Category Archives: Personal

Van’s RV-9A

Aviation, Personal
This entry is part 23 of 23 in the series Beautiful Destroyers
…and my Bembridge, Isle of Wight, Flying Adventure.

Last time I posted an article in this series was in 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic. The article was about G-VIZZ, the Sportavia/Fournier RS-180 Sportsman aircraft that I and a number of friends owned as a syndicate.

Sadly, we no longer own that aircraft. Since she was the only British-registered example of the aircraft, of which indeed a total of only eighteen! airframes were ever built, she was really expensive to maintain for various reasons, not least of which was the cost of spare parts, her age, and all this as well as our being a captive market to the very few specialist engineers in the country who were actually certified to service her.

And so, we sold her[1]. But, from the figurative ashes of our syndicate arose an even more beautiful flying experience.

Because we decided to build our own aircraft.

Allow me to introduce Alpha-Mike[2], a Van’s RV-9A[3]; a ‘kitplane’ aircraft of a class known as a ‘homebuilt’. The idea is that you get a series of boxes (very much like a giant Airfix kit), and a little tube of glue, and you build yourself an aeroplane in your garage 😉 Of course, it’s not quite like that, but essentially it’s that any halfway-competent engineer, including people who have learned basic car servicing and repairs and whatnot, anyone like that can build an aeroplane for themselves. They are less expensive to buy than an already-assembled plane[4], and you can customise the aircraft to your heart’s content as you build it.

Once it’s built, you then get in a qualified engineer from the UK’s ‘Light Aircraft Association‘ (the LAA), who checks your work for you. And then he gets in the aircraft, complete with his nerves of steel[5], and takes it for its first test flight. Wow, that takes some guts!

On an ongoing basis, then, we now do all our own servicing and repairs, and we have Alpha-Mike’s ‘Permit to Fly’ reissued (after an engineer inspection) once per year. Think of the Permit to Fly as being like an MoT test, if you will; it amounts to the same thing.

The aircraft is owned by Nigel, one of the former G-VIZZ syndicate members. Members of the group (we can’t really think of it as a syndicate because we don’t jointly own the aircraft) can fly her whenever they please. We even have a proper booking system. And this is the cheapest powered flying I have ever had, by far, so I can afford to fly more often[6].

And what flying! I’m going to get on with the main article now, and showcase this lovely aeroplane which is so much better in every way than any other aeroplane I have ever flown[7]. I’ve previously written about the Piper Warrior, the Cessna 152, and the RS-180; all aircraft I have flown on a regular basis. But the RV-9A is in a different league entirely.

(All the images in this essay are zoomable by simply clicking on them)

The RV-9A, like all of the aeroplanes I have flown – well, the powered ones, at least[8] – is a single-engined monoplane light aircraft, powered by an Avco-Lycoming engine. In Alpha-Mike’s case, the engine delivers 16fhours0hp of power to an aircraft with a maximum all-up weight of 970kg, as compared to the RS-180’s 180hp for 1100kg, or the Piper Warrior’s 1055kg powered by a 160hp engine, so there’s a fair difference in power-to-weight ratio.

Added to that, the clean airframe design, small forward profile (as you can see in the above photo) and optimised wing profile and even a ceramic coating, means that Alpha-Mike is a bit of a ‘hot ship’. She does 140kt[9] in the cruise – that’s about 160mph – and has an excellent fuel efficiency.

This is also, to a large extent, because she has a variable-pitch (VP) propeller. Unlike all the other aeroplanes I have flown, where the propeller blades have a fixed pitch (the angle they are set at on the propeller spinner), a VP prop can vary its pitch so that it makes it more efficient, taking a bigger or smaller ‘bite’ of the air with each revolution according to how it is set. This works in a very similar way to the gears on a car, so that it doesn’t have to stay in first gear all the time, but instead it can be set to lower RPM (and therefore using less fuel) if required. In fact, Alpha-Mike has a flight endurance of something like 4.5 hours on full tanks, assuming correct leaning of the mixture[10] and judicious use of the VP prop. So, not only is she fast but she’s efficient too[11].

So, we built her ourselves, then. Here’s a picture of her in her original hangar, where we did most of the work.

As you can see, we found the upper wing surfaces to be a very handy place to put all the tools and other bits of the stuff we were working on 😉 and she is pretty much complete in this photo, which was taken the day before her maiden flight. Once we’d shifted all that clobber off the wings, and reinstalled the left seat, we took her over to the fuel pumps to fill her up.

We had already done test runs on the engine, we’d calibrated various items like the ‘magnetometer’, which basically does the same thing as a compass, and so we got the brave engineer out to have a look.

Once he’d signed her off, he took her for her first test flight. Here it is, in all its glory:

Immerse yourself in the aviation vibe for this clip: the air-to-ground communications (we had an airband radio monitoring the Tower frequency), and the raw emotion in the voices of the observers. There was a whole group of us there; most of the people who had had a hand in her construction (about eight of us) were present for this maiden flight. You can hear someone near the end of the clip saying ‘Congratulations, Nigel’, and quite right too.

So, we had a brand-new Van’s RV-9A to play with!

Here is a photo of her instrument panel as it was just after construction was complete:

Originally, she had a single Garmin G3X EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System) – that big screen in the middle – and just a few of the traditional ‘clock’-style instruments on the panel: (left to right) airspeed indicator, altimeter, attitude indicator (aka the ‘artificial horizon’). The G3X handles just about everything, including the primary flight information such as airspeed, altitude, rate of climb and all the usual things, plus it has a built-in moving map display that runs on a GPS system, so that you’re never lost. The traditional gauges are there in case the G3X fails, which just never happens. Even in the event of an electrical failure, the G3X has an internal battery that will keep it going for several hours after mains failure.

Later, we refitted the instrument panel with a new layout, with no dials at all – a completely ‘glass cockpit’ – and also added in an autopilot system. Here’s the new panel; the autopilot box is the one at top centre, just under the ‘SmartGlide’ button[12]. Despite the G3X allegedly never failing, we also have two additional independent self-powered electronic displays: the Garmin G5 (the little box to the left of the main display); and the Garmin 720 on the right, the one that looks like a Kindle Fire or iPad. Between them, these three displays give triple redundancy on flight information display systems, even in the event of a total electrical power failure.

Here is the panel in flight, with the moving map display on the main panel (the purple lines indicate the route programmed in for the autopilot) and the PFD – Primary Flight Display, which displays all the important information such as airspeed, altitude, heading and so on. The sunlight today, up here at 4,000ft, is pretty harsh and also at such an angle as to highlight all the dust on the panel. Sorry about that!

What’s she like to fly? Well, in short, she’s gorgeous. Powerful, fast and enthusiastic. Once you open the throttle on the runway this little aeroplane is positively eager to enter her natural element. Before you know it, only seconds from a standing start she’s at 65kt; the ‘rotate speed’ or Vr, and she’s leaping into the air and accelerating as she climbs. Quite astonishing really, far in excess of anything I’ve ever flown before. Whereas with the RS-180 G-VIZZ, we’d routinely use ten degrees of flap for takeoff, and retracting them in the climb-out, we initially used that procedure with Alpha-Mike but we found out that even though we had flaps deployed, with all the extra drag they give, still she rapidly accelerated in the climb to speeds in excess of the maximum flap extension speed, thereby risking breaking something! And so we now don’t use flap at all on takeoff, even on short fields. She’s just too sprightly to need it!

Control harmonisation – that’s another way of expressing the ‘feel’ of the aeroplane – is excellent, with rudder, elevator and ailerons all beautifully balanced and without any of them being more ‘dominant’ than the others. For example, in the Piper Warrior II, another aeroplane I love, the slab tailplane does give a different feel because it has such a large ‘pitch authority’; it doesn’t need much effort to make the nose go up or down. The ailerons on the Warrior, however, are not as decisive as that, so that althought the Warrior is still a great aeroplane to fly, it doesn’t have the same balanced ‘feel’ that the RV-9A has.

View from the cockpit is simply stunning. While the occupants are not sitting as high up as they would be in the RS-180, and the windowsills are not as low as they are in that aeroplane (actually no aeroplane I know has the same view as the RS-180!) even so the view is excellent because of the bubble canopy. There’s only the one frame breaking the otherwise uninterrupted view. Lovely!

Landing can be a little tricky because the nose undercarriage leg isn’t very strong. This means that even though there are many elements such as crosswind, windshear, sink rate, airspeed and all the other multiple factors that the Pilot has to consider in order to make for a good landing, the thing that must remain high on the list of priorities for the RV-9A Pilot is that the brunt of the landing must be taken by the main undercarriage; the bits under the wings. The nosewheel leg, in fact, is not even considered to be ‘landing gear’ as such; it’s more a ‘taxying gear’, only to be used when the aircraft’s speed has decayed enough after landing to allow the nosewheel to be lowered safely[13]. This involves using a lot of back-pressure on the control column after touchdown, to keep the weight off the nosewheel until it’s safe enough to lower it to the runway. And even then, when I land this aeroplane, I only lower the nose when I can’t stop it lowering itself, when there is insufficient airflow over the tail to keep the nose up any longer; the elevator has lost its ‘pitch authority’, if you like. Even then, I keep on a good back-pressure on the stick because it still helps keep the weight off the nose as the propeller wash[14] still gives a little bit of elevator authority even at taxying speeds. But as long as this is kept in mind, flying and landing this aeroplane is a breeze, and indeed a real delight.

Bembridge, Isle of Wight Flying Adventure

Probably the best way to describe this aircraft is to let you see her in action, so here is a photo diary of an epic flying adventure I had in April this year.

As a bit of background, let me explain that my son David is also a Pilot, and he flies from Kemble Airfield in Gloucestershire. He asked me if I would like to do a landaway meet-up on the Isle of Wight; specifically, at Bembridge Airport right on the eastern tip of the Isle. He intended to rent a club-owned Piper PA-28 Warrior II to be his chariot for the day, and so we arranged to meet at Bembridge Airport at about 1045 local time.

This trip was something I’d always wanted to do, ever since I had visited the Island back in 2015, back when Fiona was still alive, and with my daughter Ellie and some caravanning friends too. We had stayed on a campsite right next to the airfield, and so Bembridge has been on my landaway wish-list ever since then![15] So it was arranged that David, his wife Stace, and myself, plus Oscar – David’s toy otter mascot who loves to fly with him and goes on every flight with him – would indeed meet up at Bembridge and spend the day together on the Island.

So, I booked the aeroplane and checked the weather forecast for the upcoming weekend – this was on the Monday before the Saturday on which we flew out. Looks good on the long range forecast but of course that can all go to trash on the day. Did the PPR request – that’s ‘Prior Permission Required’ – basically an online form you fill in to let them know to expect you. It’s important so that they can account for your aircraft as part of the day’s traffic pattern, but also for safety reasons; if you don’t arrive something like when you say you will, they will have emergency search and rescue procedures that they will implement so that they can come and try to find where you’ve pranged the kite[16]. Planned my navigation route – headings, heights, speeds, landmarks, turning points. Danger areas like military ranges. Checked the NOTAMs – the Notices for Airmen; telling you about important things en route that may affect the way in which you conduct the flight. Things like high obstructions (cranes and stuff) near airfields, temporary airspace restrictions, temporary danger areas maybe because of high-energy military flying exercises (meaning fast-jets doing practice dogfights), temporary airspace restrictions for things like airshows or displays by the Red Arrows, or maybe even ballooning events. Looked up radio frequencies and generated a communications plan. Considered diversion airfields to be used in emergencies. Checked with Nigel to make sure the aeroplane was serviceable. Briefed about the fuel state and what he wanted me to do with the aircraft on my return – like did he want her refuelling ready for him the next flying day, that sort of thing. Comprehensive preflight planning is key to any successful cross-country flight, especially where that will involve a landaway and/or liaison with multiple ATSUs (Air Traffic Service Units, so people like radar services, control towers, approach services and all that sort of thing. Complying therefore with the annoyingly (and deliberately) alliterative Pilot saying, ‘Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance’, which nevertheless highlights how important the planning stage is to the satisfactory execution of the day’s flights. Most people who don’t themselves fly also don’t realise how much planning goes in to a cross-country flight, especially one involving a landaway, and even more so on one involving flight over the sea, which this one did of course. I’m flying to an island, remember! Also, making sure I have the most up-to-date aeronautical chart; checking that my equipment is in good order (like my headset, for instance) and that I have all my pens and flying gloves and baseball cap and sunglasses and all the other bits I need.

Here’s the SkyDemon chart for the route, with the intended track indicated by that thick magenta line. SkyDemon is a brilliant piece of software that aids greatly in the flight planning stage, bringing together all the information that the Pilot needs for the route. Some Pilots I know use it on their phones and it acts as a kind of satnav, a bit like the Garmin G3X system in Alpha-Mike.

Well, the Saturday dawned bright and relatively clear, so, armed with the current met forecast (the weather) and what we call the ‘Actual’ (what the weather is like right now at the relevant airfields including diversions, and their TAFs: Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts; what the weather forecasts are for the airfields in question), off we trot for Exeter Airport.

Alpha-Mike lives in a hangar on the secure and non-passenger-related north side of the airfield, so I need a special (and expensive!) ‘Northside Pass’ to get in, and so I make sure that this is also in my bag before setting off.

Arriving at Exeter, I dragged the aeroplane out of the hangar and did my preflight walk-round inspection, where I look for potential problems on the aircraft, check the oil and fuel levels, make sure the windscreen is clean, and all the other minutiae that make for safe flying. Better to find a fault on the ground rather than have that problem announce itself up in the air! Once done, and once I’d refuelled the aircraft, it’s time to book out – that’s where I tell the Exeter Air Traffic people where I’m going and when I think I’ll be back; a bit like the PPR mentioned above and for the same reasons – and in we get. I had donned a lifejacket and PLB because I’m going to be flying over the sea. It’s only for six miles or so, but there’s a reason why it’s called a lifejacket! And the PLB is a Personal Locator Beacon; a radio device that you activate once you’re down in the drink[17] and floating hopefully the right way up, so that Air-Sea Rescue can find you.

Ok, so start her up, program the navigation computer and autopilot, perform the power checks and pre-take-off vital actions from the checklist, and then call for taxi clearance. Lined up on Runway 08 at Exeter and cleared for take-off, the view gave me the usual (but somehow always new) thrill of anticipation of adventure[18].

There is no finer view in all of aviation; I am going flying, right now, and I am going to interface with – and indeed become a part of – this singularly unique, finely-tuned and indeed beautiful piece of machinery called a Van’s RV-9A. And today she’s going to carry me nearly 100 nautical miles, in under an hour, to meet family for a lovely day out. What can be finer than that?

As always, take-off and climb-out are busy times so there’s neither time nor mental space for photography. But once established at the correct altitude, and in the cruise with the autopilot engaged, I am now hands-free for photography, as well as being eyes-free to keep a good lookout[19]. So here’s the first shot, of the Devon town of Honiton about four miles off my port beam (it’s visible just above the wingtip):

This is the Garmin G3X showing the PFD in full-screen mode, with the aircraft position shown on the mini-map inset on the bottom right. You can see that we are just a mile north of Seaton, East Devon[20].

Axminster, East Devon, just forward of the wing

The view forward from 3,000ft, with Lyme Regis at the bottom of the photo, and with Chesil Beach and Portland Bill just visible. It’s quite hazy up here this morning. But it’s still utterly, utterly glorious. 

Coming up on Dorchester:

Portland Bill and Weymouth Harbour just visible in the murk. Actually, visibility today is excellent for aviation, just not so much for long-view photography.

Coming up on Poole Harbour, Dorset

Brownsea Island, Poole Harbour. This island was the inspiration for the fictional ‘Whispering Island’ in Enid Blyton‘s ‘Famous Five’ book, ‘Five Have A Mystery To Solve‘.

Bournemouth coming up. I’m now what we call ‘feet wet’ (flying over the sea), but I also happen to be within easy gliding distance of the land should the hamster die[21].

See what I mean about the superb view from this aeroplane?

Approaching Hengistbury Head, Dorset, the turning point which will set me up on my new heading over the sea, heading out to the Isle of Wight.

At the same time, Oscar the Otter (whom I mentioned earlier) is at the controls of David’s Warrior aeroplane, most likely somewhere over Hampshire.

…while my autopilot system executes the coasting-out turn over Hengistbury Head for me. The town visible aft of the wing, there, is Southbourne, Dorset.

The view down the Solent through the murk, from just past Hengistbury Head. This is because it’s early morning; this will all burn off later in the day. The entire Isle of Wight lies to the right of picture.

The Needles, IoW

Taking over control from the autopilot for a few seconds, I racked the aeroplane into a fairly steep left bank so as to get this lovely shot of the Needles with their Lighthouse:

Now transitioning to manual control for a lovely sightseeing tour of the south coast of the Isle, I could still use the autopilot temporarily to hold the aircraft straight and level in order for me to take photos as required. This is Ventnor Downs, the steep hill above Ventnor. There are the remains of a WWII Chain Home radar station up there, which was attacked by German dive-bombers at the start of the Battle of Britain in 1940. I visited the site back in 2015, and there’s still a lot of interesting military archaeology up there. For a World War II geek like me, anyway…. 😉 

And now, coming up on Bembridge, the town on the Eastern tip of the Isle of Wight. The Solent, Porstsmouth  and Hayling Island visible in the distance.

Meanwhile, having relinquished control back to David, Oscar is now enjoying the view of the Hampshire countryside out of the passenger side window of the Warrior.

…while I have my target in sight! Bembridge Airfield’s main runway 30/12, just above the wingtip as I roll in to a sort-of ‘crosswind’ leg to set up the circuit. Runway in use today is Rwy 12 which runs in a south-easterly direction, so I’m looking up the opposite direction in this picture. I need to set up so that I will be landing in the direction that, at the moment, is towards the camera. Things get a bit busy from now on, positioning the aircraft, so as to join the circuit while at the same time avoiding annoying the neighbours by overflying their greenhouses, that sort of thing.

Aaaand safely on the ground at Bembridge Airport. Runway is concrete but the parking is on grass, so as I mentioned above, I have been really careful to keep the weight off the nosewheel while taxying on the uneven grass surface. Now I’m parked up and looking across to the Britten-Norman aircraft factory to the north east of the airfield.

This is the Propeller Inn, Bembridge. I spent many a happy hour there in 2015 with Fiona and our friends on our camping holiday. More on the Inn later!

G-CSAM parked up at Bembridge. I was the first arrival of the day; it got a bit busy later on!The Cirrus aircraft with the red tail, parked beyond Alpha-Mike, is a Canadian-registered one. A local asked me if it was my aeroplane because I was wearing a Canada baseball cap… well I need something to keep the sun out of my eyes when up in the sky, and my brother (who lives in Canada) had sent me it a number of years ago, so I use that. You’ll see it in a later picture.

On the way to check in at Air Traffic Control, thought I’d bag this lovely view straight down Runway 30; the footpath passes directly across the extended centreline.

Back on the airfield after paying my very reasonable £15 landing fee, I got this nice shot of Alpha-Mike on the deck with her flaps down. What always gives me a really strange feeling during a landaway is that I look across the airfield at the parked aeroplanes, single out ‘my’ aeroplane, and think like ‘Crumbs, I came here in that, and that’s how I’m getting home too’. Similar to parking a car, I suppose, but evoking an unparalleled sense of wonder at the same time.

Anyway, In the background, there’s the treeline…and behind that treeline is the caravan site where we stayed in 2015 for that holiday I mentioned. Although now it’s all static caravans, not touring caravans like mine.

Listening out on my airband radio, and also watching on my phone app, I could see David’s Warrior aeroplane approaching the Isle from the mainland. Because of this, I was ready to shoot this video of his landing using Alpha-Mike’s tailplane as a rest 😉 You can hear the radio chatter on my airband radio. The strange buzzing engine sound is not David’s aeroplane; it’s another aircraft off-camera that had a weird sort of buzzing noise for its engine sound. Maybe it was powered by an electric shaver or something, I don’t know.

So once we’d met up, hugged and signed them in, we set off on a lovely walk down into Bembridge town proper, including a yummy lunch at the Harbour View Cafe. After wandering along the beach for a bit, we walked back up to the airfield. Many more aircraft had arrived by this time! Alpha-Mike is third from the left in the front row; David’s Golf-India is fifth from the left, next to the Canadian-registered aircraft to the right of Alpha-Mike.

Here’s a close-up of David’s chariot for the day, the beautiful Piper PA-28 Warrior II, G-EDGI.

Now we were back at the airfield, we popped in for a lemonade at the adjacent Propeller Inn. Like I said, I had stayed on that caravan site next to the airfield in 2015 for two weeks, and since then I have always wanted to do a landaway there. Although there’s now that treeline we saw earlier blocking the view from the campsite, and the Propeller Inn is under new ownership – they have sacrilegiously removed all the aircraft models from the ceilings[22] and there was a bartender bot with absolutely no personality whatsoever; couldn’t even call him an NPC as he had no script – anyway things haven’t changed all that much over there. Things hardly ever change on the IoW, except that now they have a decent phone signal.

But we had to leave at some time, so we said our goodbyes and boarded our aeroplanes to fly home again.

Here’s the view down Runway 12, lined-up and just prior to beginning my take-off roll. This view is simply unbeatable:

 

Five minutes after liftoff and already at 3,000ft, here’s a view of Shanklin, IoW, with Sandown just to the right/East. Sandown airfield is visible in the centre of the photo. From up here, I could see the entire Island and the Solent, Portsmouth and Southampton all in one go. Simply stupendous.

Time for another scenic cruise around the south coast of the IoW, and here’s Ventnor Downs again. Note how much the visibility has improved. You can see for miles now.

Coming up on The Needles again, the western tip of the Isle of Wight.

What happened next was almost unbelievable; one of those things that happens occasionally when flying. It was completely unexpected when the Bournemouth Radar controller, from whom I was in receipt of a radar service[23] suddenly called me up and said, “Golf-Alpha-Mike, traffic is a Spitfire, one thousand feet below you on a parallel heading. He’s probably headed for The Needles”. I heartily agreed that looking out for a Spitfire would be a great idea and she told me it was in my 2 o’clock low. So I looked and Tally-Ho! – I’d spotted him[24]; the Spit was very low on first sighting; as she said, about 1000ft below me, and I kept sight of him for about a minute then lost him in the background clutter. A minute or so later, I glanced at the Needles, which I was just passing, and there he was! The aircraft can be seen in this photo if you zoom riiiight in just left of centre, and just in front of my wing. As is always the case with amateur aerial photography, he was a lot closer in reality than he looks in the picture! This was very much a point-and-hope shot which fortunately worked out rather well. The black thing at the bottom middle of the photo is the Needles themselves. Can you see the Spitfire? What a great thing to have briefly shared airspace with such a legendary aircraft! 

After my epic encounter, I still had to cross the Solent! Here’s Hengistbury Head coming up ahead. The black marks on the picture are the way in which the camera picks up the propeller blades whirling around.

Over Hengistbury Head, a lovely shot looking at early evening mist in the direction of Swanage. Poole Harbour to the right of the shot.

Swanage and Ballard Down, with Studland in the foreground. Look how clear the air is.

Portland Bill and Weymouth again. If you compare this photo with the one from the morning, you can see how much the visibility has cleared up.

I don’t often do selfies but here’s me displaying the ‘RV-9A grin’. It’s going to take me a few days to lose that, I think. And there’s my Canada ball cap too:

Final shot of the trip, approaching Lyme Regis to my left. After this, things were a bit busy, so no more photos I’m afraid. Flying almost directly into a low-ish sun, with haze still present over home plate despite the clarity here, and trying to look out for other aircraft in that muck too, also trying to see my home plate at Exeter coming up. Certainly not a time to be mucking about with a camera, even with the autopilot in operation. 

So, like I said, a lovely day out and it took me at least a week to lose the grin! And what an adventure, especially with the Spitfire sighting![25]

The RV-9 grin. What a lovely aeroplane and I am privileged beyond measure to be trusted with flying this little beauty. And also to have been able to share, in some small measure, my adventure to the Isle of Wight. Even now, over a week later, I am still enjoying flashbacks of the things I saw and experienced on that trip. I will go again this summer, I think!

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 She now lives at Lasham, home to one of England’s main gliding clubs. Given that she has a glider-towing attachment, I would not be surprised if it were the case that they were using her for that purpose.
⇧2 The aircraft’s name is given by the last two letters of her registration, so, ‘Golf Charlie Sierra Alpha Mike’, becomes ‘Alpha Mike’.
⇧3 The designer, Richard VanGrunsven, uses his initials to name his different aircraft designs, hence the initials ‘RV-9A’. The RV-9 is the tailwheel version; the RV-9A (like Alpha-Mike) is the tricycle version with the nose wheel
⇧4 Although, Van’s Aircraft do actually sell completed aircraft too.
⇧5 To put it politely 😉
⇧6 I used to fly gliders back in 1991, with the Leeds University Gliding Society, but as that was affiliated with the RAF Gliding and Soaring Association, it was heavily subsidised and therefore very cheap.
⇧7 The sole minor exception is that she has only two seats rather than four, but that doesn’t really matter as I have very rarely flown a four-seater with a full load of passengers, and in any case the logistics of getting four people together to go flying all at the same time is quite something!
⇧8 Over the course of my flying ‘career’, I have flown something like thirteen different aircraft types, including four gliders (Grob Acro, Schleicher Ka-2, Schleicher K-7, Schleicher K-13) and nine powered types (Cessna 152, Cessna 150 Aerobat, Piper PA-28 Warrior II, Piper PA-38 Tomahawk, Robin R2160, Ikarus C42, Sportavia RS-180 and of course the Van’s RV-9A).
⇧9 As opposed to 90kt (100mph) for a Cessna 152 and 100kt (114mph) in a Piper Warrior.
⇧10 ‘Leaning’ refers to the adjustment of the fuel/air ratio (the ‘mixture’) going into the engine, by using the red ‘mixture’ knob visible on the photos in this article. As the air density decreases with altitude, you can end up with too much fuel in the mixture – known as a ‘rich’ mixture – so you need to make the mixture more ‘lean’ (hence: ‘leaning’) in order to correctly match the proportions of air to fuel. The reverse happens as you come down; the air gets more dense so there will be too little fuel in the mixture (it will be too ‘lean’), so you need to enrich the mixture again using the mixture control.
⇧11 Having the VP prop also meant that the group’s Pilots had to have additional training to get the VP prop rating put on our licences, as we also had to for the Garmin EFIS (the Electronic Flight Information System or ‘glass cockpit’) too. So now we are all VP prop-rated and EFIS-rated Pilots as well as our basic Private Pilot’s Licences (and I have a Night Rating as well, of course). These ratings are lifelong and they mean that we can now fly any aeroplanes with VP props and/or EFIS avionics.
⇧12 This activates emergency glide protocols in the event of an engine failure, including turning the aeroplane towards the nearest airfield within gliding distance. Really clever!
⇧13 Taxying is the term used for driving an aeroplane around on the ground, as opposed to up in the air.
⇧14 Propeller wash, or ‘prop wash’, is the high-speed airflow around the aircraft’s fuselage caused by the propeller acting like a giant fan, which, I suppose, it is…. 😉
⇧15 A ‘landaway’ is exactly what its name suggests: a landing away from your home base. Most private pilots’ sport flying careers consist of simple local jaunts where they take off from their home plate, fly around the local area a bit, and then return to the place they set off from. A landaway is where you fly out to another aerodrome and buy a coffee, lunch or breakfast, then fly back to base after you’ve had a wander around on the ground at your landaway destination. With G-VIZZ, one of my favourite landaways was the short grass strip at Bolt Head near Salcombe, Devon. I’d land there, go for a lovely cliff-top walk, then return to the airfield and hop back into the aeroplane to fly back to base at Exeter.
⇧16 Where you’ve crashed 😉
⇧17 The sea!
⇧18 The blue hangar in the middle distance, to the left of centre, is the hangar in which we built the aircraft.
⇧19 I could really get used to that autopilot!
⇧20 For those who are used to interpreting a Garmin G3X display with autopilot, you may be wondering why the autopilot is executing a descent when we are below the requested/[reset operating altitude. That’s simply because I am still learning to drive the thing; using an autopilot is not as simple as just pressing a button and it takes over. Well, not once you get under the hood, anyway. I had sorted it all out within a few minutes!
⇧21 Everyone knows that light aeroplane engines are powered by a hamster running on a little wheel, under the engine cowling; this makes the propeller go round very fast.
⇧22 Sacrilegious, because how can you have a pub right next to an airfield, keep its name as the Propeller Inn, have a giant propeller stuck on the outside of it, and then remove all the pre-existing model aircraft from the ceiling in the bar?? Seriously, someone needs to be shot for that!
⇧23 A radar service is basically where the radar station has you on their screen; they keep a lookout for other aircraft in your vicinity and warn you if there’s any chance of getting too close to each other. No substitute for keeping a good lookout, of course, but it does add an additional layer of safety. It’s like having an extra pair of eyes.
⇧24 Tally-ho! was the code word adopted during the Battle of Britain in 1940, which RAF airmen used to tell their radar controller that they’d seen the aircraft (usually enemy!) that they’d been vectored to intercept. While it is not correct radio procedure nowadays to use ‘Tally-ho!’, still I do use it occasionally and they know what I mean 😀 I think I used it on this day, but I can’t remember for sure!
⇧25 Only twice in the past have I seen anything similar; on both those occasions I was flying in the same bit of airspace as the legendary Red Arrows. Once was in 1991 at RAF Dishforth near Ripon, where I used to fly gliders with the Leeds University Union Gliding Society, which was affiliated with the RAF Gliding and Soaring Association. Just as I was completing a winch launch at about 1000ft above ground, two Red Arrows Hawk jets flew over me about a thousand feet higher up and going in the opposite direction. There was an air display going on that day at RAF Leeming, ten miles further up the A1. So I could legitimately say I’d flown with the Red Arrows! 🤣 The second time was a couple of years after I got my licence. On one day in August 1999, I was flying solo circuit practice at Plymouth Airport when a voice came over the Tower frequency, “Plymouth, good afternoon, The Red Arrows!”. Tower was unfazed. “Station calling Plymouth, say again your callsign”. So funny. I’m afraid I don’t think he’d misheard, nor was it that he couldn’t believe his ears; I think he was trying to wind them up. I suppose you had to be there. Anyway, the unflappable Red One calls back, “Plymouth – The. Red. Arrows! Crossing ten miles north abeam your airfield”. And so both I and the controller looked, and there they were, a close group of little aeroplane-shaped dots in the distance which were nevertheless, very distinctly, red. I think they were on their way to display at Fowey in Cornwall, they do tend to display there at least once a year even to this day – although last year (2025) it was at Falmouth.

I Was A Stranger….

Insights, Personal, Humour, Asperger's/Autism
This entry is part 25 of 27 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism
“I was a stranger, and you did not welcome Me”
– Matthew 25:43 (ESV)
Passing the Test? – A Real-Time Experiment

I have a friend who began going to a church near me – a congregation that I’d never heard of – and they suggested to me that I might like it and even want to go. And, given how much my friend was being blessed in this church, I thought I might indeed take a look.

Being Autistic, I needed to check them out a little first. Autism, for all its amazing benefits – which I would not be without! – has some downsides too, the main one for me being that I have a perception that I will not fit in because I am so ‘different’; so ‘odd’. This has been the case since my schooldays; fortunately I have spent the majority of my Christian life in congregations where they accepted me exactly as I am[1]. So I wanted to see if there’s a chance that this one will accept me like that too.

Because of this, I adopted the sensible approach, and took a look at their website. I gave particular attention to their ‘Statement of Faith’ which (usually, anyway) sets out what they believe[2].

And fair enough, there it is: they’re an Evangelical church; they believe in Biblical infallibility (that is, the Bible is always right), and in ‘eternal conscious torment’ (i.e. ‘Hell’) for those who do not believe in Jesus. All clear so far 🙂

Nothing in their Statement of Faith presented any particular problem to me; no matter what church I attend, I am mature enough in my faith to be able to spit out the bones and eat the meat – to learn the things of God while internally rejecting those things that don’t sit right with my spirit in terms of doctrine or anything else. It’s a shame more Christians don’t do this! So, things look good so far 😊

But I still needed to do my Litmus Test. I have written on this before; the Litmus Test is where I ask a potentially contentious[3] question to see how they cope with it: how they answer; and indeed whether they answer!; and what they say in their answer. Using this method, I can make a pretty good guess as to how I would be welcomed despite my ‘differences’ and therefore how ‘safe’ I will feel in their group!

Because my questions have been ignored in the past, when asking other Evangelical groups the Litmus question, this time I’m going to keep track of my questions; the times I sent them, and any replies, so that my attempt at communication works out like a real-time experiment, with me writing down each ‘test’, and its result, in real time. In that way, it will read as a story; it will be productive in that you will be able to learn from what really happened, as it happened; and you will see my methodical approach to the whole thing. And I hope you enjoy it!

And so, to begin, I found their church contact page, and I simply asked them my question, via their online electronic contact form. Here’s the question as asked:

Hi there

I have been looking with interest at your church website and, in response to the things I have seen there, I wanted to ask a couple of simple questions about your practices.

Here we go:

—

How do you, as a church, cope with people of ‘different’ sexualities (like Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer etc. (LGBTQ+))? I have contacted churches with this question in the past, and have not once received a clear reply!

What I mean by my question is, how much do you integrate people of ‘alternative’ sexualities into your church? I’d really love to hear an honest answer from you on this subject.

For example, do you really preach ‘come as you are, don’t worry, we’ll accept you’, or is it instead the sort of thing where it’s really ‘come as you are but we want to change you’?

Or can an LGBTQ+ person come along and be fully accepted just as they are, without any expectation of changing to your pattern, along with any partner they may have?

Are LGBTQ+ people treated in any way differently from other people in the church? Are they fully accepted but with reservations? Would people be in any way judgmental about them?

And can an LGBTQ+ person hold a position of responsibility in your congregation?

In other words, can people feel ‘safe’ in your church?

I know that’s a lot – more than just a ‘couple’ of questions, in fact! – but I am asking all these honest questions in order to ascertain whether or not this is a safe church for all people, or just those deemed ‘normal’.

I look forward to reading your reply!

Thanks for your time

Anthony

So it’s Sunday 22nd March, and I’ve just sent that question off. Because this is being written in real time, I will now actually stop writing this essay for a few days, giving them until later in the week to respond, at which time I will resend the question if they haven’t already replied.

Hiding behind the Sofa!

It’s now Thursday, 26th March. Did they pass the test by answering the question? Or are they hiding, terrified, behind the sofa[4], hoping that the stranger (figuratively) knocking on their door (me!) will just go away?!🤣

Well, I’m sad to say that there was no response. I am still ‘in the dark’; I don’t know if they got my message and decided to ignore it (by hiding behind the sofa!), or whether it never got there, or if they just haven’t had time to read it yet! But I’m not going to just go away. I still don’t know how ‘safe’ I would be at that church, and I would like to know because my friend’s recommendation carries considerable weight for me. So, I’m going to try again a couple of times until either they answer, or it becomes plain that not only are they still hiding behind the sofa, but have possibly even been there for so long that they have died back there and no-one has found the body yet[5] 😂 .

And so, I am sending them the question again today (26th March):

Hi there, back on Sunday 22nd, I sent you a question about your church, and I was disappointed that I haven’t received a reply yet. I suspect you might have been on holiday! Anyway, I will re-send the question for you here, rather than have you troll through your inbox to try to find it. Here we go:

[Copied and pasted the original message in, verbatim]

So, again, let’s wait and see! Let’s also hope that the bodies behind the sofa aren’t beginning to smell too badly….

Monday, 30th March.

There’s been no response from the church yet.

It did occur to me that they may not be monitoring their communications from that contact page; their website is set up in the form of a WordPress blog (like this one) and their last posts were in December 2022, so just over three years ago. Maybe their comms aren’t being looked at, then. Maybe the guy who designed their website and monitors their comms is one of the bodies behind the sofa, and as such is terminally incapacitated 🤣

Or something.

Ok, then, let’s control that part of the experiment by sending them another, more innocuous message that doesn’t contain anything even remotely unusual. And we’ll send it via the contact form again because that’s the system we are testing with this message. I won’t write here the message I sent; suffice it to say that it was a routine sort of enquiry similar to ‘do you take a collection’ sort of thing, and giving a different email address from the one I gave for my previous messages. Who knows, maybe my other address was being blocked for some reason. You never know!

Now, if the message doesn’t get through, then no harm done; no-one will have read it. If, however, it does get through and they reply, then that tells me that they do indeed receive contact requests through their website and they are deliberately ignoring my original messages. The small subterfuge of asking a trivial question in order to try to get a message through is, in my opinion, justified[6].

Tuesday 31st March

Well, my innocuous message got a reply from the pastor! This tells me that messages sent via the online contact page are indeed being received; that they are monitoring communications sent via that page. And this leads me to believe that the Litmus Test messages I sent were actually received but were being ignored (back behind the sofa we go!). There are a couple of other possibilities. It could be that they don’t read their contact form messages all that often. That would explain the lack of response so far to my questions, but only if this is in combination with the pastor possibly needing to consult with his leadership team (if they have one; in common with most Evangelical churches, they probably do) with regards to the best line to take when replying to that impertinent LGBTQ+ query! It would need to be a combination of both late reading and working out an answer, because the receipt of the innocuous email shows that their system is working at a normal speed for electronic communications – i.e. it’s fast – so any delay in replying is a human factor. If it were me in their position, I would have written back and said something like ‘We’ll get back to you on your query; bear with us’, which would be fine. Well, kind of, anyway; if you think about it, anything other than a big, hearty ‘YES!!’ to LGBTQ+ inclusion has to be viewed as showing the strong possibility that actually they don’t accept people with ‘differences’. But let’s cut them some slack. There’s always the chance they might think in depth and come up with a decent policy.

As an aside at this point, let me also tell you something good about this church: they do welcome homeless people. Like I said, I had a friend at that church and they told me that there were all kinds of different people there, from professionals, to everyday blue-collar people, to farmers, to homeless people; you name it. I wonder then if they have any LGBTQ+ people there and, although they welcome them, they believed that my question was some sort of ruse? I mean, it isn’t; it’s a genuine question that will help me determine whether or not it is a ‘safe’ church for someone like me to attend. As I’ve already described, my neurodivergence means that I am someone who is very different from ‘normal’ people. This is why I do the Litmus Test; their attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people will be a good indicator about how they relate to ‘different’ people in general.

Another point about that church was that I recognised someone in one of their website photos, and I had actually met him a few years back – he was at work and he served me as a customer – and I just knew he was a Christian because I could feel the Spirit on him. And so yes, Jesus is ‘in’ at least one person at that church! 😉 I have no doubt that God turns up every Sunday and that the people walk with Jesus. No, sorry, I’m being facetious; I am sure that each person at that church knows the Lord, not just that one bloke. It’s just that what puzzles me is still that glaring point: so if Jesus is so much a part of their existence, like He is with me, then why the problem with answering contact requests? I still, I ehhh, well I just don’t get it. Like I said, my friend’s recommendation, and their favourable impressions of the church, do carry considerable weight for me, which is why I find it puzzling. Aaaaanyway….

Well, in order to give them another fair chance at a reply, I then actually emailed using a ‘proper’ email message, as opposed to simply contacting them through their website form. In this way, we bypass the contact form altogether. To check I had their email address right, I actually drove up to their physical premises! and found out their email address from their signboard.

So I emailed them, to that ‘official’ email address, the same message that I sent on 26th March, as above, and I now await their reply. I’ll give it a few days, as per normal, before I call it a day on the experiment, write it all up and publish. I have to say, though, that by now I would be very surprised were I to receive a reply to my questions.

Right, so now it’s Tuesday 7th April, the Tuesday after Easter this year. I’ve left it so long because I did them the courtesy of not burdening them with my terrifying question over the Easter weekend and thus spoiling it! 🤣 But I still have not heard back from them – good job I didn’t hold my breath; I’d be purple by now! – and so I’m going to write to them again in a slightly different manner; in the form of a gentle appeal. I’m using direct email and writing to the church email address, and also copying in the pastor on his personal email account. Here’s what I’m sending:

Please answer my question

Hi there

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been hoping for a reply from you regarding my question – sent several times and via different pathways – via your church contact page, and via direct email to your church email address which I got from the signboard outside your premises – about to what extent LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and other sexualities) people are integrated into your church. In my contact attempts, I set out clearly my questions, and gave a clear and valid reason why I am asking those questions.

It saddens me greatly that I have not yet received a reply. I do believe that the messages have been getting through to you, so I can see only five possible reasons for the lack of a reply:

1) I was wrong; the messages are not in fact getting through to you;
2) The messages are getting through to you, but you are on holiday or very busy, or both;
3) You suspect that my neutrally-expressed question is from someone who would not want to come to your church if they thought that LGBTQ+ people *were* welcome there;
4) You suspect that LGBTQ+ people would not want to come to your church if they thought they would *not* be welcome there, but you don’t want to put them off by telling them that;
5) You and your leadership team are as yet undecided on your stance on LGBTQ+ issues, or at least on how to respond to my questions. In which case, please acknowledge this with a simple, ‘We’ll get back to you’, unless of course you’re not going to get back to me!

Whatever the reason, I would like to make a final request that you answer my question, please, and, in its shortened form, it’s this:

*To what extent are LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and other sexualities) people integrated into your church?*

I have deliberately done you the courtesy of not burdening you with this over what is likely the busiest weekend in your church’s calendar!

I won’t trouble you with the question again after asking this time. That said, though, this isn’t going to just go away. Even though this is the last time I will ask, someone else will ask you again, sooner or later.

I hope this time to hear back from you.

Thanks

Anthony

Note how I have simplified it down to just ‘to what extent are LGBTQ+ … people integrated into your church?’ I also gave him five reasonable ‘excuses’. I really am trying to be gracious here!

Again, let’s wait and see…

Well, Saturday 11th April has dawned and still no word. Because they could indeed have gone on holiday after surviving the hectic Easter weekend – which is a realistic possibility – I am going to leave it until Monday 13th April before I publish this. Let’s give them every chance!

But in the meantime, let’s just consider the ‘no-reply’ reasons that I suggested in the email above. We may be able to glean something that might explain why I haven’t heard anything back.

1) I was wrong; the messages are not in fact getting through to you

This is not the reason; I know from the ‘innocuous question’ test that I asked that the mails are getting through to them.

2) The messages are getting through to you, but you are on holiday or very busy, or both

This is possible, which is why I’ve given them so long before publishing. But given that I copied my final email to the pastor’s personal email account as well as the church one, I’d have thought that it would have got through to someone at least. If I do hear back at a later date, and they were/are still on holiday, then I will update this essay to reflect that. Can’t say fairer than that.

3) You suspect that my neutrally-expressed question is from someone who would not want to come to your church if they thought that LGBTQ+ people *were* welcome there

…or (I will lump these two reasons together)

4) You suspect that LGBTQ+ people would would not want to come to your church if they thought they would *not* be welcome there, but you don’t want to put them off by telling them that

In other words, they are worried that I might not like their answer, for either of those reasons or maybe some other reason. In which case, if they’re in any doubt, they should ask for me to clarify the question, and not just ignore the email. Another church I once asked this question of, at least offered to come and have a chat with me, which I graciously declined. Now that’s the way to handle this if they’re in any doubt. But, especially regarding the opinions of other believers as I mentioned in point (3), it is worth mentioning that the fear of man (and man’s opinions) has to do with voluntarily placing the ownership of our lives into the hands of men, whether we realise it or not. We change our behaviour in order to be accepted. Well, there’s no need to do that, not ever. Jesus didn’t do it, and neither should we. It’s not about pleasing men at all, not even other believers who want you to conform. Your life, your reputation, your ministry, and your church belong to God, not to the people who would try to judge you. Proverbs 29:25 (KJV) says that “The fear of man bringeth a snare but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe”. It’s worth remembering that.

5) You and your leadership team are as yet undecided on your stance on LGBTQ+ issues, or at least on how to respond to my questions. In which case, please acknowledge this with a simple, ‘We’ll get back to you’, unless of course you’re not going to get back to me!

This would kind-of be fair enough, and, again, if they need to decide on something, then maybe they will contact me later – I will update the essay if they do. But there was also no ‘we’ll get back to you’ note either, so I seriously doubt I’ll hear back unless, as we’ve already considered, holidays.

There’s a sixth reason that I left out of the email because it’s not all that polite; remember I was trying to be reasonable, a) in the hope of getting an answer and also b) to not want to offend a brother in Christ. And that sixth reason is that they just decided to ignore the problem and hope it will go away. It’s very cosy behind that there sofa…. 🤣🤣🛋️ Well, I might go away, but my writing won’t 😂 This is the cowardly approach, to put it bluntly. What would it have cost them to reply to me? And even if the cost was huge, in whatever terms, would it not be worth it in order to rescue a ‘sinner’ from the pit?

There’s also the additional possibility that they think it’s all a joke or a ruse; that I’m just trying to wind them up, provoke them, or something else – maybe they thought I was a militant anti-Christian just using the LGBTQ+ question as a way of starting an argument! – and therefore to reply would be to feed the trolls. Well, in response to that, I’d say that while in this piece I have indeed tried to keep a humourous slant on most of the prose[7], the question was not asked as a joke, nor as a wind-up or provocation, and nor should it be assumed to be one. It should be standard practice to treat seriously any question from a new/unknown contact, unless and until they know for sure that it was a joke or something worse. As we have seen in my explanations above, the questions were genuine in that I was trying to ascertain how ‘safe’ the church would be for me, and that was clearly expressed in my original messages. That I could write it up, in the same manner as if it were an experiment, is simply my way of trying to make sense of it using the analytical mind that God has given me. So, it’s not a ruse; it is a perfectly valid question, asked for a real and clearly-stated reason.

To sum up all that blather: There’s just no excuse!

Monday 13th April, in the evening. Ok, still no reply after yet another week. In fact it’s been like three weeks now, just over. I’d say it’s time to stop the experiment, and publish my results.

And I will also send them the reassurance that I will not be bothering them again:

Lessons Learned

Hi [Pastor’s name]

Well, you’ll be pleased to know I won’t be asking you that LGBTQ+ question again. It’s sad that you didn’t feel that you could reply, by hey-ho; I’m sure you had your reasons.

I had hoped for better; [I then shared something personal which I won’t go in to in public, but it’s about me identifying with the pastor as a brother and fellow human].

Anyway, I asked the LGBT question because I was thinking of coming to your church, and I needed to know how safe it is for people who are ‘different’, as I openly said in my initial messages.

I’ll tell you straight off that I am not gay, nor am I of any other ‘alternative’ sexuality. I am actually autistic, and I have several personal disability issues that make it very hard for me to be in a public place, because I am so ‘different’. The LGBTQ+ question is simply a litmus test that I use in order to try to find out whether or not I will feel comfortable attending a church, despite my differences. 

And I had so much to give. I am a recently retired NHS professional and with a classical education; I have a Bible college qualification; and I have formal qualifications in theology. On 12th July this year, I will have been walking in love and power with Jesus for 46 years. I am a highly experienced and talented Charismatic worship leader, having led countless worship meetings varying in size from housegroups up to congregations of hundreds of people. I am a gifted musician, and I have also done much public preaching work. I have had extensive training and experience in ministering in spiritual gifts, with proven proficiency in words of knowledge, in prophetic ministry, and in spoken and written word, doing only what I see my Father doing. I have even ministered on a couple of occasions at Brunel Manor. However, I do not put my good works on show; I do not do things for human approval, so you’ll not have heard of me. I’m just a humble minister of Jesus who practises His work quietly and behind the scenes; I am one who does the will of his Father in Heaven.

Sad to say, then, that the lack of any answer to my question has made me completely sure that I will not attend your church, unless of course the Lord tells me very clearly that He wants me to do so.

I was a stranger, and you would not take me in. You wouldn’t even answer my serious question.

I have written this experience up factually, and have published it on my blog at

[Gave him the link to this article]

I haven’t named anyone, neither church nor individual. Jesus doesn’t work like that, and neither do I.

Grace and Peace to you and, despite your failure to respond to me, I pray every blessing on your ministry; Grace is not dependent on behaviour. We will meet in Glory, but likely not before.

Shalom, shalom

Anthony

I might get a reply; I might not. Probably not, given their previous record. And to be honest I’m not bothered whether I do or I don’t. I simply would not want to be a part of their congregation; I just can’t be doing with rudeness like that. And from fellow brothers in Christ too!

Conclusion:

The bottom line for the experiment, then, is this: They fail the test.

They fail to convince me that they are a church where Jesus would fraternise with ‘tax collectors and sinners’. If this were not so, then they would have proved it to me, simply by replying to my question. Sure, they may have homeless people there. But that’s not the whole story, as well they will know. Had they been an ‘accepting’ church, then they’d have given their questioner the benefit of the doubt, should any doubt exist. It seems to me that, in their church, judgment triumphs over mercy. And by comparing that attitude with their Rulebook, in James 2:13, I’d say they’ve got that back-to-front from how God wants it.

But it answers my question. It’s not a church I could go to, simply because I would not feel safe there. They failed to be up-front about a simple question; there’s no telling what it would be like to actually be in that congregation. So I won’t be going. I wouldn’t dream of attending a church where such an offensive attitude is displayed towards complete strangers. This is Evangelicalism at its worst[8].

Because they were not upfront about answering the question, to me that demonstrates that they are just as closeted and inward-looking as any of the other more culty Evangelical congregations. They will claim that they want to be a ‘witness for Jesus’, and they’ll want to try to grow their church by dragging in more ‘converts’, but this will happen slowly and at the end of the day their converts will be ‘..twice the sons of Gehenna that [they] are’ (Mt 23:15), because they will have to conform to the societal norm within that group – which is to be inward-looking. I have had long experience with groups like that, both from inside and out, and they look to be just the same old, same old as other groups I have been part of.

No, these people have nothing to offer me; there is nothing good for me here, and, conversely, I am sure that anything I bring from my own storehouses (Mt 13:52) would not be welcomed by them. And so, I have nothing to offer them either. If they had wanted my ‘services’, based on what looks quite like a resumé on my final message to them 😂 then that message would have been responded to in, shall we say, positive terms. I have also noticed that groups like this are absolutely terrified of people with ‘proper’ theological qualifications, even though these qualifications, in and of themselves, don’t really mean anything in terms of spirituality. I think it threatens their internal power and authority structures, but that’s just my personal opinion. These are people who are afraid of proper theology because it could end up changing, even if only slightly, their cherished beliefs; in short, they are not going to be teachable[9].

Also, the complete lack of any answer to the question, “…to what extent are LGBTQ+ people integrated into your church?”, means that the answer is actually this: They’re not.

And therefore they will also likely have difficulties in accepting people like me, with my ‘differences’. The Litmus Test has done its job and saved me from a world of hurt!

So, to sum up:

I was a stranger[10] and they would not welcome me. For whatever reason, they will not answer my reasonable question even though their systems are working.

Do they think that Jesus would be pleased with that attitude, given that He said that inasmuch as they didn’t do it for the least of these, they didn’t do it for Him?

I will leave you to ponder….

Grace and Peace to you all

As part of the process of writing this article, I also thought of a lot of things that might be useful for churches and their leadership who might be interested in beginning to accommodate LGBTQ+ and other ‘different’ people in their congregations. The work is pretty unpolished but it might be useful, and so I have published it as an Appendix below.

I Was A Stranger – Part II – Appendix
Discussion, Ramifications and Recommendations

(What it means if you hide behind the sofa!)

I wanted the results of the experiment to be constructive: for me; for my readers; and for the leadership of that church if they do follow the link that I gave them. And, indeed, I also want it to be constructive – indeed edifying! – for any person in a position of church leadership who might read the essay. If I am highlighting faults with the attitudes of Evangelicals, or indeed of any church, towards the full acceptance, or otherwise, of LGBTQ+ people, then it wouldn’t be right to just present the problems without proposing some solutions as well.

Let me begin by explaining that LGBTQ+ inclusion is becoming a major hot-potato issue in the church worldwide, and not just in Evangelicalism. Here’s an excellent quotation from Bill White:

“…non-Christians are asking the L.G.B.T.Q. question before they even enter the door as a litmus test[11] as to whether they will even come in the first place. We can argue about whether that’s fair or not, but we can’t argue about whether that’s reality. They simply will only come to a church that is welcoming of L.G.B.T.Q. people, and not what they call ‘pretend’ welcoming into what they call “second-class citizenship.”
– Bill White

I also found some good evidence of groups who not only see and appreciate the problem, but they also do something about it. For example (and it’s well worth reading carefully, and in detail):

“[In our group] there are no tricks, no half-measures, no false promises, no crossed fingers when it comes to our welcome, affirmation, and celebration of LGBTQ+ people. We affirm the LGBTQ community in all its variations, colors, identities, and expressions”

– The Faith Community (link is here)

That’s what I would call the proper attitude for a congregation who really want to welcome the ‘tax collectors and sinners’ that Jesus had no problems with welcoming and associating with (Mt 9:10). It’s important, then, for modern Christianity in general, and Evangelicalism in particular, to get up to speed with the issues that are caused when LGBTQ+ and other ‘odd’ groups are discriminated against in the church.

Maybe you might think I was hounding that church in my original essay, by asking the Litmus question several times. But I wasn’t. I had a genuine question that, as a potential new congregant, was perfectly valid and perfectly reasonable – and they should have answered it. In essence, it’s no different to asking them if they take a collection/offering, or what kinds of songs they sing. There was no need for them to hide what they think, nor is there any need for them to hunker down behind the titular item of furniture. If they have an existing ‘policy’ (for want of a better term), then they should just get it out there and tell me. If they don’t have a policy, then that’s what they should tell me. If someone asked, ‘Do you serve coffee afterwards?’, I’m sure that would have received a prompt reply. I mean, I haven’t even said I am gay or anything; I have simply asked how they integrate LGBTQ+ people into their group. And that’s all.

As my readers will know, I am a veteran Christian, coming up on 46 years of walking with the Lord; Bible-college trained and with a classical education including formal qualifications in theology; and with decades of experience in the anointed leading of Charismatic worship meetings, playing live instruments, doing musical ministry. I have a gentle, pastoral outlook that just wants to bless people; I just want to be Jesus to others. I’m not going to be modest here: I’d have been a real catch! But of course they didn’t know that. All they see is someone asking an awkward question about how well LGBTQ+ people are accepted. Surely not a major threat[12], nor any reason to not reply?

I don’t know; maybe they think I am gay myself, and therefore it doesn’t matter if this ‘sinner’ doesn’t come along; best be shot of me even before I begin with them! Maybe they’ve forgotten that Jesus Himself welcomed ‘sinners’, including prostitutes!, much to the chagrin of the Religious of His day. Maybe they are scared of damage to their reputation with other Evangelical Christians if they were to do likewise. Guilt by association. Jesus wasn’t bothered by that, and neither should any Christian be.

Well, here are some suggestions for people in leadership of this kind of church, who have been patient enough to have read this far. Kudos to you, if you’re one of them! The suggestions are meant to be constructive, but sadly many Evangelicals would consider them to be anything but. However, I’ll try. The points are raised in no particular order of importance and they are not necessarily linked conceptually with previous points. I probably even repeat myself on occasion. These points aren’t supposed to be a polished treatise like my other pieces, or even the main essay; they’re more of a ‘thought shower’.

  • Nowadays, more and more people are using this question, or a similar one, as a litmus test for churches. If you want to get people in to your church, you need to think right now about how you’re going to answer it, and what ramifications, and indeed consequences, your answer will have with regard to the growth and relevance of your church. And you need to have that answer ready.
  • I understand it that you don’t want to compromise in any way. On the one hand, you don’t want to ‘water down’ the ‘whole counsel of God'[13](Acts 20:27) because it’s “…the world that needs to change and not the Bible”. On the other hand, you also don’t want to tell the whole truth because you know that the truth, as you understand it, is unpalatable to ‘sinners’.  So, what do you do? Do you risk compromise by ‘watering it down’ to make it more palatable, or do you insist on your (likely to be unpopular) interpretation and put people off coming? If we’re being honest, you likely don’t want such awkwardly-different people in your group anyway. And so maybe you need to look again at the doctrinal points that you hold on to so tightly, why you hold them, and whether or not you can let go of them because they are not part of an unchanging truth; maybe they are simply ‘doctrines made by men’? (Mt 15:9) These are exactly the things that Jesus was talking about in that verse in Matthew; and these doctrines actually cause others to stumble.
When you find your belief system to be the thing keeping you from becoming a better person, summon the courage to become a better person than your beliefs.– Jeff Turner
  • Related to the above, remember that most if not all firmly held doctrines are based on someone’s (an individual’s or a group’s) interpretation of what various Scripture passages mean, when those Scripture passages were not originally written to us today anyway[14]. This is why dogmatic adherence to fixed, set-in-stone doctrines is not a good thing, especially when others are damaged, hurt or excluded by those same doctrines. The first few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles tells the story of a group of people whose faith (which isn’t even called ‘Christianity yet at this stage in the story) has taken a remarkable turn from their previous faith of Judaism, and their ideas are still in a fluid state and they’re trying to come to terms with it all. This is the normal state of being for people (i.e. you and me) who are constantly trying to make sense of the whirlwind of amazing things that God is doing in our time, just as He was doing back then in their time! So, what it should look like for people who claim they want to ‘be like the early Church’ is that they should be constantly changing the way they relate their faith to society, and be in a constant state of fluidity. Solid doctrines don’t really have a place when God is constantly moving; concrete foundations are not very mobile.
  • Remember that the people you are rejecting, or causing to stay away – which amounts to the same thing – are Jesus. “Inasmuch as you did not do this for the least of these, you did not do it for Me” (Mt 25:45). And especially, in my case, where I am a stranger – you don’t know me – and you did not welcome me Mt 25:43). You didn’t even say, Come along anyway and judge for yourself’, which would have been far better in terms of acceptance and even Scriptural – see John 1:45-46. Yes, you love Him; that’s not in doubt here. But you also need to love these people unconditionally – without conditions of any kind – just the same as God loves you. That’s part of what Grace means.
  • You may well be afraid, generally, of presenting a ‘bad witness’, by being seen doing things like smoking or swearing, but this is worse. Here, you are displaying a lack of transparency, the appearance of trying to hide things (or at least not declare things up-front, which amounts to the same thing) and indeed a knowledge or a suspicion of, yes, just how absurd and out-of-date many of your ideas are. But you need to rethink your idea of ‘the word of the Lord endureth forever’ (1Pet1:25; Ps 119:89; Isa 40:8), and apply that Scriptural concept properly and contextually in your lives and beliefs.
  • By not answering perfectly valid questions such as mine, you show a great disrespect for your questioner, because you are showing that their question is not worthy of an answer. In fact, I personally feel quite devalued in human terms, if I’m honest. I didn’t deserve to be ignored. You have devalued me even without meeting me, which is really quite an achievement! I would say that your stubborn ignorance in this case made me realise that you are not the kind of group I would feel safe joining anyway, for several reasons – not least the strong potential for rejection. So I am also glad that you ignored the question, because now I have not had to waste emotional energy on developing relationship, only to have it all count for nothing further down the line.
  • You are also demonstrating pre-judgmentalism, where you have judged the assumed motives or alignment of your questioner’s heart, but without sufficient evidence or personal context. God knows your questioner, and values them individually and personally. And so should you, if you claim to live in Him (1Jn2:6).
  • You will miss out on the unique gifts and talents of people who would have been able to give much to your congregation, both to your enrichment and to theirs. And that’s without you ever knowing them, irrespective of whether they were gay or not.
  • You may well pride yourself in the people you accept. Maybe you accept homeless people alongside mansion-dwellers, and that’s great. But if you reject certain types of people for other reasons – and let’s face it, those reasons are subject to your own personal decisions (we will accept homeless but no gays, thank you very much) – then you are no different from other churches who also reject people for their own, different, reasons and criteria. Maybe you feel better for being a church that does not reject the homeless, whereas ‘that lot down the road’ won’t let someone join the church unless they drive a BMW. Well, by rejecting LGBTQ+ people, and even innocent and valid questions about your church’s attitudes towards them, you demonstrate that you are, in fact, just as bad as ‘that lot down the road’ 🤣 . Acceptance based on behaviour is judgmentalism. If you accept me despite being ‘weird’ due to my autism, but don’t accept LGBTQ+ people, then you are showing a selectivity based on your perception of a person’s worthiness based on their behaviour or inclinations – and this is not a selectivity that God has. You do not reflect your Father in Heaven if you behave like this.
  • You may see this entire thing as being a persecution, or an ‘attack’ from the Enemy. Most Christian organisations, who are entrenched in their beliefs, pass off any criticism (even that intended to be constructive) as such, so that they feel justified in ignoring it. But fellow believers can also make edifying comments and criticisms that are supposed to help you. Iron sharpens iron, and all that (Prov 27:17). This means that the essay is possibly prophetic for you, in a similar way to how the prophet Nathan ministered to King David in 2 Sam 12. If this is the case, then you will have to ask the Lord what He wants you to do with the things you have read here, if indeed you have the ears to hear. Accept or reject? Spit out the bones and eat the meat (i.e. accept some of it, reject some of it)? Either way, do not miss out on what the Lord wants to do with your congregation in order to help you bear more fruit for Him.
  • Remember that, in damaging your own reputation, you are also damaging God’s reputation. So much of your effort is spent on not being a ‘Bad Witness’, and yet, sadly, this is exactly what happens when you a) are not transparent, b) ignore sincere questioners, and c) reject LGBTQ+ people – people that Jesus certainly would not have rejected, and that He died for while they were still ‘sinners’ (Rom 5:8).
  • Like it or not, ‘the World’ aren’t stupid; they know what Jesus looks like, despite the best efforts of the church to misrepresent Him. And in many ways I’m afraid they know what He looks like better than you do, because your vision is skewed by the rules you have to keep. And this means that they will not see Jesus in your congregation, because you do not behave like the Friend of Sinners. Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did (1Jn2:6). In your zeal to remain faithful to the Bible, you are neglecting other more important parts of that same word. Woe to you Pharisees neglecting the important parts (Mt 23:23). In effect, you shut the door of Heaven in men’s faces (Mt 23:13). Ignoring a valid and polite question, which came with a clear explanation of its purpose, tells me that you have something to hide. Is it not a colossal red flag where any group, not just a church, is anything less than fully transparent when it comes to openly and unambiguously stating their beliefs?
  • If one of your main objectives is to save people from Hell – and I am assuming that a) you believe in Hell and therefore b) this is indeed your objective – then surely any changes you need to make with regard to the way you relate to people – any people – must be worth it? According to Jesus, it’s the sick who need a doctor (Lk 5:31). And in the way that you acknowledge that you yourselves are ‘sinners in need of a saviour’, you proclaim that not only do you need that Doctor too – don’t we all?! – but also that your particular need for the Doctor does not disqualify you from, for example, full inclusion in the Church, whereas others’ needs for that same Doctor – like being gay, for example – does disqualify them. If all sin is equal in God’s sight[15] then you yourselves are no ‘better’ than those you would disqualify from full inclusion and involvement in your congregation. If all sin is equal in God’s sight, then either you should not disqualify LGBTQ+ people from full inclusion including holding positions of responsibility in the congregation, or you yourselves should not hold such positions. According to your own rules, their ‘sin’ is no worse than your ‘sin’ in God’s sight. In some ways, they’re even doing better than you are: at least their ‘sin’ is out in the open. Only you and God know of your own ‘secret sins’ that you struggle with every day; these are not out in the open[16]. You know exactly which sins I am talking about.
    Don’t you?
  • If you discriminate (because that’s what it amounts to) against people in certain groups, like LGBTQ+ people, or smokers, or those with tattoos, for example, then you are declaring yourselves to be somehow ‘better’ than they are; somehow more ‘deserving’ of God’s Love and Grace, like the Pharisee in Luke 18:11. As your Rulebook says, you know that you should not consider yourselves better than others (Phil 2:3, Rom 12:3). In Micah 6:8, where it says,

“He has shown you, O Man, what is good
And what does the Lord require of you?
To do justice
And to love mercy
And to walk humbly with your God”

…you need to remember that part of walking humbly with God involves not considering others to be in any way inferior to yourself, and you also probably don’t know that God is non-discriminatory in the way in which He gives His Grace. You see, if they don’t deserve it, then neither do you. Fortunately, though, Grace is not so much undeserved (which I know is the standard Evangelical line) so much as it is unearned – nothing you have ever done, nothing you are doing, and nothing you will ever do will make you any more or less worthy to receive God’s Grace. It is a free gift – by definition, a gift is free; who ever paid for their own gift? – and, unlike the standard threat to kids at Christmas where parents tell their child that if you do not behave, then it’s no presents for you, God does not have a naughty list (Heb 8:12). It doesn’t matter if you’ve been naughty or nice; God gives His Grace and His gifts freely to those who do not deserve them, either by actions or by inclinations. And the same criteria apply to those that YOU deem unworthy! But, you might argue, does that mean that a person can ‘sin’ as much as they like and God will still like them? Well, go and honestly work it out, is all I will say on that matter. Ask God for wisdom (Jas 1:5). I could give you some pointers, especially to my own articles, but this is the sort of thing you need to work out for yourself so that you can own your own conclusions.

  • Whether you like it or not, all Christians are one Body in Christ (Gal 3:28). This includes every believer, gay or not, smoker or not, alcoholic or not, gambler, adulterer, whatever. We are one Body. And you have no right to exclude some members of the Body on the basis of your own beliefs, whether or not you consider these as being Scripture-based. Remember you could be wrong, even if your beliefs are based in Scripture. You may think that ‘God never goes against what is written in Scripture’, but that is incorrect, because when Jesus said things like, “You have heard that it is written [something], however I say to you [something different]”, that’s exactly what He was doing; He was going against Scripture. Unless of course you are claming that Jesus isn’t God, which is something that I very much doubt that you would do!
  • Your idea that ‘whoever approves of these things shares in his evil work'[17] is a man-made concept derived from context-dependent verses from two particular letters in the Bible – these verses are found in 2 John 11 and Romans 1:32 (the latter being another verse that is routinely and blatantly ripped out of context). Many Christians use these verses to justify lumping people who support ‘sinners’ in with the ‘sinners’ themselves. Well, you will have to decide. Do you go with your interpretation of St. John’s or St. Paul’s verses, then, or do you emulate Jesus who associated with ‘tax collectors and sinners’ without mentioning their ‘sin’; without bringing it up at all in fact. The Religious of His time saw His association with these people as tacit approval of their ‘behaviour’ or their ‘sin’. How is that different, then, from you saying that whoever approves of, say, gay people, ‘shares in their evil work’? (2 John 11; Rom 1:32) Jesus accepted unacceptable people; He accepted those rejected by the religious. He even died for you while you were still sinners. Should not your attitude be the same?
  • People are more likely to want to come to your meetings if they know they’re not going to be judged or looked down on. Your attitude to LGBTQ+ people models what your attitude would be towards anyone who doesn’t fit in, for whatever reason. Remember that outsiders see Christians as people who love to judge others[18]. Outsiders want to know whether or not, should they join your ranks, they can lead a fulfilling church life including everything they are called to. But they’re gay, then you’re not letting them do that, are you? If it means compromising, then compromise, in the name of Love. Let mercy triumph over judgment (Jas 2:13)!
  • When thinking about caring for ‘the least of these, it is important to note that caring,  also includes valuing them as a person, no matter how ‘unworthy’ you consider them to be, by extending to them the same Grace that God extended to you when you (as you see it) weren’t worthy either. You have become so steeped in religious language, rules and procedures that you have forgotten what it’s like to be a person – say a sympathetic unbeliever or one who is considering believing – on the fringes. Holding these people at arms’ length is, again, shutting the doors of Heaven in men’s faces (Mt 23:13)
  • Let’s do a thought experiment. Just imagine for one moment being a gay person. You join the church, and you ‘become a Christian’. You begin attending a church, and you begin to form close and meaningful friendships with church members, and you invest time and money and talents into the church. No-one knows you’re gay because it just never occurred to you to tell them. But then, you find out (only two months after becoming a Christian) that god hates gays[19]. And he also hates those who affirm them, because guilt by association of course. So, now what do you do? In all innocence, you’ve joined this group of people who will suddenly all[20] have a beef against you. And you wish someone had told you before you joined their group, because now you have a ton of hurt, judgment and rejection to cope with, and you as a new, fledgling Christian who doesn’t know how to cope with all these ‘solid’ Christians telling you how wrong you are and how you have to change or leave. **Thought Experiment Ends!** Think: How would that situation make you feel? Can you see the problem here, in relation to the subject of this essay?
  • I think it’s also a reasonable conclusion that not only would you as a church not be good with LGBTQ+ people, but neither would you be good with those who support and affirm them. So, look at that! You’ve just alienated two groups of people that Jesus loves, for the price of one! Congratulations! Remember that your brother Christians who do affirm LGBTQ+ people are not ‘fallen away’; they are not ‘backslidden’ nor is it the case that ‘they were never true Christians in the first place’. Chances are they said the exact same ‘sinner’s prayer’ that you did, and have lived a Christian life very similar to yours in most respects. Maybe, then, it’s just that they have been listening to Jesus – Who, remember does contradict Scripture when it suits Him (see above) – and He has shown them His heart towards LGBTQ+ people. Maybe their hearts have grown in their walk with Him, and are now more aligned with His heart in this regard. That’s no reflection on you; no-one’s saying that you’re not a Christian or anything like that, or that you don’t listen to Him. It’s just that He has explained to them things that either He hasn’t told you yet, or He has and you weren’t listening or didn’t want to hear. Either way, He’s told them things that you haven’t heard yet, and that’s fine. Maybe now is the time when He wants to tell you these things, maybe not; I wouldn’t presume to tell you that. You will have to listen to Him for yourself.
“If you find that your heart has grown bigger than your doctrine, know that it is the doctrine that needs to go, not the heart that needs to be restricted.”
– Jeff Turner
  • What are you hiding and why? And are you hiding other stuff too? Shouldn’t you be shouting your acceptance and inclusion of ‘tax collectors and sinners’ from the roof tops? Jesus welcomed everyone! Churches who are not upfront about this sort of thing are a red flag; what else are they not telling people?
  • At the end of the day, your failure to even respond to, much less answer, my question, is indicative of cowardice. Yes, you’re hiding behind the sofa! I am guessing that you, like many Christians of the Evangelical persuasion, are running on fear rather than Love. This is the dark side of the coin with such a real and fervent belief as Evangelicalism gives. Yes, there is a real belief in God, in how much He loves us, and that He demonstrated that in Christ Who died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). God is real, Jesus is alive and lives in us, and we know that (well most of us do, anyway) by His Spirit. That’s the bright side of the coin. But that strong belief and faith has a potential dark side as well. It means that if God is indeed real – and our experiences with Him tell us that He is – then it also means that He’s entirely the wrong person to cross, to annoy, because of how powerful He is. He could wipe us out without even thinking about it. In other words, for some Evangelicals, their relationship is based on fear rather than Love[21]. People who believe that seem to think it’s too good to be true that God just accepts us as we are; surely there must be some sort of threat or fear or something involved? But Jesus demonstrated that no, that’s not the case at all. Jesus’s best friend, John the Apostle, put it like this,”And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him. In this way, love has been perfected among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment; for in this world we are just like Him. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love”. (1Jn4:12 (NLT), emphasis mine) This is pretty straightforward to me, and if you want to choose the opposite, then that’s your loss. But if you dare to believe that although it seems too good to be true, it is actually true that God loves you and is not mad with you. This means, then, that He will not smite you or those you love, like a cosmic crime boss, just because you choose to pick the way of loving others, rather than rejecting them. Those who reject others are amongst those to whom Jesus says, in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, “Away from Me, I never knew you!”, because when you rejected the least of these, you rejected Him.
  • Parallel to the fear of God is the fear of Men. Time after time, in the Gospels, Jesus tells his listeners that the opinions of other humans are not important. His teachings against those who pray in public to gain ‘cred’ with onlookers. Those who ostentatiously tip huge amounts of money into the temple coffers to demonstrate their spirituality. And there are others. Paul mentioned it too. And there’s the verse in Proverbs 29:25 which says that,
    “Fear of man will prove to be a snare,
    but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe”
    Refusal to answer my question based on your fear of judgment from other Christians is in opposition to that Proverb. Additionally, 1Cor2:15 says that the spiritual man is subject to no human judgment. So, what on Earth is it that you’re worried about?
    I’m sure that God will continue to come along to your meetings; that He’ll continue to bless you no matter what, simply because He’s like that.
  • Your lack of a reply also tells me how you might cope with people with doctrinal differences – in short, you wouldn’t!
  • You need to learn how to bring out new treasures as well as the old (Mt 13:52). The old really is old; it is tired, dusty and samey, and belongeth back in the nineteenth century where it doth originate. You have drained all the life and love out of your faith; all the vibrancy, and settled for a dull, grey, comfortable sameness where all your boundaries are defined and known. You believe essentially the same things now as they did 100 years ago, back when the mobile device you might be reading this on, right now, would have been seen as sorcery. You need to adjust to society, while giving serious thought to how relevant your interpretation of Scripture is in today’s world. You may not realise this, but many of today’s accepted ‘norms’, both in society and in religion, were once completely unacceptable. Gradually, even Christianity changes in order to ‘allow’ things that weren’t previously ‘allowed’. Failure to change with the times is not a virtue; a praiseworthy ‘sticking to the Scriptures’. It is in fact sticking to the old ways where Scripture actually does not designate such old ways as being ‘correct’ nor does it forbid doing things in new ways. Even deeper than that, the Scripture is fully capable of adapting, and being adapted, to whichever society or time period it finds itself in. What they believed back in the fifteenth century was very different to what we believe now, in just about every aspect of society. To adapt your behaviour and beliefs so that the Scripture is relevant in today’s society is actually to honour it, not to relegate it to irrelevance. This is one of the great beauties of Scripture, and to not allow it to do that is to do it a great disservice.
Concluding comments

And my final conclusion is this: No. That church is not a safe place, either for LGBTQ+ people or, for that matter, for anyone else who is ‘different’. This experiment has exposed red flags galore in this church; even just their simple refusal to answer a single harmless question tells me so much.

No, sooner or later, if you are a person who, for whatever reason, does not fit in, say by being the kind of person who might ask a slightly awkward question, then I can guarantee that you will suffer some kind of spiritual abuse in this church. Maybe not right away, when they want to indoctrinate you in order to ‘keep’ you, during the ‘honeymoon period’, but further down the line; it will happen. Maybe minor abuse, maybe major; the point is it will happen. If they have something to hide, then red flags they be a’flyin’; I’mma stay well away!

The only solution for these churches, if they want to continue to be relevant, is to offer full acceptance in every way, to everyone. In twenty years’ time, people will look back at the attitudes of Christians in this time and say, ‘Why were they so reluctant?’

Grace and Peace to you.

Further Help

If you have been challenged, encouraged or helped by this article, or if you are a member or supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, and you’re wondering if there are indeed churches in the UK who do support LGBTQ+ equality, then please check out the groups linked below to see how they do things. If you’re looking for a local congregation, well even if they don’t have a congregation near you, they may well be able to put you in touch with someone in your area who has similar values. Such churches are more than likely to be accommodating of people with all kinds of ‘differences’. One day, many more churches will do things this way!

Reimagine Church, Nottingham

Oasis Waterloo

 

 

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Although, as I have written in other posts, maybe this was because of my brilliant musical gifting; another Autistic trait! They’d put up with me if it meant I would play the piano for them… 😉
⇧2 On such websites, I also always look for their Safeguarding Policy. I am sad to have to report that such vital information is usually missing from most church websites I have checked out. There have been some I have found, though, that are really quite proud of their safeguarding systems, and they proclaim those systems openly and enthusiastically! And that’s great. 😁 Religious organisations, more than anyone else, should set up safeguarding as a matter of priority, given the strong association between religious organisations and child sexual abuse as well as other forms of abuse. Lack of a safeguarding policy is always a massive red flag to me, either because they haven’t thought of having one (unlikely given today’s litigious climate); they don’t think it’ll ever happen to them (they’re too righteous for that sort of thing ever to happen in their church!); they don’t want to be under someone else’s scrutiny (so, it’s a leadership accountability/power issue); or because it’s actually going on in their midst and they don’t want to prevent it (sick but possible; ’nuff said). Or maybe a combination of the above. I can think of no other reason why a church will not have a publicly available safeguarding policy set out clearly on their website. And that’s pretty poor really. Oh, btw, this church didn’t have one; not that I could find, anyway.
⇧3 It’s ‘potentially contentious’ because, for some, churches, the question I ask will be a non-issue; for others, not so much.
⇧4 The original title for this piece was going to be ‘Hiding Behind the Sofa’; hence the header picture of a terrified bloke who daren’t come out from back there….
⇧5 Check out my essay ‘Thinking In the Box‘ for a previous, true real-life example of this sort of behaviour, although probably nobody died behind the sofa on that particular occasion. But hey, who knows… 😉
⇧6 If you don’t think so, well I’m sorry but I myself will sleep just fine tonight 😉
⇧7 This is partly to protect my mind from the quite frankly offensive sheer ignorance and rudeness displayed by their ignoring my messages – which is at the same time both disgraceful and disgusting. I really don’t understand how ministers of the Gospel could be so rude as to not reply to a perfectly inoffensive question.
⇧8 Well, nearly so; I mean obviously things like child sexual abuse and stuff is a lot worse. But ignoring the messages is in itself a form of abuse, and that’s before I’ve even darkened their doors with my presence!
⇧9 I sometimes think that this is why so many churches just stick to reading and discussing familiar Bible passages, because of the warm and comfortable, familiar feeling it gives them. Which is fine, if that’s what they want, but for me nothing short of the fizzing, solid presence of God will do!
⇧10 They don’t know me, so by any definition I’m a stranger.
⇧11 Interesting how he, quite independently, uses the Litmus Test terminology that I too have adopted! I used it because I am a retired professional pharmaceutical scientist, so it meant something to me at least!
⇧12 I apologise for calling you Shirley, unless of course that is actually your name 😉 Yes, that’s from the classic movie ‘Airplane’ (1980), “Surely you can’t be serious?” “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley” 🤣
⇧13 I mean here that you don’t want to ignore any important verses that you consider pivotal in forming your doctrines and policies. In practice, however, for most churches this usually turns out to be not so much the ‘whole counsel’ meaning the entire sweep of Scripture, as they claim they mean, but just the verses they have chosen to not ignore. People who claim that they proclaim ‘the whole counsel of God’ never actually do so.
⇧14 All you need to do is to look at the same passage in a number of different English translations of the Bible (I have twelve of these, including a Hebrew and Greek Interlinear, and a Greek-only New Testament Interlinear with a different Greek text; am I a sad man or what!) to see that the wording of the translations (even in the Greek) is slightly different. How then can someone hope to form a cast-iron doctrine on what is essentially a paraphrase of the original-language text, both in wording and possibly even in meaning?
⇧15 This is a standard  doctrine in some (but not all) branches of Evangelicalism, probably based on Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death”, and the nature of the sin required to qualify for that death is not specified simply because all sin pays the same wages: death!
⇧16 And knowing what Evangenitals are like (Evangenitals being Christians with an unhealthy interest in what others do with their private parts! 🤣 ), they are probably sexual ‘sins’.
⇧17 A standard argument to prevent gentle Christians from affirming (well, openly, at any rate!) LGBTQ+ people and their relationships.
⇧18 I have to be fair and say that this is a human trait, not just a Christian one. There are those for whom it appears that their entire purpose in life is simply to judge others. I wouldn’t want to live like that!
⇧19 For the purposes of this thought experiment, let’s say that ‘god hates gays’ is that particular church’s attitude towards gay people; not all of them are like that, but this hypothetical church is!
⇧20 And it will be all of them; the entire church will know within a matter of minutes. Church gossip is one of the most lethal and unstoppable forces in the Universe!
⇧21 And they’ll justify that by claiming that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That’s not quite what that verse means….

Spring Forward, Fall Back

Personal, Humour
By the time you read this, it might be too late!

If you went to church this morning, you may well have noticed some regular congregants sneaking in at the back about an hour after they would normally have arrived. They’ll have been looking quite sheepish, I’d have thought.

In fact, you may even have been one of those sheepish people yourself; you’ll know by now why this happened, and this post is indeed too late for you!

My apologies for being completely unhelpful. 😉

Last night, (or, more accurately, this morning at 02:00), daylight saving time came into effect here in the UK; the clocks went forwards by an hour. This means that everyone who forgot about this annual event[1] will have been running an hour late today until they realised what was going on. Spring Forward, Fall Back. In the Spring, you move the clocks forwards an hour. In Fall (autumn) you move them back an hour. Nice and simple, or so you’d have thought!

When I led Sunday worship on a weekly basis, at my old church in Leeds, on that last weekend in March there were always some people who came in an hour late. Always! I was usually strongly tempted to welcome them by name, as they tried to sneak in unobserved at the back[2], and even maybe invite them to come and sit at the front like naughty schoolchildren 🤣 Believe me, the temptation was almost irresistible![3]

Despite the ‘lost’ hour, depleting our precious weekend by sixty irreplaceable minutes (you’ll see why they were ‘irreplaceable’ in a minute!), we were never once treated to an hour’s shorter sermon[4] on one of these Spring Forward weekends. Or even no sermon at all! But of course that never happened either.

And what makes it even funnier is what happened at the other end of the year, in the autumn, (usually the last weekend in October) when the clocks go back an hour so you get to spend an extra hour in bed if that’s what you want to do. Or, maybe you might want to take things a little easier on the Sunday because, if you think about it, you’ll actually be going to bed an hour later that evening and you’ll be wondering why you feel tired!

But not with our church. Oh, no. In our church, on the ‘Fall Back’ weekend, we were ‘invited’ to turn up an hour early for church, so as to be able to engage in an hour-long prayer meeting before the main service. The idea was to ‘redeem the hour in the Name of the Lord’, for goodness’ sake[5]. You’ve got an extra hour to spare (a huge assumption at the best of times!), so, then, why not come and join our prayer meeting!

Now in some ways that would be fair enough. Spend an hour in the presence of God, in the company of fellow believers, and all that.[6]

But my problem with it was that yes, let’s spend that hour in a prayer meeting, but then why not return the favour in six months’ time by, as I said above, reducing or even removing the sermon so as to pay us back? Now there’s an idea! That really appealed to my sense of fair play, if I’m honest; at least, it would have done had they actually done it. But they didn’t, of course! 😂This is Religion we are talking about here! Novel, inventive or original thought is not, generally, a feature of the Religious mindset.

Still, at least in a sermon of over an hour’s duration, and considering that we’d all had one hour’s less sleep on the previous night, we still might have got the chance to recover that lost extra hour’s sleep that we’d forfeited those six months previously….

As long as the beady-eyed pastor doesn’t spot you, anyway! 🤣

Grace and Peace to you!

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Some might argue it’s a biannual event, but it’s not; I’m only talking there about the clocks going forwards in the Spring!
⇧2 Of course, as the meeting leader I was always facing towards the back, so I spotted them coming in even if no-one else did!
⇧3 There was a dear couple in that church, with whom I am still in regular contact, and they were notorious for never being on time for anything. They were reliable in terms of attendance, in that they rarely missed a meeting, but they were always late. For everything. And they still are. They are very dear to me, and they often come down to Devon on holiday, so we invariably arrange to meet up. And they are always at least 20 minutes late at our pre-arranged rendezvous. For us, if someone in the church asked us before a meeting, “Are [the couple’s names] coming today?, my reply would usually be, “Yes; if they haven’t arrived yet, that means they’re coming!”
⇧4 Anyone who has been to an Evangelical church on a regular basis will know that in some instances, sermons can last over an hour. It’s enough to make one believe in Hell 😉
⇧5 As if God lives to a strict timetable…
⇧6 And to be really fair, I actually enjoyed prayer meetings; the sense of God’s presence was really strong there – as it should be! – and in fact I used to go to a weekly early-morning prayer meeting at 0600 on a Monday morning in Otley, a town a few miles from my house (I got a lift there with another church member  who went there regularly too). At a certain point in the meeting, I would get up and leave in order to go to the bus station, which was just around the corner, to get the first bus into Leeds City Centre where I worked.

Josie

Personal

This is Josie, our Miracle Chicken.

In October last year, Josie was free-ranging in our large garden when she was attacked and left for dead by a fox. I know it was a fox because I saw it myself and chased it off, then went to look for Josie.

I found her under the bushes in the garden in a state of shock and surrounded by a pile of feathers; she had at least three deep-penetration wounds: two bite marks in her back and a big one under her back end. We immediately treated her for shock, and arranged to get her in urgently to be seen by the brilliant Ollie at Dart Vale Vets here in Devon.

Ollie agreed to try to save her, although he gave her a less than 50% chance of survival. He cleaned her up, sewed up the wounds as best he could (on the biggest wound, there wasn’t enough skin to be able to close the wound fully) and gave her some antibiotics and pain relief.

We kept her in the house for three weeks – she’d always wanted to come in to the house and now she had to be indoors! – and gave her her treatments. Chickens don’t like to be given oral antibiotics so that was a struggle every day! But she survived.

She survived.

Now, she has a secure walk-in run and cage out in the garden; sadly we can’t take the risk of letting her out freely any more because the fox still visits; we see it regularly on our overnight security camera footage, so we know it can still get in.

And now she also has two new sisters, both rescued from industrial egg farming just like she herself was rescued four years ago.

In this picture, Josie is perched on one of the ladder perches in her cage, about to begin devouring a tray of bird seed, a treat that she and both her sisters love.

She really is a Miracle Chicken, and we are so glad that we saved her life that day. Poor little sweetheart can’t go out free-ranging any more, sure, but she’s still lovin’ life and you really can’t tell that anything ever happened to her.

Dear little Josie. We are so proud of her! ❤️

My Desert Island Discs!

Insights, Personal

I am an avid BBC Radio 4 listener.

While I do listen to the BBC news on there, it’s always with a hefty pinch of salt… however, there are also quite a few intellectual-type programmes on Radio 4; things that engage my mind and my thinking. There’s some very good humour too, and there’s also some terrible humour, of the kind where you need to be told it’s humour or you’d never have noticed[1]. In particular, I actually find ‘Woman’s Hour‘ to be really interesting and useful, for reasons which are probably too complex to go into here.

But there’s also some more personal-style programmes on there, and one of these is ‘Desert Island Discs‘, which I usually listen to on a Friday as I am cleaning out our rats’ cage.

The format is simple. Each episode features a ‘celebrity’ – referred to as ‘the castaway’ – who is about to be stranded on a desert island, and has to choose a list of eight musical tracks[2] which they consider to be important to them for one reason or another. The show is centred around an informal ‘interview’ with the castaway, where they introduce each track and give the reasons why they have selected it to accompany them to the desert island. A short excerpt from each track is then played, or maybe the entire piece if it is very short[3].

The interview with the castaway usually elicits anecdotes, attitudes and wisdom, in a highly-varied mix from castaway to castaway, which are usually fascinating to hear. In addition, at the end of the show, they are told that, in addition to the complete works of Shakespeare, and the Bible[4], they are also allowed to choose one other book and a ‘luxury item’ that they would take with them to their desert island. And then to choose which one song from their list they would simply have to have with them on the island.

As I listened today (it’s a Friday as I write this, so it’s clean cage day once more for the ratties!), I thought to myself, “I wonder which tracks I’d choose?”, closely followed by, “This might make a good blog post!” and so here I am, about to be marooned on a desert island[5] and having to think of eight tracks, a book, and a luxury item.

My tracks are not necessarily my favourite music. But they do have meaning for me, and that’s what I’ll share.

So, here we are. My Desert Island Discs. I will present the full version of each track, and my readers will maintain full control as they can always stop each track as they get bored!

Find somewhere comfy to sit; this is a long one!

All my life, I have been surrounded by music. My maternal Grandad, whom I never met (he died of cancer shortly before I was born), was an amateur operatic performer and musician. My Mum and Dad were part of a concert party that used to do performances in local theatres. And then my Dad was a professional musician for many years working hard doing the club circuits in the North of England. Back then, in the heyday of the Working Men’s Clubs, many well-known names in British entertainment cut their teeth on the stages of smoke-filled halls filled with ordinary, everyday working-class people who were simply leaving behind the grind of everyday life for a few hours and just having a good time. This scene was what was known as ‘Clubland’. Entertainment in Clubland was provided by snooker tables; darts; bingo; slot machines; the raffle; well-priced, top quality beer; and the ‘turn'[6]  the Artiste, aka a ‘club act’. The artiste would be a musician, a singer,  a comedian, a drag queen, or maybe a magician, maybe a ‘muscleman’; a man with a bodybuilder’s physique who would pose and show off his muscles as his ‘act’. Sometimes, several acts would be on each evening, so as to provide a range of different entertainments for the club membership. There was a very wide variety of such artistes, and my Dad’s thing was to sing and play guitar and the ukulele-banjo (banjolele). His stage name was ‘Johnny Douglas’ and, in my opinion, he was one of the best turns in Clubland, retiring from performing in 1986 when he opened his bodybuilding gym in Yeadon.

This is my Dad in 1978 on one of his publicity cards:

My Dad met and worked with many such artistes, including such well-known names as Frankie Vaughan, Des O’Connor, Joe Belcher, comedian Pete ‘Machine-Gun’ Wallis[7] (so named because of his rapid-fire delivery of his jokes; he was so fast that you only got chance to laugh at about one in every three because you’d be so busy laughing that you’d miss the next couple of gags…), Freddie Starr, Bernard Manning, Tessie O’Shea, Alan Randall, Les Dawson, and many others, all of whom started their careers on the Clubland circuit. For a flavour of the sort of thing that the working-mens’ clubs used to have going, check out this episode of ‘Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club’, which was a long-running TV series in the 70’s which gently lampooned – ‘gently’, because it was so realistic – the sort of thing I’m talking about. Anyway, I used to go with him often and watch him perform; although I was only young (and therefore couldn’t drink alcohol in the clubs, not that I wanted to anyway!) I was still allowed in because I was part of my Dad’s ‘road crew’. I used to assist him in plugging in his gear, sound checks and setting things up. And later, while I was learning to drive, I used to drive him to and from his shows. Much of my pre-test driving practice was carried out at night!

My Dad performed numbers[8] from two main genres: Wartime; and Country and Western (C&W). He sang songs from both the World Wars; veterans of both conflicts were still alive in those days, and his singing of nostalgic songs which used to remind them not only of their youth, but also of lost friends, and these songs were always welcome.Songs like ‘When the Poppies Bloom Again’, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and similar. I particularly remember that October used to bring ‘El Alamein Reunions’, where soldiers from both sides of the Battle of El Alamein used to sing together, especially the song ‘Lili Marlene‘, which was the song that men on both sides of the lines used to sing at night. At these reunions, the Royal British Legion clubs, which were part of Clubland, used to host their former enemies with great enthusiasm; a marvellous thing to see.

The C&W stuff was a mix of Hank Snow, Johnny Cash, George Hamilton IV, Jim Reeves, and others. I particularly remember him doing a song with his singing partner, Kay, where they sang the classic (although not strictly C&W) ‘Something Stupid'[9]. ‘Kay Stevens and Johnny Douglas’ was the title for their double act when they were working together[10]. In addition, as part of his Second World War repertoire, he used to play a lot of songs by George Formby, including some really rather masterful ukulele playing. My Dad was really talented, but as far as I could tell, he didn’t want to become really famous because the Clubland scene already took him away from us as a family a lot. When he was fully professional, he used to have entire fortnights staying away from home, back for a couple of weeks, then away again staying in digs in remote parts of England. One of those places is the Webbington near Weston-Super-Mare, a place not too far from where I live now; back then it was called Webbington Country Club and he played there for a couple of fortnights a year over the course of several years. And this was before we had things like motorways, especially the M5 which actually runs past the Webbington. Anyway, back to George Formby. Formby songs were pivotal in bringing me into being a musician in my own right. I learned to play the ukulele at the age of seven, and Formby’s music ingrained, into my musical ear, a huge amount of practical and experiential knowledge of how music works, what sounds good and what doesn’t, and the structure and proper use of chords[11]. My stage debut – at the same age – was playing the theme tune for ‘Skippy the Bush Kangaroo‘, for which my proud Dad gave me the princely reward of half a crown – two shillings and sixpence – as extra pocket-money, which for a seven-year-old was an absolute fortune! I still have that uke in my cupboard and I trot it out now and then…

Which brings me rather nicely to my first track, George Formby’s ‘Bell-Bottom George’. I am using this song here to showcase Formby’s extraordinary talent on the instrument. While neither I nor my Dad had Formby’s talent, he was an inspiration to us both, and he’s one of the main reasons why I am a musician. This is the version from the Formby movie that it featured in, the eponymous ‘Bell Bottom George’, first screened in 1943. The ukulele solo at the end of the song is one of his best:

 

At around the same time, I was brought up on a diet of Gerry Anderson’s science fiction (SF) TV series ‘Thunderbirds‘, ‘Captain Scarlet‘ and ‘Stingray‘, and, later on, Anderson’s ‘Space: 1999‘, along with Irwin Allen’s ‘Land of the Giants‘, ‘Lost in Space‘, ‘The Time Tunnel‘, and ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea‘. There were others too, along with movies such as Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘ – and above all, the Apollo moon landings[12]. And SF writers such as E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith, Clifford D. Simak and of course the inimitable Arthur C. Clarke. Also, the astronomer Patrick Moore and, again, Arthur C. Clarke, were decisive in instilling in me a love for astronomy in particular, and science in general. And not forgetting, of course, cosmologist Carl Sagan’s beautiful series ‘Cosmos’ – which came along later in my teens – and all the possibilities that it opened out for my eager and hungry mind.

The effect of these shows and authors was to give me a huge inspiration into technology, science and engineering. To have the confidence to believe in stretching the limits of the possible. To allow my mind and imagination to wander unfettered in the unknown lands of clever inventions of the future, and facts yet to be discovered. Is it any wonder that I became a professional scientist, working in both medical research and then pharmaceuticals?

As an aside, before his career as a musician, my Dad had been an engine fitter in the Royal Air Force, and was on active service in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the mid-1950’s. During his RAF career, he worked on the engines of such varied aircraft as the Avro Anson, Avro Lincoln, Vickers Varsity, Hawker Hunter, Gloster Javelin, DeHavilland Chipmunk, English Electric Canberra, Gloster Meteor and DeHavilland Vampire, and others too. He therefore taught me all I know about DIY, car mechanics, machinery, problem solving in those fields – all of this knowledge and experience culminating in me being able to help my friend Nigel build his Van’s RV-9A aeroplane in a hangar at Exeter International Airport, which is the aeroplane that we now fly and maintain as part of a small team of skilled engineers (there’s four of us). This gives us some of the cheapest flying it is possible to participate in, as we do all the servicing and maintenance ourselves.

Nigel’s Van’s RV-9A aircraft ‘G-CSAM’ under construction and nearing completion at Exeter Airport, March 2022

And, of course, it was only right and proper that my passion for all things aviation should stem from my Dad’s similar passion, including his RAF service. But I describe that passion enough in the rest of my blog, without having to expand upon it here!

Anyway, I digress again! These experiences during my formative years, of being exposed to the possibilities afforded by engineering, technology, and science, gave me my scientific and problem-solving mindset right from the get-go. In addition to being a man of faith, I am also a dyed-in-the-wool scientist. I am a competent engineer and mechanic, and a problem-solver. There are very few problems I can’t solve with the judicious application of my huge skill-set[13]. And it’s all down to the training from my Dad and the inspiration of those early SF TV series[14] and the aforementioned science authors.

But in addition to all of that, it is certain that no SF series was more influential in my life than Star Trek.

Following closely, in my timeline, after Lost in Space, Star Trek took me, and millions of others, to places that we could only dream of. And showcasing technologies that, yes, we could only imagine back then, but which have become real and even, in some cases, already obsolete[15] in my lifetime. Now, granted, we don’t yet have the Transporter Beam (Beam me up, Scotty!) nor the Warp Drive, to give us the ability to travel faster than light. But so many things that Star Trek first thought of are now commonplace in our everyday lives. Things like the ‘communicators’, which are what we now call a ‘smartphone’. Things like the ‘medical beds’, which we now call CT and MRI scanners. Even the fast-opening automatic doors from Star Trek now exist in everyday society. Star Trek was truly visionary in its scope; indeed only in the last decade has humanity discovered the awe-inspiring truth that most of the stars in the Galaxy have planets around them, something which Star Trek took for granted. My lifelong career in science is due to these powerful formative influences in my life; I love these things and they are part of me, part of my character. Star Trek and the Apollo space program especially instilled in me a near-fanatical interest in space exploration, space science, and astronomy. I am a member of The Planetary Society, and also my local astronomical society, because of this interest.

And so, that all brings me to my second track. Here are the opening credits from the original series of Star Trek. A beautiful melody with beautiful chords, and would you believe that there are even lyrics for it. Google it if you don’t believe me (“Beyond the rim of the star-light”)!

Earlier, I mentioned the author E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith. ‘Doc’ Smith wrote within a genre of SF called ‘Space Opera‘; this is essentially the classic, action-packed and rambunctious space adventure fiction involving loads of space battles and aliens, empires and villains. Star Trek, while indeed having ‘bad guys’ and things, and the occasional space battle, wasn’t really space opera as such; although it is listed as such in the link above, I’ve never really considered it to be so, it being more of a thinking-person’s adventure series telling stories which may, or may not, be linked as part of a wider, overreaching story arc. But ‘Doc’ Smith wrote excellent space opera, especially the ‘Lensman’ series, which tells the story of a vast, eons-spanning struggle of good versus evil. There’s everything in that series that a space opera fan could ever want: Galaxy-wide travel and civilizations; battles; super-powers; huge ships bristling with weapons; good heroes and evil villains – indeed, superheroes and supervillains! – evolving propulsion and weapons technology; faster-than-light travel and all sorts of other stuff. Smith also wrote the ‘Skylark‘ and the ‘Family D’Alembert‘ series; again, epic space opera novels that capture the imagination like nothing else.

And all that was simply excellent reading for a young man with a feverish imagination and no real cap on his concept of the limits of the possible.

But then came Star Wars. Here at last was the visual representation of the space opera. Sure, there’d been things like the comic strip ‘Flash Gordon’, from the 1930s, ‘Buck Rogers‘, and other similar stuff.

Star Wars, though, was different. Although it was at first just the one movie, first screened in 1977, there were also spin-off books, magazines and even some toys. I remember I bought my first lightsaber in about 1978! But in Star Wars, space opera was brought to life like nothing had ever done it before. And it has stood the test of time, too; like Star Trek, Star Wars has a worldwide cult following and, also like with Trek, words, phrases and concepts from the franchise have passed into common parlance. I would imagine that when I referred to a ‘lightsaber’ earlier in this paragraph, all of my readers would have known what I was talking about! Sometimes, in common ‘personality quizzes’, where you are asked things like ‘what’s your favourite colour?’ and similar, one of the questions is Star Trek  or Star Wars?, like it’s one or the other that you have to like. Similar to Indian vs. Chinese food. But in both cases, these are false dichotomies; there is a third option. Both Star Wars and Star Trek. Both Indian and Chinese. And, indeed, both science and faith. There is no need for any of these to be in conflict, as each part of a pair covers areas that the other doesn’t. And so it is for these things. So, Star Wars and Star Trek have both been massive influences on me both in terms of the possibilities of technological progress, and the related suspension of disbelief that is so important in faith matters as well as in imagining the limits of the possible. Both are inspirational in their own way.

I need to mention, as a (still relevant) aside here, that I have a special love for classical music. Being both a musician and an Autistic person, I find that I try to over-analyse music that isn’t classical. My mind tries to work it out, to figure out what that chord is, how to play it, what piano fingering to use, and that sort of thing. But because classical music is so a) outside my playing style, and b) beyond my abilities, I have the ability to just let classical music ‘be’, without having to dissect it in my mind. And this is a real relief; it’s really relaxing. Because of this love for classical music, I wanted to bring to my desert island a track that is classical in style. I thought of tracks like ‘Jupiter’, ‘Mars’ or ‘Uranus’, from Holst’s The Planets suite. Or maybe Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March Number 1, which always used to make my Mum cry. Or some Mozart, Grieg, Bach or Boelmann. All these are worthy, but I had to pick something. And so, I chose this piece, Imperial March, by the incomparable John Williams, because, like all the best movie scores, it is classical (in that it’s orchestral), and it represents the Space Opera which, together with the more cerebral Star Trek stuff, completes my love for science fiction and its consequent effects on my scientific mindset. A mindset which has carried me through a long career as a professional scientist and on into my retirement, in which I am still given opportunities to use my mind in a similar way. I really can’t complain!

Here we are, then. John Williams’s Imperial March, from Star Wars Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back:

 

Although I grew up, as I said, surrounded by music, I didn’t listen to music on the radio very often. I think it was because I had no control over the music that was played; I didn’t like a lot of the music in the ‘hit parade'[16] at the time. However, I did have some songs that I liked, and, if I liked a song enough, I would just go out and buy the single. A single, of course, being a 7″ vinyl disc which you played on your record player (a ‘turntable’ as they are known nowadays). I’d only be able to afford about one a month as there were other things I wanted to spend my pocket money on; things like Airfix model kits and paints in order to build up my huge collection of plastic model aircraft. But I did manage to buy the odd record every so often. Bands like ABBA were especially important to me back then, and I did indeed buy their albums… I used to go down into Bradford where I knew I could get the albums I wanted, at WH Smith in the city centre.

And I had other musical tastes too. On one occasion, when my Dad worked in Clubland, he was in ‘digs’ (temporary lodgings) in Spennymoor in northern England. My mother, my brother and I went up to visit him in his digs and, while there, we got playing table tennis with some guys from another band that were staying in the same digs. I learned many years later that the band were in fact the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), a band that had many hits in the British charts during the 70s and 80s, but who never had a Number One hit despite all that. This encounter was before they became famous! Anyway, entirely independent of those table tennis games!, I grew to really appreciate ELO’s music. Because they were semi-classical, I could just enjoy their music without analysing it. Their music was often played on jukeboxes in the indoor skateboard parks I skated at in 1978, during the ‘skateboard craze’ that was on at the time. And when I worked in my cousin’s car mechanic workshop in 1979, their music was on the radio a lot then, too. And so, my late teens were lived to a backdrop of ELO music, amongst other excellent music including ABBA and, of course, a lot of C&W music too – especially that of George Hamilton IV. On my parents’ record player, I used to flog[17] ELO, ABBA and George Hamilton IV numbers all day long. Of course, this meant that I was steeped in really good quality music. What with my Dad and his wartime and C&W stuff, and the bands mentioned above, how could I not then develop – on top of my already-existing gifting – a really good ear for what constitutes good music. And I must say that ABBA’s Benny Andersson was a huge influence on my piano style too, although it would take a very discerning ear to detect that as I actually don’t play anything like him.

So for my third track, then, I have chosen ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky, one of their most well-known, popular and indeed catchy creations. This song epitomises the musical backdrop, as I’ve said, to my teens, and reminds me of my youth spent trying to seriously injure myself doing crazy things on my skateboard – which I still have!

 

On the 12th of July, 1980 – the day I left school, in actual fact – my life was changed irrevocably by my encounter with my best Friend, Jesus. I cannot even begin to describe what my life became after I met Him, save to say that everything – everything – I am today is because of that encounter. When asked by those two rogue evangelists on my doorstep back in May what difference Jesus had made in my life[18], all I could do was laugh deeply from the wellspring of joy – ‘Jesus joy’! – in my heart. Words are simply not enough to describe it. I suppose that by reading some of my blog posts from over the nearly eleven years this blog has been in existence, you might be able to see some of what He’s done, but to try to express it in words, and especially in only a few words – is simply impossible. The Apostle John wrote in John 21:25 that “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written”. And that really is how it feels, to try to describe what He’s done with me, in me and, yes, through me over the decades. Next July, it will be 46 years since I met Him. Words cannot express enough….

And, neither can music. Yes, I was a worship leader and I led people into God’s tangible Presence on a regular basis. But even in that arena, the individual believer has to have their own, unique and individual, encounter with Him. I can’t do that for them; all I can do is to help to set them up so that they can do it more easily, if they choose. And it doesn’t need me to do it for them anyway; somehow, though, God seems to like corporate worship: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! … For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.” (Psalm 133:1, 3b) and so, it ‘works’. But still, my life has been shot through – like the letters in a stick of seaside rock – with the Songs of Heaven. They run through me like lifeblood. And while I know, and can play, literally hundreds of these songs, for me I have two favourites: When I look into Your Holiness and Great is the Lord. The stories of what those songs mean to me is related in this article, but of all the songs I know, When I look into Your Holiness is my absolute favourite. More than any other, that song sums up and epitomises the heart of worship for me. And so, unsurprisingly, I’ve chosen it as my fifth track:

 

One of the things that Jesus set up for me was for me to meet my precious wife, Fiona. Fiona was the perfect wife for me. I can’t even begin to describe why that was the case, save to say that we were soul-mates. Losing her to cancer just over nine years ago was the worst thing that has ever happened to me; much of this blog since then has been about her influence on me and how I have survived her loss.

Our life together had its ups and downs, yes, but over all that time we had eyes only for each other. We were absolutely besotted, I suppose the word is, and we were like teenagers all the time, so smitten were we! Alongside that, our love for Jesus guided our lives, and the reason why I now live in the south-west of England is solely because we followed His lead and moved here on what we believed was His guidance. And I would even be so bold as to say that the fruits of that, I suppose you could call it ‘obedience’, have remained with me to this day. This is where we were supposed to be; indeed this is where I am supposed to be, right here and right now. I have lived my life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and no-one can ever take that away from me, nor convince me otherwise. This is the effect of living the life of faith; the life in the Spirit (Gal 5:16). I say this as a declaration of fact, not as a boast of any kind. This is the only way I know how to live, and it works.

Probably the song that helped me the most, when I lost Fiona, is the gorgeous My God and King (Eyes for Only You) by Shauna Chanda. I showcased it before in my series on Fiona, but here it is once more, as my sixth song. Soak in it; feel it. You will not be disappointed.

This next track has a bit of a different slope to it. In addition to listening to Radio 4, I also listen occasionally[19] to the station Classic FM. For reasons already explained, I love classical music and, while Classic FM do tend to play only the more popular, well-known, pieces, I do occasionally discover a real gem via that station. One such piece, for example, would be the duet from the Bizet opera The Pearl Fishers; look it up on YouTube if you’d like to hear it.

But the piece I am introducing now is one of the few classical pieces I can play; it was always a firm favourite with the audiences when I used to play it on the Blüthner grand at Coleton Fishacre when I used to volunteer there for the National Trust, some years ago.

Me at the Blüthner grand at Coleton Fishacre

It’s called The Ashokan Farewell, composed by Jay Ungar, and it was used as part of the soundtrack for the Ken Burns historical documentary ‘The Civil War‘ (1990). And I first heard it on Classic FM, although the version I heard was not this one I present today[20]. And when I heard it, I was so entranced by it that I had to write down the title (so I would remember it!), and then go and find it and buy it as soon as I got home. The Ashokan Farewell is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and its haunting melody has permeated my life since the first time I heard it. No Desert Island Discs collection compiled by me could ever be complete without it. This piece is so evocative and deep, yet so simple that I can play it; it is absolutely priceless.

This version is the definitive track from the Civil War soundtrack, performed by Jay Ungar and his wife, Molly Mason. Here we go:

 

For my final track, a shorter explanation will suffice. I mentioned earlier that ABBA were a huge influence on my musical style and tastes. Well, of all their songs, none means more to me than their beautiful Thank You for the Music. I have always loved this song, from the very first moment I heard it, and once I began using music in my Christian ministry, it became almost a personal worship song for me.

I mean it full well when I sing this song (apart from the line where Agnetha sings, “I am the girl with golden hair”; I’m a bloke and I have close-cropped dark hair 🤣🤣) because I really am thanking God for the music.

So, I say Thank You, [Lord], for the music, the songs I’m singing. Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing!

There is really no other song to finish with, that encapsulates it all so well: a lifetime of music and worship for which I am so deeply grateful. With this song, just as much as with any ‘proper’ worship song, hymn or chorus, I can express from the depths of my heart the gratitude for the gifting and for the lifelong lifeblood of music that flows through me. I am so thankful!

 

Well, that’s the songs. And so now to the other items I am ‘allowed’ to take on to my desert island with me. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Bible, a book of my choice, and a luxury item. And to select the one song that would mean the most.

Well, I have to say that The Complete Works of Shakespeare holds absolutely no attraction for me whatsoever. I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about Shakespeare; I don’t know, maybe this makes me some sort of infidel or something? But I think he’s vastly overrated and is indeed only held in such reverence because nobody wants to go against the general flow and say out loud how rubbish it all is. Emperor’s Clothes, and all that. I also think that most modern people, even those like me who have a classical education, feel the same – but they daren’t say it out loud. But I have no such inhibitions! No, if we’re going to have a ‘complete works of [some classical author]’, I’d much rather it was Jane Austen. She’s just brilliant. One of my favourite books ever is her classic Pride and Prejudice; I’ve read it at least eight times!

The Bible? Yeah, I can cope with that 😀

My book would have to be The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. I have read it at least fourteen times, but I am sure I could cope with reading it a few more times if I was pressed 😉

And as for my luxury item, well that would simply have to be a piano. Preferably with something to stand it on so its feet don’t sink into the sand on the island 😉 And I would prefer it if it were my own piano, which I love and which was made in 1907 and used to belong to my maternal grandfather. Failing that, a nice Steinway grand would do…. 😉

And which would be the one song that I just couldn’t do without? Well, it’s a difficult choice, for sure. But probably the one I’d pick would be ‘When I Look into Your Holiness’. That, for me, encompasses nicely the main focus of my life, which is to be close to Jesus. ‘Nuff said.

So, there we have it. My Desert Island Discs. Thankfully, I am no kind of celebrity, so I am highly unlikely to be asked to present my track list on Radio 4, and I’d probably decline if I was so asked.

Because I really don’t like the limelight…. 🤣

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 The best humour on Radio 4 is to be found in the programmes ‘Just a Minute‘, hosted by the brilliant Sue Perkins, and ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue!‘, presented by the wonderfully deadpan Jack Dee.
⇧2 Although it has to be said that some of the tracks might well be some sort of ‘rap music’, which phrase is, to me, an oxymoron. In addition, ‘rap’ is the only word in the English language that begins with a silent ‘C’. 🤣
⇧3 This is probably to keep the show flowing properly and maintain the listener’s interest
⇧4 Or other appropriate religious or philosophical work
⇧5 Which, being Autistic and very happy with my own company most of the time, I would find quite a relief!
⇧6 They’d ‘do a turn’, which meant to get up on stage and perform.
⇧7 In that video, he talks just like I used to talk, with that broad Yorkshire accent!  Unfortunately, my accent moderated somewhat once I moved south! But, regarding Pete, I saw him once, at Yeadon Constitutional Club, and I particularly remember his parting shot was “…and please do remember to take care on your way home, because ninety percent of people are caused by accidents…” – he was hilarious!
⇧8 That is, songs
⇧9 Which, while not really their own song, was made into a worldwide hit by Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra
⇧10 Kay had a beautiful singing voice, and she sang in a local choir in Yorkshire until only a few months before she died at the age of over 100.
⇧11 Chords are where several related notes are all played at the same time, to create a fuller sound. This concept is easier if it’s demonstrated rather than explained in writing!
⇧12 Moon landing deniers: Don’t even bother commenting or communicating. Your comment will vanish without trace, into the nonexistence that both it, and you, deserve.
⇧13 Yes, this is similar to another ‘judicious application of…’ saying. IYKYK!🤣
⇧14 The word ‘series’ is both the singular and the plural word for ‘series’, so I don’t call them ‘serieses’ or anything like that!
⇧15 Technology like the 3.5″ floppy disc drive, first seen as the ‘data card’ in Star Trek, but which has now of course passed into history in favour of the ‘thumb drive’.
⇧16 A probably British term for music that was popular at a given point in time.
⇧17 ‘Flog’ meaning to play a song repeatedly again and again ad nauseam.
⇧18 Why do some Christians always have to issue challenges to everything someone says?? It’s like they’re constantly in interrogation mode…
⇧19 Usually when Radio 4 has Gardeners’ Question Time or The Archers on 🤣😂
⇧20 The version I heard on that day was one played by the band of HM Royal Marines, with the violin solo by Capt. J R Perkins. Here it is.

I Will Remember Him

Personal

I always like to acknowledge Remembrance Day by posting something on Facebook about the people who have given their lives in the service of their country. Usually, I post a list of names of people of many nations, both ‘enemy’ and ‘friendly’, who died on active service, to honour their sacrifices.

This year, though, I’m going to bring it a lot closer to home, as well as posting it here on my blog. This is Trooper Brett Hall, of 2nd Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment (2RTR). Brett was 21 years old when he died of wounds received in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. His Viking armoured vehicle was hit by an insurgent’s IED (Improvised Explosive Device, basically a home-made bomb or mine), and although he was evacuated to the UK for the very best medical treatment, he died of his wounds four days later on the 16th September, 2009.

The reason this story brings it home for me is because I knew Brett. He was from Dartmouth and was one of my son Richard’s friends at Dartmouth College. He came over to our house several times and was always a real character with an hilarious sense of humour. You can see it in his face in this portrait of him in his uniform.

It’s when something like this happens, to someone in uniform that you know, that brings it home just how precious is our freedom, and how much we owe to service men and women, both current and retired, when they enable that freedom on our behalf.

Every time I visit The Tank Museum at Bovington in Dorset, which is several times a year, I visit the RTR Memorial Wall, which is just outside the entrance to the Museum.

Brett’s name is inscribed there, and I go there to pay my respects.

Brett would have been almost 40 now, and remembering him is how I make these people’s sacrifices real to me.

I will remember him. And we will remember them.

‘White Christmas’

Personal, Humour, Reblogs

Here’s a re-do of an essay I published ten years ago, almost to the day. I’ve rewritten it but included much of the original prose in there; it’s supposed to be humorous (like I should have to explain that! 😂 ) but hey who knows.

Anyway, bah, humbug! It’s that time of year again!

Yes, it’s the time of year where the shops are full of Christmas displays, some of them works of absolute genius, some of them not quite so good. The time of year where we get bombarded with so much commercialism, adverts and just general Christmas tripe, that by the time it’s all over, many people are sick of it! 🙂 But still, the kids love it and despite all the trappings of the commercial Christmas, still somehow the magic of it has not quite disappeared, at least not for the young. And it’s always great to remember the greatest Gift of all, the Gift of Jesus ❤️

When I was about 14 years old, I had got so tired of hearing non-stop Christmas music in the stores that my cynical mind decided to make a game of it all. To me, at the time, the song that epitomised the whole Christmas selling-things-at-you environment was the song ‘White Christmas’, which was first performed by the legendary Bing Crosby on Christmas Day, 1941.

So I decided to make a game of it. And I’ve been playing that game now for nearly half a century!

I decided that, each year, I was going to see how close I could get to Christmas Day without hearing the song ‘White Christmas’ in a commercial environment.

For me, that would mean hearing it in pubs, shops, malls, Christmas fayres or on TV/radio adverts of any kind. Basically, anywhere where the song was being played in order to try and make people feel ‘Christmassy'[1] and therefore buy more stuff. Maybe it’s because I am a tight-assed Yorkshireman who keeps a solid fist wrapped around his dosh; I don’t know. And my family play it too.

But that’s the game: to see how close you can get to Christmas Day without hearing White Christmas!

I think the closest I have ever come to ‘winning’ was 23rd December, and that was in 1994. Bah, humbug, indeed!

You can make up your own rules as to what counts as a proper ‘hearing’ of the song. For example, what arrangement counts as having ‘heard’ the song? Does it have to be the Bing Crosby version, or would it still count if you heard the Michael Bolton version? What about if you just decide you want to listen to it on your iPod? What if someone learns that you are playing the game and just hums it at you ‘for a laugh’ and to troll your game? And what about the starting time for the game; what if you hear in in mid-July?

For me, I count any hearing of any version, in a commercial environment (including TV/radio ads), after 5th November – what we in the UK call ‘Bonfire Night’. For me, that’s the point at which I personally consider it fair game for the shops to put up their Christmas stuff (rather than late August as some idiots do) – so that’s when my White Christmas game begins!

Speaking of early Christmas selling-things-at-you, here is a photo taken this September!! in my local Morrisons:

I mean, what??? In September? It’s like when they put up the ‘Back to School’ displays in June or July, just as the kids are rejoicing in their upcoming six weeks’ holiday. ‘Back to school’; what already?? Just let them be kids, and don’t spoil their holidays! Commercialism certainly has a lot to answer for!

Of course, it will probably be impossible for someone working in a pub or shop to play this game. All Christmas CDs have a version of this song on them, so in those circumstances you’re stuffed. Sorry about that!

Don’t get me wrong, the song – in the original Bing arrangement – is absolutely gorgeous, full of incredible chord sequences and lovely dynamics. And I love it to bits. 

Interestingly, over the last few years, others too have invented a similar game, based on a different song. They call it ‘Whamageddon‘ and the idea is the same, except the song is Wham!’s 1984 song ‘Last Christmas’. You try to reach Christmas Day without having someone play ‘Last Christmas’ at you[2]. I love that; obviously others in this world are just as cynical about Christmas as I am!

But still the White Christmas game[3] is just a bit of fun; in my family and friends, those of us who play the game always confess to each other when/if we hear the song, and cheer on those who haven’t heard it yet. It’s interesting in that for me, I find it quite funny to see my reaction each time I hear the song for the first time each Christmas season. You know, when it’s ‘Game Over’. Sometimes I just grin wryly, sometimes I think, ‘Oh if only that queue had moved just a little quicker, and I could have been out of here!’ But whatever, my first thought is usually like ‘Ah well, that’s it for another year! Never mind….’

So then, are you in? Get to it! Good luck!

And then we’ll see you in January for the adverts about St. Valentine’s Day. But at least they don’t play a matching song at you!

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Crikey I hate that word!! Again, bah humbug!
⇧2 However, the difference from the White Christmas game is that it only counts if you hear it between December 1st and December 24th, and it has to be the original Wham! version
⇧3 Or ‘Whamageddon’, if that’s more your thing. Or both; why not?

A Dark Testimony V – The Ambush

Insights, Personal, Humour
This entry is part 15 of 27 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

As part of my series on the Problems of Evangelicalism, I’ve already shared what I called ‘Dark Testimonies’ from various people, one of whom was me. I also shared a testimony in my article ‘The Destroyer of Faith‘.

The stories in my testimonies, apart from a few which were simply people making innocent-yet-stupid mistakes, were stories of abuse at the hands of people where it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been in a church – or, more specifically, an Evangelicalism – setting[1]. As I said in ‘The Destroyer of Faith‘, this is what’s known as ‘Religious Abuse’.

Well, here’s another story from my catalogue of choice spiritual/religious abuse situations I have been subjected to. I share these stories, and this one in particular, so as to show the variety of ways and scenarios in which abuse can occur, and also to show that it happens – as far as I can tell, anyway – in many churches. Nowhere is safe, it seems; in every church I have ever attended, there has always been someone who wants to use others to push their agenda. But I’m trying to keep this one light and humorous in order to show just how ridiculous some of these people’s posturing really is[2].

So, a bit of background first. This was in early 2016, about two years after my re-entry into church life after my fifteen-year Dark Night of the Soul. At the church I was part of at the time, we had Lifegroups – no different from the more traditionally-named ‘housegroups’ – and I attended this particular one with my wife Fiona for a couple of months. It was run by a chap who was slightly younger than me – although I don’t have a problem with that – and let’s call him ‘Dennis’ for the purposes of the story.

Dennis’s leadership style was on the one hand gentle, pastoring and caring, and on the other quite rigid and dogmatic. I understand that he was from a Calvary Chapel background, which are fairly well-structured; I also got the whiff of a bit of Brethren there if I recall correctly, but this is nearly ten years ago now so I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, he was essentially hard, rigid and dogmatic under a soft (and I believe genuine) pastoral exterior. He also knew what he believed, and was not interested in hearing anything from anyone that went against that. It seemed Dennis was there to teach, but not to learn, if you see what I mean. I also remember he loved to make me hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream, just because he knew I liked it! A nice bloke, really.

I’m afraid other members of the group saw Dennis as being a bit of a pain, though, but I must emphasise that they really did have good hearts. These were mature Christians; most – and probably all – of them were further along their spiritual walk than Dennis was; they bore with him and genuinely wanted to see him develop as a leader and as a person, so in order to try to support him, they went along with his oddities and just contributed where they could. In essence, the more mature group were trying to help to raise up a younger leader in order to help him fulfil what they assumed he thought of as his calling.

I also remember a couple of occasions, though, where the façade began to crack; one funny, one not so much. These were the occasions where, in retrospect, I can see him trying to advance from the caring pastor to the beginning of the imposition of his will, as it were.

The first one was when he squatted down in front of me in my preferred position sitting on the floor[3] and said, “Anthony, next week, do you think you could deedle-eedle-diddle” (this last word while doing a sort of typewriter keyboard action with his fingers in front of himself). 🤣🤣🤣

Of course, I knew exactly what he meant; he wanted me to use my keyboard to lead worship. But being an awkward Yorkshire so-and-so, I decided to string him along a bit. “Could I do what?” I asked, simultaneously adopting my most baffled facial expression.

“You know, to bring your keyboard and lead worship”, he clarified.

“Aaaahhhh!”, says I. “Yes, of course I will! No problem!”

“Oh that’s great, thanks for that.”, said Dennis. “Now, I’d like you to lead us in that worship for fourteen minutes and sixteen seconds”.

This time it really was, “What??“, but this time, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear, I only said it in my head!

But, no, really; that’s what he said. Probably the most odd request I’d ever had[4]. I think what he’d done was to time the Bible study video he was going to show us during the meeting, and in order to make the worship ‘fit’ into his plan for the evening, he had ‘allocated’ that time to the second. To be fair, a bit of a quirky oddity much in keeping with someone with Autism or similar; I don’t think he was Autistic but I wouldn’t like to judge[5]. Well in the event I did the worship, yes, but let’s just say that timing constraints didn’t feature in the session!

Another time, in the Lifegroup meetings, I’d been sharing various things that God had shown me, over the space of a couple of meetings at least, as had other people in the group. These things I shared greatly blessed people and, when combined with the others in the group sharing what God had been showing them too, it was total blessing all around. We all did it. That’s what Lifegroups should be about. Everyone brings something along (1Cor 14:26) for the building-up of others. Anyway, I digress.

One evening, as the meeting was getting together, Dennis took me to one side and told me in no uncertain terms that anything I said that evening (‘and from now on’) would have to be backed up with chapter and verse from the Bible. Ha, he wanted me to proof-text!! My witty repartee was, “Well, I’d like hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream, but I’m afraid there’s no chapter and verse for that one. So what should I do when you ask me what I’d like to drink?” Sad to relate that this flippancy – which I see as a strength! – was completely lost on him; you tend to find that Religious people don’t allow humour in anything to do with God and it all has to be really serious![6] Needless to say, from meeting to meeting I carried on sharing what God gave me, and yes I gave chapter and verse (sometimes) when available, but to be honest most of the people there knew their Bibles backwards and so there was no need for Bible references. And anyway I don’t do proof-texting. I was the only person that he took aside in that manner; I don’t know, maybe he found my infectious enthusiasm disturbing or threatening or something. I really don’t know. But what if someone brought something where they didn’t provide such backing? Does that mean that nothing that anyone says in the meeting counts unless it is backed up with chapter and verse? If so, how would a complete newbie get on; how would they be able to contribute since it takes like half a lifetime of Bible study to be able to do that? And how would he know that even I could do that, or indeed anyone else in the group? Fiona was just as spiritual a person as I was but she didn’t have an encyclopaedic memory for Bible verses, in fact to be honest most people don’t!

Maybe he hadn’t really thought that one through…. 😉 😜

Or maybe, for some reason, he saw me as a threat to either his authority or to the purity of how he perceived the group’s doctrines should be. Well, I have never been interested in church leadership positions[7], so he had no worries on that score. And as for doctrinal positions, maybe he hadn’t learned that everyone in any group will always believe something slightly different from everyone else. This is why groups like that are so important and productive, because everyone brings something that maybe others hadn’t seen before. And so that’s how they learn[8]. And in any case, it should be the Holy Spirit Who is in charge in directing these kinds of meetings. Always.

In addition, the point about people’s differing doctrinal positions is something that any leader, new or old, has to take into account. You can’t learn things, whether ‘spiritual’ things or practical leadership things, unless you are teachable. And Dennis was so entrenched in his doctrinal rut, at least, that ‘unteachable’ could easily have been his middle name 😉

Well anyway, the meetings continued and I learned a lot, although I’m sad to say, not really from Our Dennis. Even at that stage in my faith walk, although I hadn’t learned the analogy at that point, there is little value in butterflies taking flying lessons from caterpillars. Back then, I was still getting used to the whole idea of walking in Grace and of going out into the deep Oceans waters of faith. And still the group were blessing each other.

I suppose that eventually something had to give; things had to come to a head. For me, the final straw was The Ambush. It’s taken me long enough to get around to the title of this essay, hasn’t it?

Well, this was The Ambush, and here’s how it happened.

I’d decided that it was a good idea to go out for a coffee with Dennis, so we could get to know each other a little better. To keep the conversation about personal things, like hobbies and interest, life stories, that sort of thing. For that reason, when we agreed to meet, I specifically asked him not to bring his Bible and to keep the conversation light, and I promised to do likewise.

Well, we got to McDonalds, and Dennis had a coffee and I had, of course! a hot chocolate. Almost as soon as we’d sat down, and with a fanatical gleam in his eye, Dennis hoicked up from the floor a small satchel which contained – yes, you’ve guessed it! – his Bible. That satchel could have been made-to-measure; it fitted his Bible perfectly! I remember it clearly. So he hauls out this Bible. To his credit, it wasn’t any kind of a mighty tome or grimoire[9]; it was just a softback one of about A5 size or so.

And then he proceeded to try almost to ‘lead me to the Lord’; to ‘convert’ me; to take me along the ‘Romans Road’. The Romans Road is a presentation of the gospel using mainly theological points from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans; it’s presented usually to an unbeliever, which is supposed to bring them to the point where they collapse on their knees in a weeping, repentant heap, at which point they hopefully ‘give their hearts to Jesus’ and get ‘converted’.

I mean, what?

He was really enjoying himself! At one point, he actually exclamed, “This is a great Bible study!” Speak for yourself, Dennis! 😂 But during that ‘Bible study’ – although actually it was more a back-and-forth tossing about of Scripture verses – all the reasons I gave to explain my already-existing hope in Christ were ignored. It was like talking to an online Pharisee troll, but over coffees and hot chocolates (yes we did have a second one each). It was just as if I was an unbeliever. I find it amazing how, despite the depth and obvious Bible knowledge of their victims[10], Fundamentalist and other ‘on fire’ Christians, like those two evangelists that came to my house that time as related in this article, suddenly forget, in their blind zeal, that you have an already-existing faith which is probably further on than their own, and that you have only. just. this. minute. been giving them Bible verses straight from memory. What kind of unbeliever can do that, to perform that sort of trick? Maybe the whole thing, in these cases, is the well-known phenomenon – at least to those who understand the Stages of Spiritual Growth – whereby those still in ‘Stage 3‘[11] consider those who have moved ahead with Jesus to be backsliders? Maybe that’s it. Anyway, I went home that night feeling battered and bruised, and, I’m sad to say, completely betrayed. I had trusted Dennis to behave himself and just let us have a normal conversation, over things other than our faith. I trusted him when he agreed to not bring his Bible. I kept my part of the agreement as far as I could; I didn’t bring my Bible, but of course once he’d broken the seals on the religious part, I couldn’t just not respond. And I laugh at this even now, nearly ten years later – I still never found out what his hobbies are, where he was raised, where he went to school, or anything like that. As far as I knew, he was just Dennis with the Bible, who did happen to make a very nice hot chocolate but someone whom I knew I could no longer trust. Trust is usually earned, in most personal or business relationships; in churches, however, I think it’s fair to say that it is almost assumed: this person is a Christian, of course you can trust them. Which is of course mainly why a betrayal of trust like that becomes Religious abuse; they have broken an almost unspoken rule, or at least convention, of implicit trust in your brother or sister.

And maybe that’s one of the main lessons we can learn from this piece: just because someone is a Christian does not in any way mean that you can – or should – trust them on that basis alone. They still have to earn your trust, just like in any other relationship. Their Christianity should not give them a ‘head start’ on the ‘trust curve’.

Of course, though, like any other broken trust, once it’s lost that trust is very difficult, if not impossible, to regain.

During his attack conversation, Dennis had also suggested I adopt attitudes that, of course unbeknownst to him, I had long since sloughed off during my Dark Night; things like feeling the need for a ‘covering’ relationship (which is a popular high-control religious concept where you make yourself answerable to some sort of ‘authority figure’!). He also didn’t appreciate my personal testimonies of God’s blessings either.

But still, I wanted to give him chance; I wanted to explain what his actions had done. That’s what’s called ‘maturity’. It is exercising Grace and extending forgiveness. And I also wanted to actually get him to help us agree on some healthy boundaries. And so I sent him this email:

Hey Dennis

Thanks for last night, it was good to get to know you a little better!

Although I kind-of enjoyed the ‘Bible study’ we did, in that it reminded me of the fabulous Gospel we believe in, I did feel very uneasy once I got home.

After reflection on what was bothering me, here’s what I came up with.

Firstly, I was particularly concerned about the ‘covering’ bit. First of all, although I don’t really set too much store on things being ‘Biblical’ – because ‘Biblical’ usually means ‘Biblical in the eyes of the person talking’ – the concept of ‘covering’ is in any case not a ‘Biblical’ concept. And I am under no man’s covering; should I choose to make myself accountable to someone, I can do that, but such people are few and far between. There’s nothing personal here, but although I want to honour you as group leader, I do not choose to place myself under your ‘covering’ in the sense I think you meant it, and I ask that you please honour that request.

Secondly, I did express a desire not to be proof-texted, but it seemed you couldn’t resist! Granted, I went along with it, but that I found very uncomfortable. Here’s why. As I said yesterday, I have done loads of encouragement work on Christian forums, being a voice for the broken and downtrodden (ask Jason [A mutual friend at the Church – Ed]; he has seen me in action) and I am currently having an extended sabbatical from that activity (http://tinyurl.com/gwbgd85). The main reason is because of harsh Christians Scripture-bombing me on those forums, and although I try to be thick-skinned, that has done me deep harm. I have to say that last night I felt just like I was back in battle on those forums. I respectfully asked that you not proof-text at me, and usually when I make a request like that I have a very good reason which you may not (and in this case did not) know about – but now you do.

So, please could you in future respect my desire not to do proof-texting.

Also, I am sorry but I am now also hesitant to share personal blessing testimonies with you – such as those precious prophecies I shared – because they got dissected. I appreciate that, as you explained, you have had reservations about prophecy from past experience, and I respect that. But that which I shared was precious and it felt rather like ‘pearls before swine’, I’m afraid.

This may all come as a shock to you, I realise. We did agree on much, but rather than agreeing to differ on points of difference, I felt you tried to bomb me into submission!

I do want to maintain good relationship with you; I really feel for you as the group leader and I would not want your job for any money. That’s partly why I want to honour you as group leader, and this email is intended to be constructive. Unless I name the problems, you will never know about them! I don’t want to upset you, and please be assured I forgive you! If this has upset you, then I ask that you please forgive me too!

So I need to ask you these questions:

1) What do you see is the point of the group, and then
2) What do you see as your role in the group?
3) What do you see others’ roles as in the group?
4) Can you define our relationship?
5) What’s your vision for the group – your goals and dreams for the group?
6) Are you happy with people bringing spiritual gifts in Lifegroup?

These questions may also help you to think out your ideas a bit more too.

You are a kind, gentle, pastoring guy and you have a good heart. I respect you for that 🙂 [12]

Thanks for listening

Anthony

Except – he didn’t listen. He told me that he hadn’t even read it, although I doubt that very much[13]. He said to me (in person) some mumbled story about him not liking to communicate in writing, preferring face-to-face. Which I can understand, but as Lifegroup leader he had a duty to make allowances for those who don’t quite have the same facility with face-to-face interactions as he does[14]. And to be honest, he wasn’t good at face-to-face anyway, lol 😉 And remember this was while Fiona was still alive; I was working full time and also being a Carer for my terminally ill wife. And he didn’t care; all he cared about was his agenda. Sorry for the language, but that really was a dick thing to do.

And so, we resigned from that Lifegroup and were accepted into a different group in that church, one in which we received nothing but blessing, love, hope and just general LIFE. One in which we were accepted the way we were. We stayed in that Lifegroup right up to Fiona’s passing, and I stayed in it after that terrible event. And it was in that Lifegroup that I was asked the question, ‘How can you lead worship like that, even after all you’ve been through?’, to which my answer was ‘How can I not?'[15]

Well, that’s the end of the story. I hope you got some laughs out of it! And maybe learned a lesson or two as well 😀

Before I finish, please let me reiterate what I said at the beginning of the piece: I share these stories in order to illustrate the different types of religious abuse, and scenarios in which they happen. I’m not criticising others’ faiths; what I am doing is to expose the ways in which they choose to inflict those beliefs on others, and to use those beliefs to justify their often horrendous actions. This arms my readers with information which they can then use to either recognise the risk in religious situations and thereby avoid them, or to recognise the signs when they happen. Because it’s often insidious and can creep up on you, and before you know it, you’re hooked. These people think nothing[16] of using these tactics to inflict their beliefs and requirements on others, and their potential victims need to be aware of this.

Grace and Peace to you.

Header picture depicts two Polish soldiers preparing an ambush position. At least, I assume there’s two of them; there could always be more of them concealed in-frame! It is an ambush, after all….

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Although, of course, you’re probably going to get abuse in any kind of organisation or group of people, churches or other – but people in churches really should behave better than they do!
⇧2 I think that as long as you laugh at yourself regularly, you should feel perfectly free to laugh at others, so long as you do it privately!!
⇧3 For some reason, I always feel more comfortable sitting on the floor in these kinds of meetings. Many’s the Lifegroup, or other meeting, when I’ve gone in to the room and sat on the floor, and some gallant soul has sprung up and said, ‘Oh! Sit here!’, much like someone giving up his seat to a pregnant lady on a bus. But I always decline; I prefer to sit on the floor! Just one of my quirks, if you like…
⇧4 Including when some clot asked me to play a load of Gilbert and Sullivan opera music just because I had a piano in front of me 🤣😂. Still, to be fair, at the time of the request, I was at the piano in the Saloon (which has gorgeous acoustics) at Coleton Fishacre, the country home of the D’Oyly Carte family; the house celebrates its hundredth anniversary next year, if I recall correctly. The D-Oyly Cartes were a well-known Victorian operatic company, so that was why that was relevant. Anyway, I declined; I can’t play opera to save my life (except the duet from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, and even then only the chorus)
⇧5 For me to get my own Autism diagnosis, it took at least six sessions with a clinical psychology doctor specialising in Autism. Therefore, I myself would never even presume to diagnose that condition in someone else merely by personal impressions!
⇧6 But of course they would say that ‘God has a sense of humour ahahaha ahaha aha. Ha’. but without providing any examples 😉
⇧7 Even the leadership roles I have actually had, such as Musical Director and Worship Leading, were not really people-leading in that I wasn’t like a pastor or an Elder or anything; the roles were more technical in nature. Not everyone can ‘do’ music at all, much less live instrumental playing and all that that involves.
⇧8 I don’t think he knew about my formal theological training; if he had, he’d really have felt threatened – but still his fears would have been groundless!
⇧9 A grimoire is a spell-book used in magic rituals; the thing I’m trying to convey here is a large, dusty tome with heavy leather or wooden covers, thick parchment pages and with the fading words written in blood, hopefully not human blood. Well, Dennis’s Bible wasn’t like that, although some people do have Bibles of that kind. You really wouldn’t want to drop one of these things on your foot. You see, many Fundamentalists see the Bible as a spell-book: speak these words, claim your promises and speak the magic words ‘In Jesus’ Name’ at the end and all your wishes will be granted! Honestly, that’s no different, really, from casting a spell!
⇧10 Note how my status has now changed to that of being a victim; this is where the abuse came in!
⇧11 As Dennis likely was, although that’s not for me either to say or judge.
⇧12 Well, he was, at the heart of things. He was just going about things in a disastrously wrong way, is all.
⇧13 Yes, I am indeed saying he lied! People like Dennis can’t help but read things sent to them, because they consider themselves too important.
⇧14 For those who don’t know, I am Autistic, and I find it very difficult to hold face-to-face conversations and maintain any kind of coherence in the conversation.
⇧15 As related in this article
⇧16 If indeed they think at all, as most of us would understand the term!

Father

Others' stuff, Personal, Ministry, Music

Given my recent slew of postings on dark subjects, I thought it time to refocus on the good stuff; the benefits and blessings of knowing God as Father and Jesus as Friend. And so we’ll take a bit of a healthy break from all that darkness. Today, I share a song that has blessed me and many others, in the hope that it will also bring blessings to you, my gentle readers.

As with most people[1], there are certain songs which remind me of specific times in my life. In my case, this is especially true of worship songs, because many of the songs I know and sing, I first learned (and then led) in my church in Leeds before I moved down to Devon.

Even though, then, I was quite legalistic – because I had been taught by my church peers not to know any different – still, underneath all the religious baggage, I had a deep love for Jesus and for my Heavenly Father. And the worship songs I used were more to express that love and devotion to God than they were to express any commitment towards a particular church or denomination[2].

On one day early in June, 1989, God revealed to me in no uncertain terms that I am His child. The Vineyard song ‘Precious Child‘, by Andy Park, came along a couple of months later to really cement that truth into my heart in a song – being a musician and worship leader, that’s always going to be a great way for Him to impart truths to my heart! – and for that reason I have loved that song ever since.

Also in 1989 came another song, this one by Danny Daniels, and another Vineyard song, called ‘Father (I can call You Father)’. This one, too, joined ‘Precious Child’ in cementing that truth into place. I will always be grateful to those songwriters for adding another dimension to that truth that I already knew, by enabling me to sing these songs to express that truth into being even more real to me.

And so, here it is. ‘Father, I can call You Father’; a seminal song in my faith journey and one which means as much to me today as it did thirty-six years ago, because the truth it expresses is just as real now as it was then. It’s performed here by its composer, Danny Daniels, and it’s the first version of the song I heard; right when I first learned it:

 

Father, I can call You Father
For I am Your child
Today, tomorrow and always, you are my Father

Father, how I love You Father
I will sing Your praise
Today, tomorrow and always, for You’re my Father

Chorus:
Father, Father, Father to me
Father, oh Father, Father to me

Father, I will serve you Father
I will seek Your face
Today, tomorrow and always, You are my Father

Chorus

That just makes my heart swell with gratitude, praise and love. And there may also be some spontaneous hand raising going on as well, if I’m honest 😉

I hope this song has blessed you. If you can’t really identify with this concept of really knowing that God is your Father, and that you are His child – experientially, more than just as an abstract concept through a book – then please ask Him to reveal it to you. Your life will never be the same when He does.

Grace upon Grace to you

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Or, at least, I think this is the case!
⇧2 Regarding the commitment to the actual congregation, sure, I wanted to serve them, of course. But sometimes, I felt like just giving the whole thing up, throwing my hands up and saying like “Right, that’s it; I’m not doing this any more”. Sometimes, it was actually the case that I loved worship leading so much that this was the only thing keeping me in that environment. Moving me to the South-West was God’s way of removing me cleanly and simply from that situation and giving me a new start, and that on so many levels.

A Dark Testimony IV – Me

Insights, Personal
This entry is part 5 of 27 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

Each of the dark testimonies I have shared so far has been different, and yet they’ve had disturbingly similar features too.

So, for this last testimony, I will share a few of my own[1] stories of abuse at the hands of a former church. And mine is different again from previous testimonies. Plus there’s a couple of minor anecdotes too 😉

I was a worship leader in a Charismatic Evangelical house church, which had grown to the size where the main congregational meeting was held in a hired public hall. In many ways, I was the worship leader, in that I was the Director of Music for the church, and led the worship group consisting of a couple of rhythm guitarists, bass guitar, me on piano/keyboards and lead vocals, and two backing vocalists, Cathy and my wife Fiona.

Every week, I would lead a congregation of a couple of hundred people in worship, from my keyboard, and the worship was always amazing. People would come from all over the region to join in; we had a reputation for it.

I didn’t have any ego problems, except that being an honest Autistic person (I didn’t know it then) I didn’t have any qualms about knowing how good it was.

And my secret was very simple. I just said that I was going to worship Jesus now, and anyone who wanted to do so was welcome to come along and worship with me. And that was it; everything just flowed from there.

It was quite interesting once… on one particular occasion where the leadership decided they wanted to try a new variation of dishonouring me and, by extension, the rest of the congregation, this time they got in another worship leader – a very arrogant one, as we shall see – and put him on for like a first ‘spot’ during the worship time[2]. The guy, whom we will call Johannes for the purposes of the story, was an existing member of our congregation. He was the leader of a well-known (in Christian circles, anyway) Christian band who had several recordings published in those days, you know, vinyls and cassette tapes[3]. The worship wasn’t bad; the music was good, as you’d expect from a professional musician and his band – but nothing really seemed to be happening in the worship sense.

Anyway, once Johannes had finished his ‘spot’, the leadership then expected me to just get up and carry on as normal, ignoring that I was outside my usual routine and also being deliberately put up on stage for ‘comparison’. Quite what their objectives were has never been made clear to me. I wouldn’t even want to begin to speculate; God’s ways are higher than our ways, we are told, but I am sure that the Elders’ ways were higher even than that 😉

So, as Johannes left the ‘stage’ area, he literally turned towards me, sneered at me, and said, ‘There you go; follow that!’ Really, that’s what he said!

Well, I just grinned at him. This is my calling; to lead others into the presence of God, and nothing on Earth would prevent that happening. I said to the horrified crowd, ‘Let’s just worship’, and stood at the keyboard for my first worship song.

As soon as I played that first chord, the Spirit just came down like a flood. What an amazing worship time it was. Not boasting or anything; that’s just how it happened 😀

Later, I did think it was kind of like that Elijah vs. the Prophets of Baal scene in the Old Testament (1Kings 18:20-40), except no-one got hit by any fireballs, neither aimed ones nor stray ones. Or, maybe, going even further back, it was like the bit in Genesis where God accepts Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s (Gen 4:4-5). Well actually no;  I am absolutely sure that God accepted both of our worship sets – it wasn’t Johannes’s fault. He wasn’t a bad bloke really; he had a heart for worship and a real heart for God, but he had an arrogance about him, and to be fair to him it was all a set-up anyway – both Johannes and I had been set up – by the totally incompetent leadership. But God came through despite them.

Well, that’s the story. It isn’t all that much in terms of hurt on my behalf; what happened more was that the congregation, of course, saw the whole thing and must have wondered what on Earth was happening, and themselves been hurt by it.[4] To see their beloved, faithful, reliable and servant-hearted worship leader being treated like that must have hurt them a lot. I’m just glad that they will have found some healing in the worship session that I led that day – because that’s what happens when you’re in the manifest presence of God. Still, though, what confidence does that give the congregation in their leadership, when they pull a stunt like that? Setting up an upstage scenario like that (either way; Johannes upstaging me, or me upstaging Johannes, or even both!) – I mean, really?? And they’d also set Johannes up for rejection too; like I say in one of the footnotes, it kind of put them off Johannes after that. How stupid of the leaders; how senseless!

I mean, I wouldn’t want to be a church leader for any money. But somehow it seems that church leadership are not chosen for their competence, and this lack of competence in leadership shows throughout congregations – and especially Evangelical congregations, where people are told that the only ‘ability’ that is required is ‘avail-ability’ – all across Christendom. In fact, when you really think about it, in the grand scheme of things, these men are essentially nobodies. They’re nothing special, at least in terms of abilities or anointing. At least, this lot weren’t. They’re just ordinary guys[5]. And yet they make decisions and announce edicts and rules and stuff that can seriously affect people’s lives, and all the while forgetting, it seems, that attendance at any church is voluntary, not mandatory[6] and that at any time people can just leave and not come back. Even if it’s in the middle of a song 😉

Speaking of leaving in the middle of something, Fiona and I did once get a bollocking for leaving a service at ‘half-time’. We’d done the music and we went out before the sermon. That was because my parents had booked us to have lunch with them, so we left in order to make that rendezvous with them. So these two Elders  turned up at our house as a team, to air their grievances. ‘You shouldn’t have left at half-time; when you’re there, you’re there for the duration'[7]. I can’t remember whether it was in private or in some sort of meeting; most likely it was the latter because I seem to remember there being a good few other people there too… it may have been at a music group practice? I can’t remember. So anyway we were told off good and proper, and poor Fiona burst into tears. One of the Elders was very harsh: ‘There’s no point in crying about it; you’ve done something wrong!’ sort of thing. And this was in our own home as well; invaded and violated by these two. And it also needs to be said that the harsh Elder in that pair later ran off with another congregant’s wife, so there’s that.

We should really have left the church there and then, after that castigation, but sadly we stayed – mainly because I was still sure that our calling was to lead worship there. In later days, our reluctance to leave would also be partly because the Roland JV-30 keyboard that I was playing (which didn’t belong to me; it was the church’s) was a real joy to play and minister with; it was state-of-the-art and such a lovely instrument 😉 [8]

Another time, a preacher got annoyed with me because I had to go and lie down behind the rear seats at the back of the hall after a particularly powerful worship session. When you’re leading, you can’t really let yourself be ‘overcome by the Spirit'[9] like most congregants can, because people are relying on you to play and lead. You can’t just fall over at the keyboard because a) you might break it, and b) you can’t play any longer because you can’t reach the keys from your new position on the floor 😉 When I left the stage area after that session, I was shaking all over and could hardly walk, such was the power of the Spirit on me. So I staggered to the back and collapsed there, out of sight – or so I thought!.

Except that the beady-eyed preacher[10] had spotted me, and he told me to get up because you shouldn’t be lying down during the sermon. Like, you see, the Spirit has to stop doing Her stuff once the music stops; She’s not allowed to carry on blessing someone and speaking words of love to them, because that would interrupt the far more important words that the preacher was about to say. Interesting how that is almost a precursor for any behaviour where humans’ words are placed on a pedestal above God’s words or, in this case, actions. He was blind to what God was doing with me that day. He’s also the same preacher who, on one memorable occasion,[11] began his sermon, then after half an hour of blindingly dull droning, he said, “Right, so that’s just the introduction!” And I kid ye not, an audible, dismayed groan went up from the congregation at that point. And he actually didn’t notice! For crying out loud…. 🤣

I remember once, not long after our Church started, during the worship I sometimes used to sit on the front of the piano (this was a real upright piano, not the Roland keyboard I had later) during phases like the ‘collection’ or the ‘notices’; times where there wasn’t a lot of music going on, so I’d lower the lid over the keyboard and sit on it with my feet on the piano stool so I could watch what was going on. Trouble was, I was so poor at that time[12] that I couldn’t afford new jeans, and so there were huge holes shall we say, ‘under’ the jeans. Thus, although I of course wore underpants, the view was apparently quite disconcerting to certain members of the congregation. And I didn’t have a clue about it 🤣😂 So, of course, as is typical in churches (which is why I am mentioning this particular adventure) some of the offended parties ignored Bible passages like Matthew 18:15 (in their own Rulebook, remember!) where Jesus encourages people with a grievance to go and talk privately with the offending party, and instead they went and told the Elders. Those people had probably been like that at school, too; going and blabbing to the teacher whenever they see something they don’t like. And they’d never lost the habit 😉 Anyhoo, one of the Elders (my ‘favourite’ one, with whom I had a close relationship as we went to Bible college together) came to me and shared the ‘problem’ really sensitively and gently. I hadn’t realised there was a problem but I took it well and sorted it. Can’t remember how, though. Maybe I just stopped sitting on the piano 😉 But what he did say was that when they told their tales to him, he did say to them, ‘Have you ever thought of buying Anthony a new pair of jeans?’ One of the great leaders, that man was; it’s a shame that he had to leave the church later because of the way they treated people. This series is most emphatically not about him!

Then there was the time in 1990 when I was musical director for a presentation of the Graham Kendrick Christmas musical, ‘The Gift‘, at Guiseley School in West Yorkshire. After three months of rehearsals and practice, with a very large music group and choir gathered from across all the churches in the area, we were ready for what was sure to be a really big event. Not only was I musical director, but I was also lead pianist, and lead vocalist on two of the tracks.

And they wanted me to buy a ticket to get in.

Yes, they wanted me to pay to get in to my own show. Only in churches, eh? Only in churches. This time I did stand up for myself, though. “What do you call this, then, ‘pay as you play’? I can’t afford a ticket, and I wouldn’t buy one if I could. My dad was a professional musician and he never had to pay to get in to one of his gigs, duh. If you won’t let me in, then the show will just have to flop, won’t it”. They caved 😉 Unsurprisingly. And the show went a bomb[13].

Here’s a photo of the show in full swing, and that’s me at the piano. Back when I had hair. They let me in after all 🤣🤣😜[14]

And finally, I remember once we’d been at a Christian Festival; a week-long camping event that was essentially a clone of the Dales Bible Week, and we’d come back all ‘fired up’ and full of new songs that we’d learned there. Of course, being a gifted musician and fully capable of playing the songs – at least those I liked, anyway[15] – as soon as I’d heard a song once or twice, and played it once through on the piano, I’d know the song for life. Anyway, on this particular occasion, one of the Elders was leading worship and he wanted one of the new songs and he decided to use my gifting – which he knew about – against me, and outside the parameters of its proper use, as far as I was concerned, anyway, which is all that matters when it comes to gifting. We hadn’t practised the song as a band, nor was there an overhead projector slide (Remember those?!) with the lyrics on it. So I gently refused to play it. Very quickly, the situation deteriorated to the point where he was growling and shouting at me through gritted teeth to play the song. Quite what the congregation thought, I don’t know. But I played it, and once again they got away with it. His tirade burst the ‘worship bubble’, though 😂; no-one felt like singing very much after that….

So, there we are. That’s just a few stories of whole loads of ridiculous nonsense heaped upon just one man in just one church[16]. I don’t know a) why they thought they could get away with it, and b) why I let them get away with it. Actually, that latter isn’t quite correct; like I said earlier, I was there because I knew that was my calling. And also for the other reasons mentioned in some of my footnotes. Maybe they knew that about my calling, though, and they knew that nothing they did would divert me from that calling – and took full advantage of that.

I don’t know; I find it hurts my head just to try to think down to that level. Far better for me to live my simple life of faith in the One Who loves me, than to get embroiled in church politics – because that’s what it was.

A far cry from the Grace under which I now live my life 🙂

Grace and peace to you!

[Addendum]: Just after finishing this essay, I had a really surreal experience. I happened across a YouTube video featuring my old pastor, who’s now well into his eighties, preaching a sermon. And I listened to it; he’s still saying the same things and doesn’t seem to realise that God has moved on…. still, the surreal bit was that his preaching is still just as compelling as it always was. It’s not surprising that they had us under kind of a spell. Really really strange feeling to hear that quite-nasal voice again, to see his gestures and mannerisms, and, yes, see the actual warmth of his heart. It’s really really odd. And I know he’s not a bad man; he’s more of a teacher than a pastor is what I think nowadays – and I still love him. But I would still never go back.

[Edit II: 21st November 2025] Funny but I have just remembered another episode where they used poor Johannes to damage us – and this time it was a bit of a bad ‘un; we nearly left the church over this one. As background, I’ll explain that, as lead musicians, Fiona and I always used to get to the church building about an hour before the service was due to start. For things like set-up, communication with other participants, instrument tuning, pre-service prayer session, that sort of thing. On this particular Sunday, we turned up at our usual time ready to set up and minister, and, dragging all our kit with us – keyboard and stand, foldback amplifier[17], cables bag, kids and kids’ clobber – you get the picture! – we opened the inner door and were totally surprised to see that Johannes and his band had already set up and were doing their tuning and things. We weren’t expecting Johannes and his band to be on at all. So there we were; having prepared for the morning, and with no warning whatsoever, we’d been bumped off the playlist and, well, I don’t know what they expected… whether we were supposed to sit and join in, whether we were to join their band as a sort of team effort, whether to go home, whatever. We were just completely surprised and indeed shocked by it and were really shaken and at a loss. So in the end we turned around – literally, turned around – and went back to load all our gear back into the car again to go home. Our two lovely, gentle guitarists, who loved us really deeply, had spotted us and they hastened out to try to help us, but we were too hurt to want to go back in. Later, those two told me that they had gone and told the leaders what they thought of their nasty surprise for us that morning, and asking like what the hell they thought they were playing at. As far as I remember, their response was something to the effect of ‘Oh, it’s Anthony and Fiona. They’ll get over it’ – meaning that they felt they could do whatever they wanted and we’d just have to suck it up. My guitarists nearly left over that attitude. I really don’t know why we, or the guitarists, stayed in the church after that. They had to do apologies and all sorts to get us to go back; we also took some time off and received a lot of healing when our dear band members took us up to Hollybush Farm Christian Fellowship for one of their evening meetings, so we could just worship and receive. Just what we needed; they even did some Don Francisco songs that really ministered to our hearts on a deep level. But, again – as with the first Johannes story – I still don’t know why they did it. It wasn’t as if they’d forgotten to mention to us that our services wouldn’t be required that morning and to take the morning off. I really don’t know. Maybe they thought we were getting burned-out (which does happen when intensive ministry goes on week after week), but if that was the case then they should have just asked us/told us that that was what they thought and put it that way. But instead, if it was a burnout issue, then this just made it worse as it made us feel even more like just jacking in the whole thing. Great leadership! </sarcasm off> Lol.

Header image is an artist’s impression of a neutron star, the remnant cinder of what was once a huge supergiant star which, once upon a time, more or less ran out of fuel and exploded in a brilliant supernova, leaving a cold, dense, dark core spinning in space forever and warping everything around it. Bright and powerful, then burned out yet still breaking things. There’s a message there, isn’t there? 😉

 

Comments have been disabled for this post

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Just a few of many, believe me!
⇧2 I must make it clear at this point that no-one had told me that this was going to happen; it was completely out of the blue, as it were.
⇧3 This was before anyone had even dreamed of CDs and mp3 files!
⇧4 And sadly, but understandably, they didn’t really like Johannes all that much after that episode…. ‘Follow that!’ indeed! 🤣🤣
⇧5 I can’t remember who it was, but it may have been Douglas Adams, or maybe Terry Pratchett, or maybe even the great Arthur C. Clarke, who said that people who put themselves forward for high leadership positions are usually the very last people who should be in such positions.
⇧6 Except of course in the more high-control churches, but to be fair ‘my’ church wasn’t really like that.
⇧7 Something that they failed to appreciate was that we could have done it in a different and far more inconvenient way. We could have told them that we were not going to be there that week, and simply not gone to Church. And they’d have had to arrange something else in terms of musicians; anyway most of the band was still there after we’d gone, and fully competent they were too. But we could have simply not been there at all. Instead, though, we did what we saw as the ‘right thing’ and turned up to play, and then left when we’d done our bit. There was no further inconvenience to anyone apart from maybe having to do their last song a capella (unaccompanied), although like I said there were still other competent musicians there and they were happy with our leaving at half-time. There wasn’t even a keyboard to pack away as this was before we’d got the Roland synth. If we’d not been there, and made arrangements for cover, we’d not have been castigated; instead, we did turn up and we got a bollocking anyway. How utterly, utterly stupid and irrational is that??
⇧8 Also, it says a lot for either our indoctrination, our reluctance to ‘rock the boat’, or our subconscious reluctance to give them an opening for further bollockings – somehow, you know that if you protest, you will fall even further from their favour – that we let them get away with that, absolutely scot-free. I feel terrible now – remorseful – that I did not stand up for myself, nor especially for my beloved wife, on that occasion. Nowadays, of course, I wouldn’t put up with it at all.
⇧9 Being ‘overcome by the Spirit’ is when the power of the Holy Spirit is so strong on a person that there are physical ‘manifestations’; sometimes the person will shake/tremble, sometimes they will just be almost unconscious of what is going on around them, so overcome are they with the power and presence of God, and sometimes – most people will have seen videos of this sort of thing – they just fall over as if poleaxed. Hopefully someone will catch them on their way to the floor. I was once ‘ministering’ to a young man on the floor who suddenly opened his eyes and rolled away, because he had become aware that his mother – who was ‘quite a big lady’ was also about to fall over and land on him 😂 Someone would have caught her, all right, but that someone would have been her son. Sort of. 🤣
⇧10 And yes, he did have a really beady, disapproving stare!! I suppose the correct term for it is ‘baleful’ 😉
⇧11 Only memorable because of what happened!
⇧12 Partly because of having to tithe to the hilt!
⇧13 That means it went well 🤣
⇧14 Interestingly, though, the bloke I had the ‘chat’ with ended up becoming a ‘Grace’ believer. I even got an apology out of him; he volunteered it too. Sorry for anything I did when I was an Evangelical, sort of thing. Very refreshing.
⇧15 For some reason (probably Autism-related), my musical gifting, in terms of playing songs, only extends (musically speaking, that is, not necessarily in terms of lyrics) to pieces I actually like. Songs I don’t like, musically, just don’t stay in my head well enough for me to remember how they ‘go’, and I am completely hopeless at reading sheet music. Songs that have great tunes but dreadful lyrics I can play, but why would I ever want to?? 😉
⇧16 That church is now an unrecognisable shred of what it once was. It is a sad fact that congregations who express the unconditional love of Christ are few and far between nowadays. Much more common are groups where the love of Christ has gone cold, and all that is left is the cold, shrivelled neutron star (what’s left of a powerful supergiant star, once its fuel runs out); a cinder of a church that has had its day; it’s only carrying on going in order to try and recapture memories of its past glories, and it’s about time it closed down completely. I’m sure Jesus still turns up, which to be honest is likely all that keeps them going at all. It’s interesting that folks in such remnant congregations generally have only sin-policing and dislike of ‘worldly’ systems as their common/uniting factors, rather than uniting in love and letting that love leak out into their community. In a sense, they are closed systems with no new life. Maybe that’s why their fuel has run out…
⇧17 Foldback is where you have a separate amplifier or loudspeaker that plays your instrument’s or microphone’s output back at you, so that you can hear what you’re playing or singing. This is important when the overall sound is controlled by the boys on the sound desk, as, depending on their mix of inputs/outputs, you may not be able to otherwise hear your playing/singing – which you really need to be able to do.