Meet Paul Taylor, CEO of The Willats Trust. We asked Paul some important questions…
1. Marmite – love it or hate it?
Hate it!
2. What’s one value that guides your funding decisions?
What we like to call the ‘Fingerprints of God’ in a grant application story – seeing something happening with people being called or communities being transformed which makes no logical sense whatsoever without God being in it. At some point in the story, someone or some community has put it on the line in such a way that it is going to be awkward unless God shows up! Humanly it makes you scratch your head. Inwardly, you smile because you realise faith has been at work and God responds to faith – and if God is on the move, how do we as a funder get behind that with what is in our hand.
3. What does “impact” look like to you?
Those who are feeling the most hopeless, overlooked and disempowered getting to hear the life-changing hope that is available to them in Jesus. Those who might feel rejected, broken and nobody could possibly love them discovering they are deeply loved and precious to God who has an amazing purpose-filled future waiting for them. Seeing personal and community transformation as God brings broken lives and relationships back into wholeness through a discipleship journey that invites others to experience what they have. Because of the nature of what and where we fund, we aim to sow responsibly with our partners and leave the fruit to God, in his time and in his way. While we like a plan, we hold them loosely and are very open to God disrupting our plans. Stories over statistics.
4. What kind of change are you most passionate about supporting?
Seeing new vibrant expressions of church being planted in the heart of our most deprived estates and communities. We are passionate about the margins of our society experiencing a worshipping community of Jesus-followers who demonstrate the reality of the kingdom of God in their locality and in a context that feels authentic to that community. If that is your heart and God is calling you to a specific place that fits our criteria, come and talk to us!
5. What’s one hope you have for the sector in the next few years?
That as church, funders and individuals, we catch more of God’s heart to not just go to the margins and those on the fringes of our society (which is amazing), but that we would go further and also be physically and relationally proximate and embedded in those communities. Churches, funders and individuals are doing lots already and that is brilliant, but in the short-time I have been in-post, I have been struck by how God seems especially close to the poor and hurting and how ministries relationally embedded in these areas are working with the grain of God’s heart, and it seems a thin place. As society becomes more challenged and seems more dark, I am encouraged that God’s heart to lean in and bring light is even more pronounced. Whenever I have the privilege of visiting these communities, often I find God is already there and just waiting for us to catch up with him.
6. What’s something you’re experimenting with or learning right now?
So much, especially around new expressions of church planting and discipling that usually look a little messy around the edges: multi-generations altogether in one service, non-traditional church buildings (current favourite is church in a pub), less ’stage/pulpit-centric’ and much more learning as community, with new songs/prayers from people in that community declaring God’s truth and promises over that community. We are here to serve those on the frontline, but I love hearing stories of not just people coming to know Jesus and lives being transformed, but also their ongoing transformation and discipleship and them becoming evangelists themselves or growing into church leadership and discipling others. God is on the move in new ways, and it is such a privilege to see him call people whose lived experience enables them to reach communities in ways others simply cannot.
7. What are your key funding priorities at the moment?
Funding new expressions of local church that are proximate and incarnationally embedded in our most deprived communities. That could be helping fund new churches being planted or strengthening those that are already there, always by funding people not buildings. What we especially like is helping fund first generation christians in those churches who have grown up in those communities whom God has called and equipped in leadership or evangelism to take the message of Jesus back into their community in an authentic and culturally relevant way.
