I have never looked at this story from the father’s point of view and so it was intriguing to do so. On retreat Roy drew attention to three characteristics of the father that struck us in particular; his generosity, his grieving and his forgiveness.

The father was very generous and gave away his inheritance. He was so generous that he gave away everything he worked for. In that giving everything away, he had to become dependent on others. That is an incredible selfless generosity. In addition to this, he knew his son; so I wonder if he had a good idea was what going to happen next. He was probably aware of his son’s weaknesses and the probable sequence of events. Could that be why he was watching – a good mixture of hope but with a kind of certainty that it would be when and not if. This makes the generosity of even more outstanding and generous.

The father has obviously been grieving. He uses the language of death – he was lost but now is found, he was dead but now he is alive! The father has been struggling without him. Everything within him has been yearning to see his son just once again. The pain has been so intense that he has been on virtual constant look out.

When he sees his son in he distance he runs towards him. My boss and good friend, Richard Bromley, used to work in the Middle East and tells me that running is a big no no and very degrading. He actually saw someone run over and killed by a car because they would not run across the road! But ere we see the father hitching up his skirts and racing out to see his son. He does not give a toss what other people think. All that is important to him is that his son is back home where he should be.

The father does not even want an explanation. Here we see forgiveness in its purest sense. No explanation needed and instant restoration with the ring, the robe and the party to his former place in the part … as if nothing had happened!

Obviously this is an image of God and talks to me of the perfect forgiveness and restoration that I receive from God on a daily basis. But I do also think there is more here (and without creeping I need to thank Roy Crowne, national director of YFC, for presenting these thoughts and starting the thinking process).

Roy challenged us with the thought that at some stage we must all move from the older brother and son characters and display the characteristics of the father in our lives and within our ministries. He then challenged us further to go away and think what this could mean to us personally.

That was hard. When I considered the question for myself; how could I become ‘fatherly’ in my ministry there seemed to be one over-riding answer. I need to give away everything that I have worked hard to achieve. I need to give away to such an extent that I become dependent again on others.

I actually think that in ‘ministry’ we are not very good at giving away, and we should be. As leaders or workers of any kind we should be looking to ‘give away’ by handing bits of the work onto others and supporting them. This story seems to suggest that we should do that in a risky way which could result in everything going down the toilet. If I am honest – I could not go that far. I like risks, but I do not know if I could pass stuff on to people that I know will fail. There is a bit of an issue and conflict there.

I do believe though, that this country is in the spiritual mess it is, and we are not seeing the progress we would all wish, is partly due to a lack of fathers in the ministry. It seems there are a number who are precious about their ministries and about protecting them. Jesus did not leave that as an example so where on earth did it come from? There needs to be a generous and giving side to our ministry. Too often, though, we guard our work and feel others should learn the hard lessons that we had to learn. We had a hard time and so should they! It would make far more sense to help others over those hurdles – then maybe we would see people going further than we have been able to.

Recently The Tribe have announced they are stopping their performance work and will be starting up a new initiative:

Masters of re-invention The Tribe (formerly The World Wide Message Tribe) feel that another new line up is not the way forward this time. Instead The Tribe will be putting all their energies into a passing on their creative and evangelistic DNA to the next generation through a brand new training initiative called Genetik to be launched next year. They will be looking to release dozens more gifted young evangelists into music ministry plus develop cutting edge evangelistic and discipleship resources.

I have not always been a fan of the Tribe, but this is a real example to everyone that is in ministry. At the time when they are probably the most popular Christian Band in the country and could continue themselves to perform, be involved in mission and sell more CD’s and t-shirts with a certain knowledge that they will be over-booked and sold out …. at a time when they are there at the top …. they decide to stop so that they can give away everything they have learned, everything they have worked for and everything that currently gives them their identity.

What will the result be … possibly a number of Tribes rather than one. Well actually, no, it won’t. But it will be a number of appropriate incarnational creative evangelistic initiatives which are just waiting to be teased out.

As I said this is an amazing example to the rest of us. This is a purely biblical principle too, for we follow a faith which believes that through death new life occurs. We live in a world which is sustained by a process where we see seeds die to give new life.

As those involved in any form of ministry for the Kingdom – we need to be looking at how we can bring others in, how we can expand the work for Jesus by fathering others into their roles. AS we become less they will become more. If each ‘minister’ (and I use the term loosely) released or fathered one other person the number involved in mission would double.

My prayer is that we would wake up to this and stop protecting that which we have worked hard for so that we can see this nation transformed.

I know I am biased but I happen to think that within YFC that is something that we are quite good at doing. We enable and encourage young people each year to get involved in mission and increasingly see ourselves as a resource for that to happen.

I long to see all people, but particularly young people, released into mission so that we can see people lives being transformed.