Stephen Redman

Stephen is pastor of  Ark Church in York he is also a published author, has ministerial credentials from the Ground Level network and is a Presbyter of the Order of St Leonard. He also has a Masters Degree in Practical Theology and serves on the boards of the children's cancer charity 'Candlelighters', and 'Attend'. Stephen also serves as the Chair of the 'Friends of Amarna House' (a local care home).Stephen is very committed to the local unity group of church and ministry leaders 'One Voice' of which he is also a Trustee.

http://www.notraining.net/

Transcript

Nicola: Welcome to Cold Water Podcast. I’m Nicola Halton. We all know the importance of getting out there and doing a great work for Jesus. In this podcast we will learn more about the people who are involved in changing lives for good for God. Hi Stephen, thank you for joining me on Cold Water Podcast. 

Stephen: Hello Nicola. 

Nicola: Thank you. Hello. You are the author of the book, “At least it’s not raining.” Can you tell people listening about this book.

Stephen: Well some people know me as Stephen Redman. Some people know me as the pastor of the Ark Church. But most people know me as Rocky’s dad. The truth is we had 4 kids. The last of which was a boy. We named him Rocky but when he was 4 years old, he was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer, given 3 weeks to live and as a family we went through all the trauma that anyone would go through facing that situation. And Rocky actually lived almost 3 years after that date and I decided to write the book to let people know what it was like to have had a child with cancer and also to let people know 2 important things, one that Rocky did live and I wanted His name to be remembered but most importantly I feel that God gets such bad press when horrible things happen in the world. People say such stupid things like, “It’s all God’s fault. God must have wanted this to happen.” And things that I find as a Christian, I find them almost offensive to be honest. And I wanted to try and correct that a little bit and help people see that a theological view of God can be a lot wider than that. 

Nicola: Yes, thank you, that’s amazing. You have opened up several other questions for me here, but I’ll just go onto your practical life. You are the founding pastor of the Ark Church in York and you run candle lighters and Halves. Can you tell me about these roles please? 

Stephen: Well firstly Candlelighters is a charity. It’s now actually quite a big charity covering the whole of Yorkshire. And Candlelighters serves families of children with cancer and whereas.. I don’t run it. I was the chairman for 6 years and I am still a trustee but we have a situation with a very good CEO and I am still very much in contact and still doing things with Candlelighters but basically it is just about helping people. When cancer knocks at your door, no one wants to answer the door but you have to. And what we try to do at Candlelighters is be the next knock at that door and we just try to be there for folk and we do great things for the kids. We supply equipment to the ward so that every child has a big screen TV, a gaming console, a laptop, fast internet access. All of these things are provided for by Candlelighters. We have a Splish Splash experience as kids walk down the ward because there is a computerized projection on the floor of fish swimming in a pool and kids can splash through this and its an incredible experience. When we were on that ward it was a terrible thing to have to go back and nobody wanted to go back but now kids actually enjoy being there. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: Which when you consider the horrific treatment that they have to undergo. I think that is a real plus and we have also done research and we have also done therapeutic massage and blissening therapy for our customers, our clients, our parents. 

Nicola: Oh lovely thank you. And you have got Ark church which you founded 17 years ago is that right in York.

Stephen: Yes

Nicola: And you have also got halves which is a group for people who have had bereavement and are trying to get back together into relationships, into life again. Is that right?

Stephen: Well I had a conversation with the leaders in the council in York and I said to them, “What do you feel the church could do? What are your main priorities? How can we help with them?” And everyone said from the MP to the leader of the council, they all said, “Well our biggest problem is isolation.” 
 
 

Nicola: Yes 

Stephen: Which I think you will find is rampant across the UK it is not just York and we sort of had a thought about, well I had a thought about what we could do with bereaved people because being a bereaved parent I understand what goes on in people’s minds and being a pastor for all these years, I also understand a lot of other things, I don’t do a lot of funerals but I have done too many. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: And so we set up this group which started literally with 2 people but it has grown now to a fairly substantial number. There is probably 2 dozen that come together every week for a light lunch and talk to each other and one of these people I met on a bus and I said to her, “Can I sit with you?” And she said, “I’d really appreciate it if you did.” And she said to me, “This is my first time out since my husband died.” Now her husband died 6 months before and this was her first time out of the house and I just thought to myself. This is awful that people can feel trapped in 4 walls and I am so glad I happened to be there that day for her but halves just tries to be there for people. And what is lovely is it is not overtly a Christian group. We don’t try to promote the faith at all. But they all say to me, “but Stephen have you heard about so and so do you think we could all pray for them.” And we do that all the time and these people have had a lot of pastoral care in the past year when we haven’t been able to meet. And they are still very much part of us but obviously they are desperate to get back together. 

Nicola: yes

Stephen: That’s wonderful thank you. I want to reiterate that God is good. Throughout covid people have been confused about this. In all that you have been put through, you can say that God is good.

Stephen: Yes 4 years ago I had a heart attack and I was in cardiac care unit after having a stem put in and I had got tubes going in and out of my body the whole places and I couldn’t even get up to have a pee which is a technical term just in case you are worried and my wife brought me in my bible and I am quite good actually. I read a day ahead in my bible in a year so I hadn’t actually missed a day but that days scripture included Romans 8 and that particular year I was reading from the new living translation. I was absolutely amazed when I read this verse. It said that when we go through all types of trouble and pain and suffering, does it mean that God doesn’t love us any more? 

Nicola: yes

Stephen: And of course I immediately said,  Well of course it doesn’t!” And I just felt so embraced there in that cardiac care unit that God loved me and was with me and one thing I often say to people is that my circumstances tell you nothing about me. How I handle my circumstances tells you everything about me and so what I think is we can sometimes look at pastor A and see, oh pastor A is driving a Porsche that his church bought him. He must be so blessed by God, then of course, Pastor A, there is an expose to say that he has been sleeping with his secretary. You know the reality is we can make such terrible wrong judgements by looking at circumstance and I mean Job was a guy who loved God and God loved him. And the love of God was not changed by the fact of what job went through but job experienced a warfare scenario in his life and I think we all experience those scenarios.  

Nicola: yes we do, we do. Thank you so yes. I completely agree with you. God is agape. 

Stephen: Yes

Nicola: But he can’t.. he can’t.. I’m going to talk about that in a few minutes but the other thing. Do you think Christians can make a difference. On page 74 of your book, Accentuating the Positive, it suggests Christians can make a difference to their environment. Yes I absolutely believe so. We have the option in life of talking ourselves down, of listening to the devils lies and embracing trouble as if it was a dear friend that we have missed and we have wanted to have back in our lives. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: Or we can reach out to our father. I really believe that Jesus, the father, the Holy Spirit wants to walk with us through our trouble and that doesn’t mean that we get free of our trouble instantly. Even Daniel took 3 weeks to get through the heavenly trouble that was around him before he new that God had answered his prayer on the first day. The reality is that life is tough sometimes, life stinks sometimes, but God is good and we have to hold hands with the good one and we will get through to the other side. 

Nicola: yes

Stephen: I read the other day actually in psalm 41:3 it says God nurses us whilst we get well and I thought what a wonderful idea. I believe in miracles. I have received miracles. God has healed me dynamically and powerfully. Sometimes God has sat with me and held my hand and nursed me while I got better and sometimes a cold compress of the forehead is exactly what you need. 

Nicola: yes thank you. I was just going to go back to the agape of God and you have got a wonderful web site and I am doing the prime course about God’s love and I encourage anybody who is doing that. What prompted you to talk about God’s love on the web site. 

Stephen: Well I think, I read a lot, I had the privilege of going back to bible college in 2010 and doing my masters in theology. I learned then the importance of reading. I think that as a church leader it is quite important to not always be reinventing the wheel but to stand on the shoulders of giants. And so reading became much more a part of my life. I have always read. But it became something that I considered to be a responsibility that come with my job and I read so much by people who are deterministic in their thinking. Who think of God as Zeus who has got a lightening bolt in his hand who is going to zap you if you do anything wrong. A God who is deterministic. A God who rules every function of our lives so that actually we don’t have a free will. Then I read other people who do believe in free will and people who go a bit further than that and have other theologies. In all of these things I was thinking well really what is the summery of this and I was spending a lot of time with God in prayer and in study and it struck me is that what defines God for me is not that he is omniscient because he knows everything. I believe he does. It’s not that God is omnipotent, that he is all powerful. Although I believe he is but if there was just one thing that I would say about God that defines God for me and his character it would be that God is agape. God is love and agape is a very specific type of love and I just run this as a course in the church before the first lockdown and so during lockdown we decided that it was best to make this available as a series of 6 videos and I think they are roughly all about 30 minutes long and when we do it in a group there is a lot of interaction and people’s questions and answers and stuff but we felt that this would work reasonable well and so far it has the uptake online has been good. 

Nicola: It has been really good. This is the last question but it is probably the most important one to ask. In page 167 says Hebrews 11:4 it says, “Even though he is dead. He still speaks.” And that to me really sums up the book that you wrote. And Rocky was an evangelist. How would you say that Rocky would tell people about Jesus today. How would he do that in his core.

Stephen: Well, I’m so pleased that my children have all grown up with the real knowledge of God.

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: That is because it has been central in our home.

Nicola: Yes 

Stephen: It is not just been that we have always been at church because it is because I think it is what goes on in the home that children pick up on and Rocky never had a moment in his life, I don’t think where he wasn’t aware of God. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: or where he wouldn’t pray. But when he died I sort of was a bit worried for a while, what about the prophecies that we had had that he was going to be an evangelist and all this type of thing and where is he going to do that and over the years I have had some interesting conversations for example with some of the nurses that nurse him. In fact one of them, it was her birthday, only two weeks ago and I just sent her a one line message – happy birthday. And she sent back to me a couple of paragraphs and she said to me, “You know I often think about Rocky and you as a family and all that you stood for when you were going through treatment and I often think of him and I sort of think he speaks to me. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: And I thought, “Well that sounds a little bit weird, but it also sounds to me a little bit like God answering my prayers.”

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: I had a conversation with a nurse once and she said, “I’m a bit in trouble Steve,” and is said, “Come and sit down and talk to me about it.” And she said to me, “Well I let a teenager go home the other day, without the doctors signature and it was highly wrong of me to do that but he had an opportunity there and then to go home for one night and interview his family for a video he was making. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: Because he was terminal. He wanted to have this video.” And she said, “I just knew that the doctor who would have made that decision was out of contact, I couldn’t get hold of him, I just said to myself, what would Rocky of done?” 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: And I just said to myself, “That’s weird, that is really weird.” But then she said, “Then I knew it was the right thing to do and I sent him off home. He came back in the next day with this video, spent three or four days on his bed, editing this video which was then shown at his funeral two weeks later.”

Nicola: Yes, yes

Stephen: And she said, “I really felt that Rocky was talking to me.” Now I’m not saying to you that my son talks to people.

Nicola: No

Stephen: Because I don’t believe that is what is actually happening here but the impression he made on her life what is now 20 years ago has enabled her to make good decisions and I have to say to you that that women ended up being promoted. It didn’t cost her anything. But I will say to you in terms of how he reaches people, this book, I have an email address which people contact me on and they will just say, I really felt the book was tremendous. I don’t put a prayer in the book on how to receive Jesus. 

Nicola: No

Stephen: But once I had a women who was quite prominent in the city of York in a council sphere in a social sphere and she emailed me and said, “I Just want you to know that I have just prayed that prayer.” “Which Prayer?” I had just given her the book to read. She said, “I have just prayed that prayer for Jesus to come in to my heart.” And I said to myself, “Well it doesn’t actually say that in the book.”

Nicola: No, no

Stephen: But she has still got that from the book. 

Nicola: Yes, yes

Stephen: There is all of that and of course all the places where I get invited to speak about the book. And now the book is 10, 11 years old, I don’t get invited quite as many times as I used to do, but I still do, I go along, take a box of books and I usually come away with none. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: But people hear from me, what its like to have a child with cancer and also what it is like to have You can trust. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: and a God who walks with you because ultimately when Rocky died we were at home. I’d just put him on his mums knee, he looked a bit weak, I sat next to him holding his hand while Pauline has got her arm under him, caring for him and he just simply passed away. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: and we had been given all these horrific ideas of what would happen when he died. And we had got this emergency box off the emergency doctor and we were allowed to open the seal until the doctor had arrived and you know awful things could happen. And he would probably have tumours on his face we were told, which he didn’t have. And there were lots of things that didn’t happen, he just simply died. But I there and then just said aloud, “God my son, my only son!” And there and then in an audible voice God answered me and he said, “It’s ok I know that feeling. “ 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: And that was exactly what I needed to hear. You could say, “Well Stephen that is a bit obvious, you could imagine that because we all know that God lost His son so he would know that feeling.” But there and than as a father I needed to know what my father knew what I was going through because he had gone through the same and so it’s a journey learning to live without someone who is close to you. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: I don’t believe that you should just get over it. 

Nicola: No

Stephen: We have a way of living without Rocky. We have got a photo of him in our hallway and I think 4 feet tall is this photo and he wasn’t 4 feet tall when he died. It’s bigger than life and it is looking at us.

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: And its just outside the down stairs loo so you can’t even go to the toilet without Rocky looking at you. We have Rocky as part of our lives every day. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: But we are not.. I don’t blame God. I don’t blame anyone. I don’t think God was trying to teach me anything. I don’t think God was trying to punish me. I think it was just the stuff of life. 

Nicola: Yes

Stephen: in Eden we released something that was worse than a nuclear bomb and the fall out from Eden is still being washed up on the shores of my life today. And we are all facing stuff, stuff coming in on the tides and some of it is not very nice to deal with but in all of it if we know that God is good ad he didn’t have it in his heart to hurt us. Then it is really revolutionary in our thoughts, in our thought process and it helps us appreciate God more. It helps us to worship. It helps us to know that indeed God is good.

Nicola: He is. He really is. And the book spoke to me through Rocky and it helped me to get a perspective on Jesus, a perspective on life and you do that in the book really well and there is an incident where the man is going mad about his computer files and you take him to task over that and we need to be taken to task sometimes and have perspective on our lives about what is valuable. So that is how is really spoke to me, it put it all into perspective about the jobs you are searching for, the opportunities and all of this. They are all lovely but the whole.. we have got each other and we have got the agape of God in our lives so that… that really sums that up. And there was a question I was going to sneak in and I did forget. How do you feel about prayer; the importance of prayer?

Stephen: I think prayer is the Christians’ vital breath which is the title of a book written by a man called Powell, who influenced me when I was growing up but it is a Christian’s vital breath. It is just the ability to talk to God that matters. I have just had a book come in the mail this morning by comedian Frank Skinner called the comedians prayer book and I have only got about 10 pages into it but I’m quite impressed that this guy does apparently talk to God and he feels comforted and helped along the way but for Christians, I think it is important. It is vital that we are telling God all the time how we feel. Sometimes like David and other psalmists that will eb a lament and there is nothing wrong with lament. God understands how we feel, he understands how we are wired and Jesus has been there, he has got that Teeshirt so when we are lamenting to God that is a very valid expression of our hearts. But I think what is important that we don’t stay there. The bible talks about the valley of Baca which is a valley of tears and it says when you are travelling through the valley of Baca. Of course the inference there is, you don’t go to the valley of Baca and build a bungalow. 

Nicola: No

Stephen: You don’t live there. It is something you travel through. And sometimes tears come back to you after a long while. A great friend of mine, a great mentor unfortunately died about 5 years ago, Graham Bell. He caught me once. I was about to speak at the One Event at Lincoln about Rocky and my experience with all of this and he caught me coming out of the gents and just wiping my eye. And he says, “I’ve got ya, I now know how you do it.” He says, “I’ve heard you speak on this subject a couple of times and I’ve sat down and thought, how does Stephen keep composure through this? He is sharing things that are heart breaking and he catches the emotion of the crowd. How does he do this?” But he says, “Now I know, you go in the gents before you speak and have a go cry.” Which of course was the secret. You know I am not an emotionless person, I still sometimes cry. Sometimes, either Pauline or I will have a dream about Rocky and either one or the other will wake up crying, and the other one will comfort the other one and this happened only the week before last. And this is a reality for us after so many years it still hurts but God is still the giver of love, God is still the one who embraces, God is still the one who cares and this influences my pastoral style, the church. You know, we want people to understand that God loves them, and that will continue to be something that is vital in my ministry. 

Nicola: Thank you Stephen. That has been an excellent interview. I really appreciate you talking to us this morning. Thank you so much. Goodbye. 

Stephen: Good bye thanks Nicola

Nicola: Thank you for listening to the Cold Water Podcast. Please remember to subscribe and join next week.