Where Are They Now?
Pictured: Toby, Rachel & daughter Hazel
Where Are They Now? Toby Knights
Toby Knights’ ministry position is a little different from most youth ministers. He and his wife Rachel job-share at St Barnabas Broadway (Barneys) pastoring kids, youth, and families. They saw an opportunity to serve the Lord and use their complementary gifts in a church that they love.
Toby came to Youthworks College in 2013 because, in his words, “I realised I had picked the wrong uni course and I was really motivated to do some study of the Bible.” This motivation had come from his experience of youth ministry in Armidale. Toby’s youth minister had taken the group away every year and each young person took a different book of the Bible to read and study. “At the end of the camp, we met in a café in Bellingen, and explained to the rest of the group the key meaning of the book.” These camps made Toby realise, “I needed more Bible to be a helpful parishioner and to be able to preach, especially I we had chosen I wanted to move back to the country.”
After college, Toby did not take up a ministry position because he wanted to stay at Barneys. Instead, he worked for a media and design company Open Box Technology that supports churches and ministry. In Toby’s mind, “It wasn’t a vote against ministry, but for the team and church at Barneys.”
When the position of kids, youth and families minister came up at Barneys in 2018, Toby and Rach were interested in job-sharing. Toby remembers, “We applied together and interviewed together.” They were successful applicants and now both work for the church part-time. They also juggle work in their fields, Toby works in design and Rachel in speech pathology. This year baby Hazel joined their family too.
There are great advantages in having Rachel and Toby on the staff team. Toby believes that, “It helps stop the kids, youth and families ministry from being siloed. We think about strategy across all the ages, and we think a lot about transitions from one stage to another.” Together they do a lot of the production of Bible studies, booklets, talks, and communications to parents. This brings out their different gifts, Toby says, “Rach is better at administration than me and I am better at editing and design.”
Before they started working together, they asked themselves “Will this be ok for our marriage?” Toby thinks that it wouldn’t work for every couple, but there were two things that indicated that it could work, “We knew we could do ministry together; we had run many Bible studies.” The second reason was, “there was an ease of relationship and conflict resolution in our marriage.” This means that they can spend a lot of time together yet respect each other’s boundaries, “We are used to sitting on the couch together with our laptops, each doing different stuff.”
Although Toby and Rach have loved job-sharing, there are of course challenges. One of them is logistical, they both need to be at staff meetings and retreats, and this eats into the ministry hours available. The second is that they need to be more intentional in including others in the ministry. Toby says, “We have to be careful to not chat in the car on the way home and leave our leaders out of the debrief.” Toby and Rach have also worked on the boundary of “no work at home”. For the work conversations that need to happen, they schedule these into their diaries.
One of the reasons that job-sharing has been possible is because Barneys puts a high value on care of their ministry team. Toby explains, “We are often asked how we are going and if one of us turns up to church on our day off we will be asked, ‘why are you here?’”. They are encouraged to keep healthy boundaries.
What does the future hold for Toby? It was working at Barneys that brought Toby and Rach into ministry, rather than a general call to vocational ministry. Toby loves his secular work and sees the value of working in God’s world, but lately he has also been challenged to think about the option of ordination. As Toby thinks about the future, the parable of the talents has been important to him, “God wants me to use those gifts that he has given me. He also appreciates creativity and design. It doesn’t matter whether it is paid ministry or working in God’s world. We will trust in him wherever he places us.”
Prayers
- Toby and Rach need to rebuild their leadership teams. Pray that God would find the right people who can understand the Barneys culture yet challenge it when needed.
- Barneys is changing their structure of small groups. Please pray for Toby and Rachel as they look after the families in this transition.
- Please pray for Hazel that she would have a ‘boring testimony’ of knowing Jesus all her life.