Tony Cummings and Gavin Drake talked to the children's worker extraordinaire, ISHMAEL.

Such openness as to the ministry of young people is something not found in many churches. I asked Ishmael if the elders felt threatened by the work of the 'young ministers'. "Well, not in ours, you see, 'cos we always believed it right from the word go from years ago. The elders have always believed that we're committed to the family, to kids, to seeing them come on. So it's never been an issue with us. I can understand it with some churches, but with us, it was never an issue. Because we expected it, we elders have children who we've seen move on in things of God, so we expect it from other people's children as well."

The Church's willingness to encourage children to operate spiritual gifts is of course open to pitfalls. I asked what Ish would do if approached by a young person wanting to deliver a word that he detected wasn't from God. Explained Ishmael: "Say 'no' in exactly the same way as to an adult. There are times when I would say to a young person, 'No, it might not be the right time to do such and such,' or, 'Sit on that for a bit.' I wouldn't be more lenient with them than I would with an older person. I would say, 'No, there is a right time and a wrong time,' but I'd never want to restrict them from what they believe God wants them to do. And I always want to encourage them in it. So as far as the kids are concerned, I would treat them just as an adult."

"My vision is that we, as leaders, start seeing the potential of our young people. I'm still convinced that we're coming into the last days and I'm convinced that when the Bible says God is pouring out his Spirit in Joel 'on all flesh' the prophesying and so on, our children are doing that now. I'm convinced we're into very exciting times. I do see that these, the young ones, we're training now are going to see mighty things of God, that we haven't seen. That's why it's so important we take them seriously, so important we train them well, so important, we get alongside them and pass on our vision and pass on our experience and expertise, so important we actually give them opportunities to get out and do things, chances to fail and chances to succeed."

The religious iconoclast is never far from the surface with Ishmael. "I'm not keen working in Sunday Schools. I don't like the words Sunday School, I think it's out of date. You can quote me on this, if the kids don't like Monday School, they are certainly not going to like Sunday School. I can't stand the words Junior Church and you can put that down too. There's only one church and that's all ages. We've got this thing going though with the junior church, and the senior church and the teenage church. We must teach them that we're one body together, not a junior anything."

On baptism Ish is equally outspoken. "I honestly believe that anyone who is not baptised as a Christian is being disobedient. I have to say that. I believe it's vitally important, because Jesus says it. However, if you ask, 'can you be saved and not baptised?' I would say yes. But I would certainly say you definitely want to get baptised, pretty quick. It's like can you be saved and not filled with the Holy Spirit? Yes, but boy, do you miss out if you're not! Do you see what I mean?

Not giving young people the space to minister as God has called them is one of the reasons for all the splinter churches we have in the UK. Ishmael knows of this from personal experience, and now is concerned that young people can feel rejected by churches and eventually break away. "The big fear I have is if they don't feel at home in our church now they certainly won't feel at home in our church in three or four years time. They won't be there. Two things are happening. One is obviously some drift off which is tragic really, 'cos it's not that they don't like the Lord Jesus or they don't like church. All it is is they can't cope with our type of service, they are not able to get involved in it and they're just sitting there. They are not happy just to fill up pews. They want to be actively involved because they believe they've got a calling on their life. The other lot of course look at us and think 'obviously your eldership team is locked up with pastors or locked up with your musicians, you've got it all set out for years ahead. If we want to minister we've got no future here.' So they actually move out. They're going to plant down the road. This is happening. Even the so called house churches, the New Churches, are starting to become the old traditional denominations because the young ones, our life, are getting totally frustrated because we're not using them enough. These young people are going to have their own leaders. There's already one down the road from our church. Young ones just got together and came out. I find that sad. It's an indictment on us if the only way we can cope with new Christians, is to try to make them like us. Church is a family time together and it should be fun, it should be exciting and the young ones should really fit in there and know they've got a future with us. I do see that in many churches unless they change they'll lose their young people and the next generation will be the New, New Church."

Ishmael and his team travel all over Britain (and increasingly in Europe). Interestingly, more and more they are being asked to minister at Church of England churches. "We do a lot of our work now with Anglican churches. In every church you always find there's a pocket of people, whatever the denomination, who really want to go on with God, really Spirit-filled people. Obviously, the stricter the structure the harder it is to break structures. But then we in the New Churches, it doesn't take long till we have our traditions. The point is, we've got to be flexible. There's nothing wrong with tradition so long as it doesn't take over. We've all got our traditions but the minute they become law we're in trouble. The minute we've got to do those every week we're in trouble because we ought to be open to what God is saying. Don't get me wrong, it's good to have a structure, but it's a structure that must be flexible. Children feel secure within a structure. Nobody likes to drift in where nobody knows what's going to happen. But on the other hand there's got to be room for the Holy Spirit to move, and I've got to say with the Church of England I do find that there are so many churches where you wouldn't know they were Church of England, you just go and they could be any church. When we go places and do our Praise Parties, I can't tell which denomination I'm in most of the time. They all just want to go on with God. I find that incredibly exciting. I think gradually denominations are going to go by the way. I just feel that we're going to realise that we might be different in the way we're going to worship or do things. But that's healthy and I expect we'll be great for each other."

The expansion of Ishmael's radical ministry has continued into the 90s. Since the publication of his first book, an autobiography entitled 'History Of Ishmael Part 1', there's been a stream of books and booklets including teaching textbooks for children ('Angels With Dirty Faces'), children's novels ('Children Of A Voice'), song books ('Praise 'n' Glories'), family devotionals ('Ishmael's Once A Week Family Time Book') and even an evangelistic booklet ('Father God I Wonder') of which 100,000 were recently distributed in Romania. He's continued to turn out his unique rock 'n' roll children's praise albums, though when he goes into local churches these days he tries to use local drummers and keyboard players. "We rehearse in the afternoon and play in the evening. It's very good for the locals. In the past I'd turn up with a really tight band but the churches would say 'we can't do that here'. Now it's less concerty. Sure, it's taking a risk using inexperienced musicians. If they're really bad we keep them down in the mix!"

Now an unexpected new development has occurred. Long perceived as having a peculiar English zaniness that wouldn't cross the Atlantic, in the last year he's been to the States three times talking and singing at a conference of 800 youth workers and seeing them bouncing in riotous praise party style just like the Brits. Now Ishmael has just released an album, 'Ishmael USA', with kids from Malcolm Wild's Calvary Chapel church at Merritt Island, California singing along with the gravel-voiced veteran.

"It's been great working in the States. Everything out there targeted at the family is so slick and nice. To see all these youth workers jumping up and down and waving flags and getting down to some rock 'n' roll was great. What I had to say to them about integrating all sections, old people, and young people, into the body of Christ seemed to really hit home. Like, there were people wandering around the conference with T-shirts saying 'We Are The Kids Church'. That's nonsense. There's only one Church and we're all a part of it."