's what he says so reconciliation with that within the church is the second thing but also that the church becomes the peacemaker the the great peacemaker of the world and I know churches all around the world that came from Coventry seeing people just in the most terrible places the Christians seeking to bring reconciliation because the love that Christ had given them overflowed to the world around them and and the third thing is evangelization evangelism bringing people to know Jesus Christ so those are the three emphases I haven't and my prayer is the church will be risk taking in all those three areas that we will be willing to change to have a revolution that enables a renewal of prayer reconciliation and evangelism I'm the unity peace which has been a theme III a suspect of this time together that that's a tough call that's a tough call in well just even even in in the Anglican Church the unity is it's a challenge and I had somebody say you know Justin is a well-placed having been had experience of reconciliation in a war zone he's well-placed to bring about unity in the Anglican Church what what do you do about how do you how do you how how does that happen in practice it's the imitation of Christ we cannot live for our cause to win we have to live for his cause to win and the how of that it comes down to the recognition that very often the deepest wounds we experience will come from other Christians I find the things that most hurt me come from other Christians very frequently and how how we begin reconciliation is how Jesus did which is we take up our cross we bear the pains of other people's how it expressed at us and we we give love in return and it's very tough we can only do that when we do it together it's the seeking of people who are being transformed by the spirit and in whom the spirit fights against anger and bitterness because we all know that I mean I read stuff I get letters and I'll sit there and I'll write an email that you know is just gonna prove they are totally wrong and by the grace of God I have people around me who very between saying it might not be wise to send that now to that's a really dumb email and the only way I can do it is is praying for people I mean the it's the disciplines of praying for people talk a bit more about that just and how what is your what is your prayer life what are the keys good is a good start I think it it's funny it's developed over the years a long way and particularly through the traveling on in the war zone bit because quite often when you are under very great stress it's difficult to concentrate and what I've discovered is prayer prayer for me is structured around three points in the day which is the morning the formal morning office of the Anglican Church morning prayer a midday roughly Harper's twelve Communion and evening prayer the formal office before that in the early morning I spend time praying over a passage of Scripture praying meditatively through a passage of Scripture and in Isaiah at the moment usually with the commentary as well to enable me to understand better and I stand when God is speaking to me through a passage I don't move on until I've exhausted that passage I think I've been in Isaiah 34 and 35 for about two weeks now and just seeing more and more and being spoken to you more and more so it's a prayerful meditation on Scripture then time spent praying systematically for forgiveness I mean most of the early part of my prayers is repentance and and seeking the forgiveness of God and knowledge of that forgiveness in my own life and being honest with him about Who I am and where I am and then praying for family praying for my colleagues those who I work with for the Anglican Communion praying for all the past places I've worked in particularly I pray for you and and pepper and the family and HDB every Monday is just systematically because I'm so grateful for what we had from ya and then praying for myself and to be filled with the spirit and enabled by His grace to be what he wants me to be and and there's there's so there's that time of informal prayer in the morning a time with the scriptures the formal prayers of the day and hopefully several times a week perhaps half an hour of silence if I can usually it's once twice a week half an hour of silence usually in the chapel where what's called the tabernacle is and and praying and reflecting on using the communion service and the Eucharist to remind me of what Jesus did for me talk about the opportunity Justin what is what do you see as the opportunity God has put you in this position for such a time as this what do you see is the opportunity at this moment I think the opportunity comes from even in the extraordinary changes of the post-war era we're going through a bigger change spiritually in the Western economies and I suspect through the world than we have done for a very long time in this country there is the opportunity that the state needs people who will fill the gaps in Durham diocese when I was there we had we were working with other churches vineyard and others on 50 food banks unthinkable ten years ago would have been done by the government those are both a very sad fact that they're there but also it's a great opportunity for the church to demonstrate the love of Christ I am more optimistic about the church now than I've ever been in my life not only here but globally I think we are seeing a moment where the proclamation of Christ flexibility and a determination to win people to Christ meets the needs of the world in a way that people realize they have and haven't done for 70 years and the opportunities are endless and for myself it's just the freedom to be able to talk about Jesus on all kinds of occasions in all kinds of places it's very nice you've got some leaders here and in HDTV Brompton Road and watching her on the livestream so anything else you'd like to say to them today I suppose one thing there is no point in the history of the Church of the Western Church they were Church in Western Europe and North America the sort of and I suspect anywhere in the world where renewal of the church has not been preceded and accompanied by renewal of prayer and praying communities well in a moment I'm going to ask you to pray for us but first of all we won't say a huge thank you to you Justin Justin Welby [Applause]

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Length: 41min 34sec (2494 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2013