I had a dream

Crossing the Line - part 23

The final piece of the puzzle during that year in London was to find a church to go to.

I moved into my friends’ house in Corbyn Street, Finsbury Park on a Saturday and was looking forward to finding a lively church to join.  I had no idea where this would be, but I did notice an old, rather grubby looking Anglican church in the next street.  Ok I thought, I’ll go there tomorrow and then find somewhere more exciting next Sunday.

Then the strangest thing happened.  That night I had a dream.  I was walking into a church I didn’t know.  As I walked in, I saw that the pews had been taken out of the back half of the church and replaced them with second-hand sofas, easy chairs, carpets and cushions.  There was a small music group practising at the front and a warm welcome from the people I met.   When I woke up, I thought ‘That would be nice but where am I going to find a church like that?’ 

I think you can guess the rest.

When I walked into St Saviours, Handley Road that morning, I found a church with the pews taken out of the back half of the church, replaced with second-hand sofas, easy chairs, carpets and cushions.  There was a small music group practising at the front and a warm welcome from the people I met!  I was absolutely astounded.  Before I knew it, I was invited to lunch after the service and I knew that God was telling me that this was the church he was leading me to.  The congregation was quite small, and the elderly vicar was not the most dynamic person I had ever met, but I started to realise that this was God’s choice for me. 

I met some lovely people there.  There were Simon and Pauline who invited me to lunch that first day; Joy who led the music group; Jeanette who was a journalist and was planning to launch a Christian arts magazine.   Then there was the Vicar, Tony and his wife, but more about them later.

One of my hopes for the year was to find out what it was like to be part of a church without a ready-made role, while juggling the demands of work, friends and faith. 

That might sound a bit pompous but I had never had the chance to be an ordinary church member of a normal church.  As a child I had always been the vicar’s kid.  University churches are hardly ‘normal’ and I was the strange evangelical in an Anglo-Catholic shrine.  Then I had been the Youth Worker in Haddenham.  I always had a label.

Now I had the chance to start afresh where I didn’t know anyone and no-one knew me.  I could choose what I got involved in.  I could join the struggle to establish a balanced work/church/social life without any aspect overbalancing the rest. 

It was easier said than done.  I did join the church music group and a home group but at the same time, I found that dispatch riding was exhausting.   I had to be in bed by 10pm each night during the week because I couldn’t afford to risk being overtired when riding around London all day at speed.  I often didn’t get home from work until around 7pm and it would take me an hour to get cleaned up and/or dried out.  Often I was too tired to go out again.  What is more, if the last job of the day took me to the opposite end of London (or the country) that meant cancelling plans at short notice.  Juggling these competing demands is a good experience for a future vicar, and one worth remembering.  That is how many working people in churches live.

Even with all these limitations, I was made welcome at St Saviours and supported in a way which showed me what a good church should be.  I saw and received lots of acts of kindness and there were things to get involved with, as and when I could. 

The music group which led the singing was fun, if a little chaotic at times and I contributed as and when I was able.

Jeanette asked me if I would like to review a film for her new magazine.  I found myself in a press preview of the film in Soho, hosted in a luxurious cinema studio alongside people who reviewed films for a living!  I had come straight from work and was dressed in my biker gear.  To say I looked out of place would be an understatement, but I wrote the review and it was published in the first edition.  The film (Almost You) wasn’t a blockbuster and was definitely not my kind of film, but the whole experience was fun!

At work, I never shouted about my faith, but I didn’t hide it either. As I got to know the other riders, they got to know me too.  In time they found out that I was going to be a priest.  Their reaction was fascinating.  Each one said they thought it was fantastic but then promised not to tell anyone else out of concern that I would be ridiculed.  Eventually, one of the radio controllers found out, and he thought he would have some fun with this unusual information at my expense.  He called me up on the radio and with a huge sarcastic laugh he announced to over 100 riders that I was going to be a priest.  Thinking he could then milk this and get some more laughs at my expense, he called up the toughest rider he could think of.  “What do you think of that?” he asked.  The riders couldn’t hear the reply because of the way the radio system worked but it silenced the controller.  Later I discovered that he had responded by saying that he already knew and thought it was terrific that we had a man of God out on a bike.  He wished me all the very best.

That night in the pub, I had rider after rider coming over to ask me about my faith and what had made me decide to be a vicar.  It was such a privilege.

Then in church, there was another incredible coincidence.

By the time I arrived in London, I already knew what I wanted to do in a final year out before going to Theological College.  I wanted to go abroad, to live in a different culture and an amazing opportunity came up. 

My life-long friend Chris, had been to Hong Kong and spent some time working with Jackie Pullinger.  Jackie’s work with heroin addicts and the poor was famous all over the Christian world.  She lived in the notorious and lawless Walled City – a diplomatic anomaly governed by neither the British nor the Chinese.  In the vacuum which resulted it was run by the Triads – the Chinese mafia.  Jackie had already lived and worked there for around 20 years, praying addicts off heroine without the usual pain & discomfort and offering prostitutes an alternative to exploitation.  Her book “Chasing the Dragon” was an international best seller and essential reading for all Charismatic Christians.

So when Chris came back and said to me, “You should go Benny!”  I thought he was joking.  How on earth could I go to Hong Kong and work with Jackie Pullinger?

In fact, it turned out to be quite simple.  All I had to do was write a letter to Jackie, tell her a bit about me & about why I wanted to join the ministry, and then wait for a reply.  Much to my amazement, the answer was yes.

And the coincidence?  

Back in St Saviours Church in Handley Road, I discovered that Tony, my vicar had been a missionary in southern China for 30 years before coming to Finsbury Park.  His wife was Chinese and they spoke fluent Cantonese, the dialect spoken in Hong Kong. To top it all, he offered to teach me the basics of Cantonese before I went!

I think the word is God-incidence, not co-incidence. 

For 6 months I would go to the Vicarage, early one morning each week and Tony patiently taught this very slow student the fundamentals of a tonal language where the same word could mean vastly different things if said in the wrong pitch!  He would not accept any payment and while I found it hugely difficult, he patiently helped me prepare for one of the most significant years of my life.

There is one more act of kindness which shines out in my mind. 

In those days I had long hair.  When it was wet and straight it went most of the way down my back. On a motorbike, I gathered it into a pony tail which would flail about wildly below my crash helmet as I sped along.  Keeping it knot free got harder and harder as the year went on.  Before I left to go to Hong Kong, I was concerned that my long hair might raise a few eyebrows in a Chinese culture but I didn’t want to cut it short.  Pauline from church offered to tidy it up for me and I turned up at her home one afternoon for an hour to get it done.

Soon after Pauline started to comb through the mass hair, she made a disturbing discovery. High up in my pony tail was an enormous clump of knotted hair buried deep down near my hairline.  It was about the size of a plumb.  It was in an area I found hard to reach, and slowly over the year, it had grown and grown.  The obvious and easiest thing would be to cut it off, but that would mean having a short back and sides!  So Pauline spent the next four hours painstaking loosening the knot with olive oil one strand at a time.  Her husband Simon produced tea, coffee and food at regular intervals and we chatted about everything and nothing until the knot was no more.  I will always remember that afternoon; the kindness and gentleness they showed me and the smooth tangle free pony tail which resulted.

Reflecting on all this makes me think about what makes a good church.  It’s not the size of the congregation or the reputation of the clergy.  It’s not the quality of the preaching, the music, or the relevance of the services.  More important than all of these things is the love which churches show to those whose paths cross it.  St Saviours did not have all the trappings of a ‘popular’ church when I was there, but it brought together the love of God with the humanity of kindness in a powerful mixture of incarnation – God with us.

This is what real church is.

Alongside the excitement of riding my bike around London that year, I leaned about the beauty of an ordinary church in north London and its amazing people; about the challenge of balancing work, faith and friends in the way most of our church members have to.  In retrospect, I wish I had learned the lessons more deeply, but it was a start and now a new challenge lay ahead.

I didn’t know it, but the year I was about to start in Hong Kong was to be the most significant year of my entire life.  It fundamentally changed my understanding of God and people.  It honed and redirected my sense of ministry and calling for the next 20 years.  Through those changes I would later meet my wife in the most unlikely of places and we would raise a family.

As the plane took of from Heathrow, I was excited and a little nervous, but I had no idea of the extent to which the next nine months would change my life.  Twelve hours later a new world awaited - challenging, invigorating, and beyond my dreams.

God can use all kinds of ways of guiding us to where he wants us to be.  Dreams, visions, prophecies are all part of his tool kit, but sometimes he simply wants us to try.  To see a need or an opportunity and push the door.  It was a dream which took me to St Saviours Church in Finsbury Park, but a simple letter of enquiry which took me to Hong Kong.

I wonder how many things we miss in life because we a waiting for a sign?  There were no heavenly neon arrows which pointed me to Hong Kong, and yet it laid the foundation for my life and ministry for many years to come.

Click here for part 24 - Touch down

Click here for an introduction to Crossing the Line