In this chapter I am going to return to a subject that has been alluded to in earlier chapters and give it some more thought and consideration. Through the years Grace and I have been asked by people why the Grange grew from its small beginning to a significant evangelistic and discipling ministry among young people. What were the contributing factors? What did we “do” that caused so many young people to be attracted to the Grange and made them want to be part of it? I have already touched on this topic, indirectly in the narration of the story and directly at times. In this chapter I want to reflect, analyze and put some structure in the answers that can be given.
The Grange Fellowship was a successful venture and I do not say that in any spirit of boasting. All of us who had anything to do with the Grange will quickly assert that it was a movement of God’s Spirit among young people, a demonstration of His grace, an outpouring of His love and for our part, we were spectators looking on as the Lord did His marvellous work, changing and transforming the lives of children and teenagers who surrendered their lives to Him. Without the Lord’s initiation, leading, working and moving faithfully among us, little of eternal worth would have been accomplished. “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain” (Psalm 127:1 NIV).
I believe that the statement made in the last sentence of the previous paragraph is a good place to begin. In the early summer of 1961 Grace and I had been married less than three years, were very much in love and blissfully happy. Grace was thoroughly enjoying her work as a French and Religious Education teacher at a secondary school for girls in west London and I was thriving in my work with a young and ambitious evangelistic organization named the Come Back to God Campaign. The idea of founding an independent Christian youth work among young people did not enter our thinking at all. When a small group of 13 year old girls asked Grace if she would give them lessons in the Italian language neither she nor I had the slightest thought that this would lead to anything of spiritual significance. This was also true when four of them came to know the Lord and Grace started holding a weekly follow up class in our home for them. We thought this would be temporary until they settled into a good church and became involved in the activities there. It was later when those weekly meetings grew in number, crossed the gender line and began including boys, followed by some circumstances in our life taking unexpected turns that it began to dawn on us that something bigger and unforeseen by us was happening. A verse of scripture, often quoted when considering the subject of God’s guidance is Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV): “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Grace and I had endeavoured to be obedient to the instructions given in that statement, and it became clear to us that the Lord was leading us to be part of something He was doing. We could therefore be confident in following His leading.
The next thing I want to mention has to do with environment. Grace and I have always believed that the fact that we had a home that had good facilities for holding the Grange meetings was a positive factor in its success. Our ground floor flat/apartment that we rented from the International Hebrew Christian Alliance had a spacious lounge and a second room next to it that could be brought into use simply by opening a partition door. Although it was a tight fit, we could pack in 80-100 young people into the combined space of these two rooms. This meant that a lot had to sit on the floor; a few even reclined on the floor underneath the grand piano! When it became necessary, a microphone and amplifier were set up and a wire was run to speakers in our smaller living room next to our kitchen. A home offers a welcome, warm and relaxed environment. We know that in the early church there were meetings in people’s homes. Paul, the apostle wrote a letter that we have in the New Testament to “Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker … and to the church that meets in your home” (Philemon vs 1-2 NIV).
Many great works for the Lord have begun in private homes. One I want to mention has a very close connection with the Grange. Among the mature Christians that the Lord sent to help us were David and Bobbie Shearer. The time came when the Lord directed them to relocate to Tamworth, not far from Birmingham. They purchased a house on a new housing estate and, because there appeared to be little organized Christian witness yet on the new estate, they started a Sunday School in their new home. From this simple start the work grew into a church and the Coton Centre. The story of this adventure for God is incredible. David and Bobbie are fearless and tireless servants of the Lord. There are two things that reduce me to a state of exhaustion. One is a full day of hard, physical labour in our yard and garden and the other is reading a letter from Bobbie in which she describes what she and David have been up to recently. The story of the Coton (Christian) Centre includes accounts of the truly miraculous. In my opinion, it is a subject worthy of a book. A recent new posting in the updates section of the Grange site will give you some idea of what the Lord did through David and Bobbie and the small Sunday School they started in their home. Here are two links. The first will take you to the posting in updates just mentioned above, and the second will take you to the official website of the Coton Centre.
http://thegrangefellowship.wordpress.com/subpages/david-and-bobbie-shearer/
http://www.cotongreenchurch.com/
I will mention one more example of what can grow from a small project for God’s Kingdom that began in a home. The US city of Seattle, in Washington State lies 125 miles to the south of us here in Abbotsford, BC. In Seattle there is a church named, Mars Hill Church. In 1996 a young 25 year old Christian man, Mark Driscoll, and his wife Grace (that definitely, in my opinion, gave him an advantage!) began to hold a weekly Bible study and fellowship meeting in their home with 12 people. Growth was rapid and Sunday meetings were established. The group had to divide into separate groups for meetings until in 2003 it was able to come together as one group, now 1,000 strong, in a renovated hardware store in West Seattle. Growth continued and the new premises were soon outgrown. In 2006, Mars Hill Church became “a multi campus church,” meeting in a number of locations throughout the Seattle area, networked with video links. Today, it continues to grow with adherents numbering in the thousands. Want to know more? Here is a link: http://www.marshillchurch.org/about/history.
Eventually we had to move our meetings from our home to the church hall of Gunnersbury Baptist Church, located about 100 yards from our home. While the growing number of attendees was a factor, it was something else that ultimately forced us to make the change. We were not the only residents in the house where we lived. There were three ladies who had their small flatlets upstairs. Two, Mimi Vigliano and Brenda Lennox were not troubled by the noise, mainly on Friday evenings, of our meetings and rejoiced that the Lord was touching and changing young lives. The third tenant, who lived immediately above us, struggled with the noise factor. She also was a believer and told me that she too rejoiced in what God was doing but felt the meetings should take place elsewhere, preferably on church premises. She was a schoolteacher and said she found that, following five days a week with boisterous children, she needed peace and quiet on Friday evenings and the weekends. She made her complaints to our landlord who finally told us that we must hold the meetings elsewhere. We were extremely grateful for the generous attitude of the Gunnersbury church family who, without hesitation, made the church hall available to us. We had good times there but missed the intimacy of our home as a venue. It was not quite the same.
The nature of the leadership in any group activity or project is always an important factor in whether it will be successful or not. This immediately puts the focus on Grace and myself, something I am not entirely comfortable writing about. I have already said that the Grange was something that the Lord did; we were, mainly, spectators. At the same time, we were tools in God’s hand. What can I say? We loved being with the young people and they seemed to enjoy being with us. We were honoured to be the leaders of the Grange. I think it is true to say that Grace and I have always been, down through the years and even to this day deep down in our hearts, simply two happy, fun loving, adventurous kids! We are still very comfortable being with young people. Our church has a traditional service and a contemporary service on Sunday mornings. You will find us in the contemporary service where the music can be loud and boisterous, arms are raised and parts of the service can be quite unconventional. We still avoid getting into the “ruts” of life. For example, when vacation time comes round we want to be off to somewhere new, rather than returning again and again to the same place (not that I am inferring any criticism of those who love a particular place and want to spend holiday time there regularly). With our Grange young people we really felt we were two of them. However, clearly we were able to convey a sense of maturity and leadership quality so that our young people regarded us as Christian leaders they wanted to follow. We are deeply humbled when we think of this. We certainly cared profoundly for every one of them, a fact of which many have told us they were aware. Further, those young adults who were already well established in the Christian life, who, not only joined us but took on leadership roles with us were of similar outlook and disposition. The Grange became very much a family, and a strong one established on the foundation of the Gospel of Christ and the abundant life that grows out of a commitment to the Lord Jesus and His people. I will also add that, in light of the fact that Grace and I did not have biological children of our own, we were able to give ourselves wholeheartedly to the work of the Grange in which we had a large number of spiritual children.
The man who was instrumental in our move to Canada, who also became a very close friend, told me a story, many years ago now, about a man who had farming and some other business interests here in the Fraser Valley. Let me hastily add that I do not, to this day, know the identity of this man and as far as I know, I have never met him. He was a member of a local church and attended services and functions at that church, along with his family. He had even served on the church board for a number of years. Sounds like a fine, upstanding, entrepreneurial member of the community – right? Unfortunately, there was a serious problem. Over time this man gained a reputation in the farming and business community of being less than honest. He would cut corners, make shady moves and would deliberately cheat people if he could. The fact that he also presented himself as a good Christian man became an embarrassment to other Christians. According to what I was told, he provided plenty of fodder to those who wanted to ridicule local Christians with charges of hypocrisy. A very decent and well respected Christian man decided to tackle the problem and confronted the man about the contradictions in his behaviour, and the soiled testimony that resulted. Apparently he was taken aback by this and refused to accept that he was doing anything wrong. He apparently terminated the conversation by declaring that religion is religion, business is business and they should never be allowed to mix or influence each other. He was clearly ignorant of what the Lord taught about how God’s people should live and behave, or he knew, but willfully chose to ignore it. I have mentioned this story to lead into the next point that I want to make about something that was very important to Grace and me as leaders of the Grange.
Let me quote two verses of scripture at this point:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV)
“(Jesus said) …let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16 NIV)
It is made clear and plain firstly, that when someone personally and by faith receives Christ and is born again, that he/she is a new person, making a completely new start. Secondly, others observing this “new” person must see a life of goodness, joy and wholeness, manifesting the qualities of the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25). The Lord Jesus added in the quotation given above, that this can result in something amazing – people observing this manner of life in believers will actually be prompted to praise God! That is, they will recognize that this is a work being done by the Lord and the realization should be a motivation to them to seek the Lord too.
Grace and I were determined that we should do all we could to explain and demonstrate that when we turn our lives over to the Lord and let Him have His way, every aspect of life changes for the better. Everything is of higher quality, more joyful, more exciting, more meaningful and purposeful (not necessarily more easy) in the life of a person who has Christ in his/her life than one who does not.
Remember also, that we were both educators. If you talk to teachers you will learn that they regard their vocation as consisting of more than imparting academic information to their students. They see themselves as people builders, formers of character, good attitudes and habits in the children and youth entrusted to them. This came into play with Grace and me as leaders of the Grange. When Blodwen, our bus and later the Lone Granger became “members” of the fellowship all kinds of opportunities opened us for us. London is a wonderful city with a history of close to 2,000 years. We learned that some of our London born young people had not even seen some of London’s exciting places. Britain also has castles, ancestral homes, in fact many places of historical interest. So we set out to take Grangers to as many places as we could, not just as tourists, or students on field trips but as a group of Christian believers with the joy of the Lord in our hearts and the presence of the Holy Spirit with us to enhance everything that we did together. Too many people have the mistaken view that Christians live a sombre, restrictive, joyless life whereas the truth is that the opposite is the case. Jesus said that He came to give us abundant life and Grace and I wanted to enjoy all of it and to show our Grangers how it works. I am not inferring that there are no miserable Christians. There are, and I am afraid we have met too many. But, we are not among them and we did our best to ensure that our young people would be believers whose lives were victorious and a credit to the name of Jesus. We went out for picnics, to the seaside, to zoos, to places of cultural importance like Stratford upon Avon, to cathedrals, to castles from ones near at hand like the incredible Tower of London and beautiful Windsor to others further afield like Warwick. Harry Willey took us on marvellous rambles and, I must tell you, “Harry Rambles” still take place forty years later! Thanks Harry for keeping up this great tradition. There were camping trips to south Wales, north Wales, the Lake District and Cornwall, skiing holidays in resorts in Italy and Austria and an unforgettable (for all kinds of reasons!) week in Paris.
Outreach opportunities like the Dive, the Good News Trailer and door to door visitation not only provided a means to touch the lives of others with the Gospel but were also an excellent training ground for Christian service.
Retreats like the annual Capel Conference, Cliff College retreats (organized by Peter Haughey) and a wonderful Bible Conference week at the Reapers’ Fellowship in Laren in Gelderland, Holland left positive marks on all of our lives.
The apostle Paul preached the Gospel to the people of Galatia, a Roman province in Asia Minor and established a fellowship of believers there. They appear to have been a joyful group of Christians when Paul moved on. Later, it seems some religious teachers came and led the Galatian believers astray into a legalistic form of the Christian faith which, in the process robbed them of much of their joy as their Christian experience degenerated into a system of slavery to rules and regulations that were not relevant. Paul wrote a letter to them that we have preserved for us in the New Testament. In this letter he expresses his sadness about what has happened and encourages them to throw off the bondage of legalism so that they can return to the childlike freshness and happiness they had when they first believed. He describes his present concern and pain for them, and makes a most interesting statement; “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”(Galatians 4:19). Paul wanted to see Christ formed in all the people to whom he preached the Gospel and led to the Lord. That has been the desire, down through the centuries, of evangelists, pastors and teachers and all Christians who want to win others for Christ. It was a foundational longing in our hearts as we ministered to the young people that the Lord sent to us. There are few things, in my opinion, in this life that equals the experience of seeing a person come to Christ and receive Him as Lord and Saviour, and then grow into a person in which the character and grace of the Lord Jesus has been formed for all to see. We saw it again and again and again in young, transformed lives. Among them to this day there are those who continue to emanate those qualities; awesome parents (and grandparents), pastors, missionaries, church leaders, teachers, medical professionals as well as those found in a wide range of walks of life.
Grace and I humbly acknowledge the privilege that we had in being allowed to see the Lord at work in the Grange. To Him be all the glory.
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