Revitalisation Revisited: An Interview with Pastor Steve Auld Pt.3

Steve Auld has been serving as the pastor of Great Victoria Street Baptist Church since May 2017. He’s married to Lynsey and has three young kids. Steve and Lynsey served in Madagascar for two years before moving to Chicago, Illinois to study for his Master of Divinity degree. He also earned a Master of Theology from Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Before coming to Great Vic, Steve served as assistant pastor at Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge. Our Managing Editor, Andrew Roycroft, recently spent some time interviewing Steve about his experience of church revitalisation and some biblical principles that have undergirded his work in this area. Steve’s answers are biblical, humble, and eminently practical. In this final part of the interview, Steve reflects on how churches can structure for new growth and what life looks like when the initial work of revitalisation concludes.

What kinds of first steps could be taken to help a congregation without elders (or a clear candidate with potential) move towards plural leadership?

Have you ever seen those ice breaker ships that break the ice and make the way clear for other vessels to sail smoothly behind them? Break the ice in this area of congregational life with your preaching and teaching. You could start with a series on the governance of the local church. Maybe you could preach through one of the pastoral epistles and cover it there.

At Great Vic, I remember doing a more topical mini-series on biblical manhood and womanhood and how it applies in the home and in the church. This led to some specific teaching on elders and deacons. It really clarified what we needed to pray for with respect to finding more elders and deacons and helped our congregation to be better equipped to realise the need and to know what we should be looking for.

Another thing to know clearly is what your church constitution says about how elders and deacons are nominated. It is important to follow these guidelines (as long as they reflect Scriptural instructions) and if they are not helpful or clear you could follow the constitutional guidelines on how to update or amend your constitutional documents. 

What are the signs of life that have followed your work of revitalisation in Great Vic?

I’d say we have experienced a new lease of spiritual life. Truth is not only being understood in the mind but there seems to have been a renewal in the affections of our people. That is clearly a work of God’s Spirit. This affection then finds expression especially in our singing which is so wonderful, we sing loudly and the congregation’s voice is the main instrument. Then we’ve seen a real boom in young adults at the church and they’ve started to settle down, get married in some cases and have children. This has led to a real baby boom, need to start a creche and to find new Sunday school volunteers.

Alongside this we’ve also seen a lovely group of unmarried singles emerge who have used their current season of life so fruitfully for the extension of the kingdom of God. We’ve been doing more evangelism, we’ve seen some encouraging conversions and we’ve seen some believers really mature in the Lord. One really exciting thing is, we’ve also seen new missionaries sent out and supported. Most recently to Portugal and France and another couple preparing to go to the middle east relatively soon.

Steve, anyone who visits Great Vic these days has to be encouraged by what the Lord has done through you and the team of fellow labourers you have around you. Is there a tipping point where as leaders, you have to acknowledge that the initial work of revitalisation is done? Is that an enriching position to reach, or can it also be confusing in terms of the direction of your energies for future work in the same place?

Thanks Andrew. It is important to emphasise that it has been a team of people who have seen this work come about.! Yes there definitely is a tipping point in a successful revitalisation when you must acknowledge that the initial work of revitalisation is complete. It took me a while to realise this until I shared with a ministry friend in my sixth year at Great Vic, that I was feeling a bit listless, and lacked a sense of direction both personally and corporately for Great Vic. My friend just asked, “well what is your vision?” I replied, “It has always been just to revitalise Great Vic.” He said, “Steve if your vision has been to revitalise you now have to say mission accomplished. The question now is do you go to do that somewhere else or do you know figure out what the consolidation and new growth phase looks like to make sure things don’t fall backwards.”

I didn’t think I was ever allowed to say “mission accomplished” in our journey of revitalisation but what my friend said was true and my general vision of revitalisation had expired. I still sensed a strong call from God to remain at Great Vic so at our next elders day away we articulated five new priority areas that we wanted to focus on over the next five years to consolidate our initial work at Great Vic. This includes right now pressing on to complete a new building project!

How does a revitalised church avoid losing the fresh joy of restored vitality as it grows and progresses?

I believe that if the elders keep walking closely with the Lord, have articulated a clear vision for the church, the Word goes forth with a deep dependence on the Spirit and people are learning how to pace themselves in ministry, joy can be sustained. The importance of the whole congregation feeling like they’re being led in a clear direction and are being cared for is of such importance. To help with this, a continual assessment of vision is really important for the elders through things like annual elders meetings, clear updates at church business meetings etc.   

You have already mentioned that Great Vic are currently in the late stages of raising support for a new building. Why does a church building matter in your context, and what are your hopes for the new build?

We just voted this past March 2026 to go ahead towards breaking ground which is very exciting. It is also a bit daunting as we are stepping out in faith with a financial gap and trusting the Lord to provide as we build. A church build in Belfast city centre would be significant for a number of reasons. The old Great Vic building built in the 1860s was in a state of real decline itself and was torn down just over ten years ago now. This means that for the last 11 years, the church has been meeting in a partially renovated hall at the back of our site. We have now outgrown this space and our current building is now limiting rather than facilitating our ministry vision to bring the whole gospel to the whole city of Belfast. This new building will proclaim to a very new and emerging Belfast that the church of Jesus Christ is still here and still holding out the light of Christ. Though the darkness of the troubles tried to extinguish the light of this local church in the city centre, the darkness has not prevailed!

A new building on Great Victoria Street will be a visible witness of the church being alive and well and we trust will become a centre for gospel ministry and evangelism in the city for years to come. It will be another layer of the story of our revitalisation that we trust will be a blessing for many generations to come. The plan is for the new building to have glass frontage and a café area opening right up onto Great Victoria Street. It will have a spacious sanctuary, a multi-use hall and lots of spaces for our growing children and youth work. It will also be fully set up to be accessible to those with special needs as part of our vision for bringing the whole gospel to the whole city. It really is an exciting vision and please do visit our website and get in touch if you would like to learn more.

As we close, I’d like to turn to the hearts of those engaged in revitalisation. How have you maintained your joy in Christ while helping a church to regain gospel traction?

By fighting to enjoy regular and real communion with God. The Lord has been my strength and life source in it all. The most important thing in any ministry is that a pastor walks with God. All ministry vitality and effectiveness flows from here. Alongside that I’ve tried to balance ministry life and family life carefully, I’ve tried to eat and sleep fairly well, and I’ve tried to keep exercising! To use the aeroplane safety briefing language, I’ve tried to put on my own oxygen mask, spiritually speaking, before helping others with theirs.

I know that one of your heroes is Andrew Fuller. How has his life and body of writing informed or encouraged your work in revitalisation?

Fuller was instrumental in the revitalisation of the Particular Baptist cause in England in the second half of the 18^th century. He incisively diagnosed reasons for why churches were in decline in his day and identified a very real problem of spiritual and doctrinal superficiality. He called ministers to prioritise their walk with God, to love their wives and children and to shepherd their flocks faithfully. One of his great maxims was, “eminent spirituality is usually attended with eminent usefulness in a minister.” That is to say, your walk with God is what will make you useful as a pastor. He called for prayer for revitalisation across the Northamptonshire association, he called for a healthy balancing of understanding truth in the mind and a felt response in the heart. He said to a young pastor, “Beware that you do not preach an unfelt gospel.”

Not only did Fuller become a catalyst for renewal in the local churches of his association, he became a real catalyst for world missions! He was instrumental in the founding of the BMS (Baptist Missionary Society) in 1792. This was the society that sent William Carey out as its first missionary. Fuller was the founding secretary of the mission a post he served in until his death in 1815. His steady and faithful work reminds me how much can be accomplished when we seek the Lord of renewal to bring new life and we emphasise the importance of a pastor’s walk with God and not just his gifting or abilities as a leader.

What are the main things you pray for yourself, for your family, and for the work in Great Vic at this stage?

I preach to myself the gospel every day and ask the Lord to help me live in the good of it in every way. I ask God to help me live the day under the blue skies of his grace rather than under the grey skies of low level guilt and condemnation. I pray for the Lord to continue to bless Lynsey with favour and grace and a vibrant spiritual life and walk with God. I pray that God’s kingdom would come more fully into my own, Lynsey’s and my children’s hearts and lives. I pray my kids would grow up to love the Lord, his word, prayer, his church, evangelism and missions.

I pray for wisdom as we go through a very exciting but daunting building project and more generally for wisdom as a pastor. I pray that I would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding; that God would stir my affections for him more and more so that I would not just know and love the truth of God but know and love the God of truth. I pray for my elders and deacons and staff team, and for our members to know God’s favour and blessing and for spiritual growth and maturity. I pray that the Lord would bless his Word with Holy Spirit unction and that we would become everything God wants us to be at Great Vic, a lighthouse shining as a beacon of gospel hope for this needy city of Belfast and beyond.