By the village pond

Crossing the Line - part 20

Haddenham is a village in Buckinghamshire with a quintessentially English village green.

The ancient parish church with its lych-gate, the duck pond with its distinctive white Aylesbury Ducks and the cottages which line the green, make it an idyllic scene.

By the 1980’s the population had grown well beyond just a farming community, attracting commuters with new housing and direct trains into London Marylebone.  The parish church was thriving with a large congregation, a gentle kind of charismatic renewal and a lively youth ministry.

The quaint, Victorian village school was now the church hall and next to it, on the village green, was the Old School House.

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As the end of my time at University approached, I started to find myself worrying about what I was going to do next.  My housemates were all kick-starting their careers, while I was trying to find something useful to do for a couple of years before starting theological college.

I wasn’t short of ideas but my dreams kept getting dashed by reality.

I wanted to spend some time overseas.  I had met someone who had spent time delivering aid with the UN in Ethiopia.  That sounded like a life changing experience, so I started investigating how I could do this.  Unfortunately, the civil war in the region was getting worse and the UN was starting to pull staff and volunteers out, so that came to nothing.

Driving HGV lorries across Europe was something I also liked the idea of but found that it was impossible.  Haulage companies didn’t take under 25’s because of the high cost of insurance.

Perhaps I could be an air courier?  Flying all over the world delivering letters and parcels seemed exciting so I wrote to several companies, only to be told that at the age of 22, I was too old!

It wasn’t long before all of my friends seemed to have something sorted, except me.  I started to have words with God.  “OK – if my ideas won’t work, what do you want me to do?”

About a week before my final exams the phone rang. 

It was Lawrence Hoyle – a Church of England priest who ran a group called Anglican Renewal Ministries (ARM).  Lawrence had founded the ministry to promote Charismatic Renewal in the Church of England and we had first met when ARM came to lead a weekend conference in my dad’s church in Bolton.  I had helped to lead the worship for the weekend with others from the youth group.  At the end he invited me to spend a summer working at Lamplugh House, a small conference centre which he and his wife Margaret had set up in the beautifully named village of Thwing in East Yorkshire.

I spent a happy summer there, helping out around the house, designing publicity, and leading worship for the groups who came.

Now he was on the phone with a new job offer.  Anglican Renewal Ministries was moving its offices to Haddenham in Buckinghamshire.  Lawrence was looking for an assistant to support him in their office work, conference ministry and parish weekends.  He also said that the local church in Haddenham was looking for a part-time Youth Worker in return for providing accommodation in The Old School House on the idyllic village green by the duck pond.

Initially, I was hesitant.  I had wanted to travel and see the world or else, I wanted a down to earth secular job before theological college like my father had done.  Now I was being offered a church job, just 15 miles down the road! 

As I reflected though, I began to realise that I was being more than a bit churlish.  After asking God to show me what he did want me to do, I was being offered a job which would take me around the country helping to organise Charismatic Christian conferences while living in a beautiful village!  What on earth was I moaning about?

I accepted the job and got ready to move to Haddenham in the summer.

As the time approached however, I began to realise that it would have been a good idea to get more information first.  Everything with Anglican Renewal Ministries was fine, but the church youth work was turning out to be a real hornets’ nest.

First, I was told that the old Youth Worker had lost his faith before he left.  Then I was told that he had also left his wife and children.  Then a few days before I was due to move in, I was told that I couldn’t, because his wife and teenage children were still living in the Youth Worker’s house – the house I had been promised.  

When I asked a few more questions, I discovered that the church was in the process of evicting them so that I could move in, and that the two teenagers were leading members of the CYFA group I was there to lead.  Things were going from bad to worse.

Instead of moving into the Old School House, I found myself being put up by Lawrence and Margaret in their spare room with a pull-out bed above the office.

And it didn’t stop there.  As if the CYFA group didn’t have enough reasons to hate me already, I then discovered that the old Youth Worker had been accused of having an affair with a member of the church before he left – someone who I had to work with in another area of church life.  Whether this was true of not, I never really knew, but the suspicion was enough to evoke all kinds of feelings of anger and betrayal in the CYFA group.

While there were several aspects to the youth work, the most significant was the CYFA group for teenagers.  They were a good group of young people, but the experience of losing their old Youth Worker – and for two of them, seeing their parents split up and their dad move away – had left deep pain which could easily develop into scars.  Adolescence can be volatile at the best of times, but adding in the hurt and anger took this to a whole new level.

Within a few weeks of starting I was on the receiving end of both tantrums and tears, which were quite understandable.  I began to see that these teenagers needed someone caring and dependable, but also consistent and firm.  What was needed was a cushioned brick!  Someting they could kick out against, but which would offer love and care to them, whatever they said or did.

It was hard work and as I look back, I am so grateful for one family in the village who offered me care and support in the midst of the early chaos.  Pat and Ron had two kids in the youth ministry.  Their son was in CYFA and their daughter in the younger Pathfinders group.  Pat worked part-time as the vicar’s secretary and I think she saw how I had been ambushed. They regularly had me round for coffee, meals and place to crash.  Without them, life would have been so much harder.

As time went on the old youth workers family found alternative accommodation nearby and I moved into the Old School House.  It was empty and I didn’t have any furniture, so I was dependant on people in the church donating bits of furniture they didn’t need.  The CYFA group helped me move things around and make a home and we started meeting there.  They even helped me in my home-brewing! We did things together and gradually the wounds began to heal.  Smiles and laughter began to replace the frowns and suspicion.

One of the best things we did was a Custard Election to raise money towards a CYFA activity holiday in Devon.  For those who don’t know, a Custard Election is the most corrupt form of democracy ever.  We had four candidates and after church for several weeks, we sold votes for each candidate. People could buy as many votes as they wanted and after an agreed time, the candidate with the most votes would be unceremoniously drenched in custard.

The candidates were John the vicar, a CYFA member who was also a Sunday School Teacher, a retired priest, and me!  Every Sunday we would announce the running total and then encourage people to buy more votes for the person they would most like to see covered in custard.  It was a big financial success.

In a final twist, someone handed us a blank cheque in the final seconds of the election, with the instruction to level up all the votes.  We were all going to get covered in the wet, yellow, sticky stuff!

The following Sunday, the CYFA group arrived at The Old School House very early.  We had gallons of custard to make!  On the old cooker in the kitchen we mixed, stirred, and poured custard into bucket after bucket.   Then after the morning service, the whole congregation gathered on the village green for the spectacle.  It was wonderful mayhem and despite the mess, the cold, and the stickiness, it brought us all together.

There were other good moments there too.  St Mary’s Haddenham was the first church where I rode my motorbike up the central aisle of the church during a family service one Sunday (to illustrate a point in my sermon, of course!)

 It was also where I learned that when preaching, it is better to quit while you are ahead.

I was preaching on the church as the Body of Christ and we had an old overhead projector with a big screen.  I got all the children to join me at the front around this OHP and asked them what I needed to draw a body.  I then drew their answers on the OHP, gradually forming a body on the screen.  It all started well – two legs, arms, a head, eyes, ears, etc – but just when it was complete enough for me to say thank you and move on, I asked one too many questions; “Is there anything else we need?”

There was a young boy who was stood right next to me, and his mouth was right next to the radio-mic clipped to my shirt.  As he opened his mouth, the mic amplified his voice many times over, and his words boomed and echoed around the church; “A willy!”  There was a moment of awkward silence followed by raucous laughter around the church.  This gave me a moment to think, and I quickly drew a belt on the figure on the OHP, saying the only thing which came into my head, “He’s wearing trousers!”  I got away with that one.

As the year came to a close, I reflected on what I had learned.

The first thing was starkly obvious – don’t do that again!  Don’t underestimate the problems which may lie under the surface of an idyllic, picturesque village or a successful church.  Always look carefully and ask lots of questions before saying yes.  It would be lovely to think that all posts in church ministry are honestly and accurately described by parishes, archdeacons and bishops.  Unfortunately, that is very rare in my experience.

When advertising to fill a vacancy, churches are just as prone to give into the temptation to ‘spin’ their story as politicians making a speech, or estate agents describing a bijou property.  Accentuate the positives and play down the problems – worse still, don’t mention them at all.

This is particularly true when looking for a new vicar.  I have nothing against open recruitment but by its very nature it is competitive.  Each parish tries to write a more attractive profile than competing parishes, and applicants try to present themselves as better than the other candidates. It is much better to have an open and honest appraisal of both the parish and the clergy than to shadow-box around facades. Having found out what lies beneath, God may still be calling a particular person to a particular parish, but at least everyone commits with open eyes.

The second lesson is not to give up on people who are hurting and angry.  Patient, persistent love can change situations, even lives.  It won’t always work, but that is ultimately up to them.  The CYFA group in Haddenham put aside their anger and found a new joy.  Not everyone will be so open, but Jesus brought together a group of diverse men and women with lots of reasons to be dysfunctional and angry with each other. Through his patient love, all except one found a better way of living.

Haddenham’s final lesson for me was much more recent – just a couple of years ago in fact.  I was visiting the headquarters of CMS (the Church Mission Society) in Oxford to find out more about their work.  During the day I was introduced to a woman who suddenly went into a kind of quiet shock before saying, “You’re Benny Hazlehurst?!”  She then went on to tell me about one Sunday morning when I had gathered the children round me in the service at Haddenham.  I was playing my guitar and leading a song, and that was the moment when, as a young child in that group, she decided that she wanted to be a youth worker.  Now, having been a youth worker for many years, she recalled that moment and it brought me such a blessing.  I had no idea that I had inspired someone in Haddenham towards ministry until that moment, many years later.

The lesson?  Never underestimate what God can do through you, even in the difficult times, and even when you may never know.

Next week – Anglican Renewal Ministries…

Click ere for part 21 - Charismatics, Conferences and Characters

Click here for an introduction to Crossing the Line

First steps

Crossing the Line - part 13

It’s all very well hearing the call – but what do you do then?  Especially when you are 16 years old and still at school.

There was a lunch-time Christian group at school, but I had steered clear of it until now.  For a start, it didn’t have a very inspiring name.  Most schools and colleges had Christian Unions or Fellowships – we had the Christian Education Movement.  Usually this was abbreviated to CEM which was even less appealing.  It seemed like a name designed to put people off giving up their lunchtime.  It was certainly sterile enough for the secular agenda of the school.  It was safe.

In fact, I was only just old enough to go. 

My school was divided into a Boys Division and a Girls Division.  The two operated as two separate schools, a mirror image of each other in gender, ethos and architecture.  The buildings spread out along Chorley New Road in almost perfect symmetry, either side of a central arch.  On the right were the boys, on the left were the girls, with everything designed to ensure that the two should not meet.  Separate play grounds and sports fields, separate bus stops and separate Great Halls for assemblies, staring at each other across this central no-man’s land.  The Boys Division didn’t want the distraction of girls interrupting the finely tuned exam factory.  The Girls Division didn’t want those annoying boys getting in the way of producing ambitious young ladies.  When I started going out with Lesley from the Girls Division, it was mentioned at her next parents evening as something undesirable for a young lady studying hard.  There was almost no opportunity before 6^th Form for boys and girls to meet together yet somehow we had circumvented this prohibition by living in the same village.

Girls Division on the left - Boys on the right

In spite of this division, the Christian Education Movement was a mixed society of both boys and girls, so no-one below the age of 16 was allowed to go.  I had turned 16 a couple of months before my ‘Gotcha’ moment but trying out CEM was something I was still keen to avoid.

I think it was Lesley who got me there one Thursday lunchtime.  She had a close friend who went, and one day she suggested that I should go - and that she would go too.  The CEM met in the Tower Room just above the central arch which divided the schools.  It was the only room in the entire school which had doors that led directly to both the Boys and Girls Divisions.  It felt a little like entering a diplomatic neutral zone – a gendered DMZ between two opposing worlds.

When I got there, about 8 people were holding a Bible study and I saw a group of dispirited boys and girls with heads down listening to someone holding forth about his own views to the exclusion of everyone else.  It was just as I had feared.  On the way there, I had decided not to say anything at the meeting, keep a low profile and drift away at the end; but listening to this monologue dominating the proceedings and getting more and more aggressive, awakened something in me.  I tried to keep quiet, but the more I saw how everyone else had been cowed into submission, the less I was able to remain quiet.  Eventually I snapped.  I opened my mouth and out came something like, “Oh come off it!”  I can’t remember if those were my exact words, but they certainly express the sentiment of what I said.  Everyone looked up in shock. 

At the end of the meeting, the leader announced that they needed to elect a new member to the committee which organised CEM.  Before I knew what wat happening, and without offering, I had been elected.   “So much for keeping a low profile” summed up my thoughts as I went to afternoon classes.

Over the months which followed, we changed the whole feel of CEM.  Argumentative debates went out.  In came more prayer, music and fellowship.   Before I knew it, I was leading the committee, and we were booking more local ministers and preachers as visiting speakers.

Over the two years which followed, more and more people came.  We went from single figures to forty or fifty people on a good day with an exciting speaker or worship leader.  We got permission to start an early-morning prayer meeting each week, with about a dozen of us gathering at 8:15am to pray together for half an hour before school started. 

Who was the only one wearing sunglasses
for the school photo?

When churches in Bolton came together to organise a town-wide mission, I got permission to bring a Christian rock band into the Boys Division for a lunchtime concert in the theatre.  We could have filled the theatre twice over with those trying to get in, and I was invited by the headmaster to speak at the whole school assembly about the mission.  I told the story of meeting a drug addict at the mission meeting in the Town Hall the night before, and how he wanted to change, but didn’t think he could.  Perhaps we are all like that before God, I suggested to 800 of my peers.

It would be wrong of course, to suppose that this was all my doing.  We worked as a team.  God brought people to us.  Then they introduced their friends, and before we knew it, it was unusual to have less than 20 teenagers meeting together in this very secular school.  We met for prayer and reading the Bible together, for worship and for fellowship.

Alongside this, my father had changed parishes, and we had moved from the village at Blackrod into Bolton, close to the school.  There was no youth club or fellowship at the church, and before long I invited the handful of other teenagers to my room in the Vicarage for a kind of Youth Fellowship.  I had no idea what I was doing or supposed to do, but saw the need.  We prayed and read the Bible together and for many months it stayed at about 6 of us, (some under pressure from their parents) and nothing seemed to be happening.

Then I sensed God prompting me to talk about being Baptised in the Holy Spirit, sharing my story and how God had changed my life.  It started to strike a chord and others began to come.  Some were from the Christian Education Movement at Bolton School, but more were from other local schools.  David and Catherine from Smithills School came and started to bring others.  David was very gifted on the guitar, and a natural salesman.  Catherine was the quiet and highly practical person that every group needs to flourish.  Then Neil came and introduced us to 100% Proof – not a whisky but a Christian Heavy Rock Band with a sound like AC/DC!  We started taking other people to their concerts around Manchester and as they shared their Christian faith without compromise, others saw that you could be a Christian without being a wimp! There were others too like Janet, Tim, Robin and Douglas – too many to mention.  We all grew in faith and learned to encourage others in theirs.

100% Proof in Concert

In time,  St Margaret’s Youth Group grew out of my room into the Vicarage dining Room.  Then it out-grew the dining room and took over the living room.  When finally we could not squeeze anyone else into the Vicarage, it had to move to the new Church Hall and continued to grow, with David leading after I left home for a gap year before university.

St Margaret’s Church was in a fairly ordinary part of Bolton surrounded by traditional streets of terraced housing and the old cotton mills for which Lancashire was once famous, now empty and silent.  The church had a problem with vandalism.  It had huge windows at the back made up of thousands of squares of glass held together in a lead lattice.  One of the jobs over the weekend was to sweep up the broken glass from the stones which had been thrown to break them.  One weekend my dad counted over 100 broken panes of glass in the church.  It was just too tempting for kids with nothing to do.

So what could we do about it?  That was the question.  The Youth Group started to organise “St Maggie’s Discos” for teenagers, in the Church Hall (it was the end of the 70’s when discos were still cool).  At the first one, about 50 turned up.  By the 3^rd or 4^th, we were turning people away because we had already filled the hall with around 300 young people.

The discos were never problem free and we couldn’t have done it without the stalwart support of some of the men in the church who controlled the door and provided back-up if anything started to get out of hand.  One night when we were preparing for a disco, a phone-call came from the police.  They had received a tip-off saying that a knife fight was being planned between two local gangs, at our disco.  Cancelling was not an option.  The idea of having 300+ young people in the street outside the church with nowhere to go was not a good plan.  When they were inside, we could ensure there was no alcohol, but outside, they would have been knocking back the Tenants Extra or Strongbow unabated.

We decided to go ahead, with two plain clothed CID officers in the Church Hall and 2 police riot vans parked up a couple of streets away.  Soon after the disco started, David and I found out which gangs were planning to fight, and got their leaders together.  We said to them, “If you do this, this will be the last St Maggie’s Disco ever.  Everyone will suffer.”  To our amazement, they gave us their word that there would be no fighting at the disco that night.  We learned later that they adjourned to a local park after the disco to settle their scores after the disco had finished, but they respected what we were offering to teenagers with nothing to do, and they didn’t want to be the ones who put an end to it.

Alongside this, the vandalism on the church dropped to zero without the church ever having to get anyone arrested or charged or taken to court.

Some of St Margaret's Youth Group on a Good Friday Walk

We also found that some of the disaffected young people who came to the discos also started to come to church and the Youth Group.  Side by side, posh pupils from Bolton School and teenagers with drink problems and criminal records were praying and worshipping together.  We even had one teenage girl whose Saturday job was as a prostitute until she gave her life to Christ in the Youth Group.

Reflecting on those first steps in ministry, I am amazed by two things.

First was the trust which was placed in us by my dad and our local church.  We were left to run the Youth Group ourselves without interference.  We planned the worship, led the Bible studies, wrote the talks, prayed and ministered to each other and those in need.  We saw God heal broken hearts and soften hardened hearts as we prayed, without the need to call a grown-up in to do the 'important stuff'.  While recognising the need for good safeguarding in youth work, I wonder if we now tend to professionalise it too much, rather than letting young people reach young people.

Second is how God honoured everything that we did.  As I look back to that time, I can’t believe how much I crammed in.  I was doing my A-levels, working a part time job, was in a 3-year committed relationship with my girlfriend and leading a youth ministry the size of most churches.  By rights, it should have all collapsed in a heap at some point, and yet it didn’t.  I even finished my A-levels with four grade A’s – something I couldn’t have even imagined a few years earlier.  God honoured the commitment which had been required of me and I was not alone.  The other leaders all went on to college and university. 

Neil, Benny and Tim drawing attention
to themselves at Greenbelt

I guess both of these things come back to trust.  Trust in the God who calls us, and trust in one another.  I wonder how much we miss out on because of our reluctance to do either.  I remember an former bishop of Southwark Cathedral advising his clergy to experiment; to see what would work and what wouldn’t in their parishes.  Experiment, experiment and then experiment some more.  He recognised that some of these experiments would go wrong but then we pick ourselves up and learn from them.  The other option is always playing it safe, repeating the things which have worked in the past until they finally bury themselves.  For young people in particular, this is simply not an option in a fast changing society.

Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of being in touch with a good number of people from St Maggie’s Youth Group, and I am constantly delighted and amazed by the way so many have carried on with their Christian faith.  Some are even worship leaders, pastors and vicars.  All through the trust which was placed in us by the church in our teenage years. 

It is perhaps worth remembering that the greatest calling of all time was entrusted to a teenage girl in a village in the middle of nowhere.  Perhaps the church should be looking for more teenagers to invest with trust?

Click here for part 14 - Moving on

Click here for an introduction to 'Crossing the Line'