My Story Talk 17 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 2
Welcome to Talk 17 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I was talking about the evangelistic missions we organised in Basingstoke, but these tended largely to attract adults, and the children and young people needed to be reached too. So that's our subject for today.
Children’s Work
At first, the only children we were reaching were those who came to our Sunday School, which was held at 10am before the 11am Communion Service. One of those children was Rosie Wilcox (née Wright), who later became Jonathan’s Sunday School teacher. Fifty years later, I still exchange Christmas cards every year with Rosie and her husband Paul.
However, we soon began to reach other children in what was then a more unusual way. To the best of my knowledge, we were the first AoG church in Britain to organise a pre-school playgroup. I had felt for some time that most church buildings were not being used to their full potential. I talked with Bill Mitchell, the church elder, who himself was a businessman, and he wholeheartedly agreed. The church building was standing empty in the daytime for six days a week. And we were on the edge of a new council estate where most of the houses were occupied by young families.
So, we checked out the legal requirements, and discovered that our facilities would accommodate up to 40 children, provided that we had one adult for every eight children present. We obviously needed to invest in the right equipment, and Eileen knew exactly what to get. In fact, with her administrative skills, she was the ideal person to take charge of the whole thing, and before Debbie and Sarah were old enough to go to school, they could be with her while she was at playgroup.
We started by opening for three mornings a week, but the demand for places was such that before long we were open for five. And we had adequate workers to take the full complement of forty, so for five mornings a week, as well as supervising and organising the children in their play, they were able to tell them about Jesus. That was, of course, the most important thing, but another welcome benefit was that, from the small charge we made for each child, we were receiving enough income to pay the mortgage on the building!
And an unexpected result of running that playgroup was the request I received to exorcise a ‘ghost’ from one of the nearby houses! It happened like this. It was 12 o’clock and the playgroup session was ending. I happened to be present having a chat with Bill Mitchell, when one of the mums came in and said,
Is one of you the vicar?
And although I don’t usually go by that title, I said, Yes, I am.
She then asked if I could help her because, she said, there was a ghost in her house. Could I get rid of it? To which, knowing that in Christ we have authority over the forces of darkness, I replied,
Yes, of course.
How much will it cost? she said.
Nothing, I replied.
Wow! That’s good, she said, the spiritualist wanted a fiver.
She gave me her address and, that evening, I went with another brother to visit her. We told her that her greatest security would be to let Jesus into her life and led her in a prayer for salvation.
Of course, the so-called ‘ghost’ was actually a demon, because there is no biblical evidence for the existence of what people call ghosts, but the woman did not know that. She said that it usually appeared at the top of the stairs. So I went up after it and, although I could see nothing unusual, I did feel a distinct drop in temperature. So I commanded the thing, whatever it was, to leave in the name of Jesus. At once the woman, who was standing in the hall with the other brother, suddenly shrieked.
There, didn’t you see it? It went right past you!
So, although I couldn’t see it, I chased it down the stairs, opened the front door, and told it to get out and never come back. The following Sunday she was in church to say thank you and told me that it had gone.
So running a playgroup certainly put us in contact with the people in ways we did not expect, but in Britain’s fastest growing town the playgroup and the Sunday School we ran in our church building were by no means sufficient to spread the good news among the children, and we soon decided to launch a second Sunday School in a school on the Oakridge estate. This was only possible thanks to the commitment of our teachers who, having taught in the morning in Cranbourne Lane, were willing to give up their Sunday afternoon to teach the same lessons to the children in Oakridge.
Another children’s work was started by Hilda Gibbons, an elderly widow who opened her home every week to some thirty children on the Winklebury estate. And we reached hundreds of children through the holiday clubs we organised. These lasted for a week or so towards the end of the long summer holidays. They were led mainly by Anthea and William Kay assisted by other church workers, SPF students and other Christian teachers all of whom we accommodated throughout their stay.
Notable examples were David Littlewood, later to become an AoG pastor, and Phyllis Parrish (née Sowter) who was baptised in the Spirit while she was with us and later became a student at Mattersey and a missionary to Bangaladesh.
Youth Work
Some of the older children who came to the holiday clubs were also attracted to our Friday night Youth Meeting. This was our main means of reaching young people on a regular basis and, for most of the time we were at Basingstoke, was led by me. Our church was situated right next to Cranbourne Lane Comprehensive School, where Debbie and Sarah became pupils and I became a parent governor. We also attracted young people from other parts of the town where some of our members were teachers.
The church minibus, faithfully driven by William Kay, was vitally important for this work, although it wasn’t worth much financially. At the time we had no suitable garage for it, so it was parked each night in the road at the back of our house. One night, in the early hours of the morning, we were woken up by the sound of our dog barking and then I realised that someone was banging heavily on our back door. As I went to the window I became quickly aware of another noise – the constant sound of a car horn. It was our minibus, and the neighbour banging on the back door had come to ask us to silence it.
I quickly threw on some clothes and hurried outside to see what I could do. To my surprise the driver’s door of the minibus was wide open. I wondered why, as I was sure I had locked it the night before. But my first task was to silence the horn, so I quickly disconnected the battery. Now the horn was silent I could go back to bed, hoping that not too many neighbours had been disturbed.
Next morning, as I was apologising for the noise in the night, another neighbour told us they had seen what had happened. Two men had broken into our minibus, but the moment they opened the door the horn had suddenly started sounding. This apparently had caused the men to panic, and our neighbour had seen them running away. Their attempt to steal our minibus had been thwarted!
Of course, it may be possible to think of a rational explanation for all this, but it’s important to mention that the horn on the minibus would not normally sound unless the ignition was switched on, and there was no form of burglar alarm fitted to the minibus. But whether there’s a rational explanation or not, as far as I was concerned God had protected our vehicle. He works in natural as well as in supernatural ways, and we will probably never know why that horn sounded just at the right moment – except that God knew that we needed that minibus!
In addition to the weekly youth meeting, we also organised at least two week-long missions, one where Warwick Shenton was the evangelist, and another led by Paul and Janice Finn who were the national youth evangelists for Assemblies of God. We were able to get them into several of the secondary schools in the town where they spoke in school assemblies. This way we knew that the vast majority of teenagers in Basingstoke had the opportunity to hear the gospel.
But it was at the regular weekly youth meeting and its associated activities that close personal relationships could be formed with the young people. We organised walks in the countryside, barbecues, and games evenings where we had great opportunities to get to know them better – and for them to get to know us better too. And nowhere was this truer than at our annual youth camp.
New Forest Pentecostal Youth Camp
While we were at Colchester I had organised a youth camp on the island of Mersea and, thanks to Eileen’s culinary skills and to the things I had learned as a teenager in the Boys’ Brigade, this proved highly successful. So towards the beginning of our time in Basingstoke I made enquiries as to what sites might be available for us to do something similar near us, and I discovered that the Hampshire Education Committee had one near Brockenhurst in the New Forest. It was set in beautiful countryside, was within a short driving distance from the coast, and had the advantage of flush toilets and showers!
All the equipment – tents, marquees, tables, benches, cooking utensils etc. – was provided on site, which was managed by a very helpful warden, a Welshman called Eddie Davies. So we decided to give it a go and, as an initial experiment, took a group of about 15 young people for a few days in the school summer holidays. It went so well that we decided to return the following year for a full week and to invite other AoG churches to participate. I put an advert in Redemption Tidings and over the years the numbers increased to some 150 young people each week.
Eileen and I planned the weekly menu which, although it was somewhat restricted by the cooking equipment provided at the site, nevertheless comprised three hot meals a day, prepared by teams of dedicated workers. The only exception to this was that when we all went out for the day – to the Isle of Wight, for example – everyone prepared their own sandwich lunch straight after breakfast with the food we provided for them.
Much of the food we bought came in large cans obtained from the cash and carry store in Basingstoke and transported down to Brockenhurst in the minibus in advance. The rest we bought on a daily basis from the International store in Brockenhurst who, incidentally, issued vast quantities of Green Shield stamps, which, when you had saved enough of them, you could trade in for a variety of items displayed in the Green Shield catalogue. I seem to remember that Eileen and I got our coffee percolator that way!
The daily programme involved breakfast, during which each of the tents was inspected for tidiness and hygiene, followed by a short devotional involving a song, a prayer, and a Bible reading. The daytime was taken up with recreational activities including at least one day trip to either Hengistbury Head or the Isle of Wight, afternoon trips to Milford-on-Sea, or a treasure hunt in the New Forest. As a family we all enjoyed going down to Brockenhurst a week or so in advance to prepare for this, when we would compose a poem giving clues to the route.
But the most important part of the camp programme was without question the meeting we held in the marquee each evening. These involved worship, prayer, testimonies, and preaching followed by an appeal. Every year we saw dozens of young people respond, either for salvation or for a renewed commitment to Christ. And many were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. I still receive testimonies from people, now in their sixties, of how they met with God in those meetings.
After each meeting there was a break when we opened our tuck shop for half an hour. This was followed by a time of singing in the marquee, or, once a week, around a camp fire. The only exception to this was the long hot summer of 1976 when we were at camp for three weeks and when everywhere was so dry that it was illegal to light fires anywhere in the New Forest. Those weeks spent at camp during the seventies were wonderful times of blessing for all involved and form some of the happiest memories of my life.
But such blessings do not come by accident. They come as the result of prayer, commitment, and teamwork. None of it would have been possible without the dedicated help of Basingstoke church members like Hilda Gibbons, and visiting pastors and their wives who over several years brought their young people to camp and shared in the work and ministry. Of special note among these were Mike and Beryl Godward from Corringham, Brian and Audrey Quar from Crossacres, Manchester, and Colin Blackman from Tonbridge Wells, all of whom became good personal friends.
But these were not the only relationships that were formed or developed at camp. We really got to know our own young people much better too. Some of them came down early to help unload cans of food from the minibus and to assist in the erection of the tents, and I learned that forming relationships with young people, letting them know that you love them rather than just preaching at them, was the way to gain their loyalty and respect. This is essential if we want them to follow our example in following Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).
One example of this was Linda. She, along with her twin sister, Sue, had become regular attenders at our Friday night youth meeting. On one occasion we were having a sausage-sizzle in the church grounds. Linda was standing next to me looking into the fire when she told me she was thinking of leaving us. So, putting my arm round her shoulder, I said to her, Oh don’t leave us Linda. We all love you. We’d really miss you. Linda didn’t leave us, and her relationship with Eileen and me deepened when she came to babysit for us from time to time. I recently discovered a letter she had written to Eileen in 1974 in which she said,
Entering your home is so different… there's such a lovely atmosphere within it... as soon as I entered the home I felt more confident in myself. Thanks for talking to me, so far since I've spoken to you I’ve felt up on top of the world… I want to say a big thank you, but I don't think I could ever write or say it the way I feel to a friend like you... Thank you for praying for me.
Later, when her leaving college coincided with my becoming principal at Mattersey, Linda became my secretary, only leaving when she married a student from Switzerland, where she now lives.
But in 2012 she made a surprise visit to England when she came to our Golden Wedding anniversary. Of course, Linda was an exceptional case, but her story does illustrate the value of making time to develop relationships with children and young people wherever possible.
