It was the early 2000s and I’m starting out on the front line of mission in Glasgow’s East End. My ‘patch’ (or my allotted ‘corps district’ in Sally Army parlance) runs east from Buchanan Street in the city centre of Glasgow, and the communities of Townhead, Calton, The Barras, a bit of Bridgetown, centred in Dennistoun, but as far up as Royston and Riddrie, straddling the M8, but nothing east of Cumbernauld Road. Communities with significant challenges. If you know, you know.
It took this geography – my assignment – seriously. I drove it, walked it, prayed it, lived in it, seeking to advance the Kingdom by any means.
Typically, the work was a mixture of pastoring a small bunch of mainly elderly people, combatting the effects of poverty, and doing what we can to advance the gospel in outreach. We cooked meals for around 200 a week, including soup runs in the red light district. We started parent and toddler clubs, run social groups to share the gospel with the elderly, healing services, community cafes, attempted outreach to fairly wild local kids and youth, and generally just got stuck in. We were young and indefatigable.
We regularly had our windows smashed in with bricks, things stolen from our house, taken advantage of, and all the typical kind of stuff that comes with the territory. We offered hospitality to vulnerable people in our home, wept when they took their lives because life was too much for them, and played Santa to kids with devastated family lives every year.
Of all that time from just 2001 to 2003, there is one day I remember as a pivotal day. It was a hot Saturday in July and, in typical Glasgow style, my community was to be paraded through by hundreds of sectarian Orangemen. What they call, ‘The Big Walk’. I grew up with this movement in my family so I knew the score. Men and women who depict themselves as defenders of the Reformed Protestant faith but would likely have a very hard time explaining the Five Doctrines of Grace, let alone testifying to a saving relationship with Jesus.
Well, this was my patch, and I had to be present at least to pray. Tracy was at home with our new baby, so it was just going to be me. I donned my uniform, put on my peaked cap, grabbed the Trinitarian Salvation Army flag and headed down to take up my place along the parade route. I clearly knew that God was stirring me to do more than pray.
I stood on the corner of Duke Street and Armadale Street for at least two hours. I wept, I prayed, and I pleaded with people to turn to Christ. I mean, I knew I was amongst the toughest crowd in Glasgow. I endured their scorn, abuse, their blasphemies and more. These ‘committed Protestants’ hurled abuse for preaching Christ, and blasphemed him as ‘the Swinging Joiner’ – Jesus the Carpenter being crucified on a Cross, being ridiculed for his sacrificial death for them. I followed on to the place of their ‘religious service’ which consisted of a hymn, political rant about their Protestant freedom, and a rendition of God Save the Queen before they drowned themselves in beer before marching away.
That story has been in my mind for a few reasons in the last month or so as I reflect on life and ministry now. I’m remembering:
– the character of sectarian secular Scotland where so-called Protestants protest against the things they say they march and stand for. I’m thinking of some Christian brothers in ministry who are currently on the receiving end of persecution for taking a stand against Orangism in their community.
– aside from Orangism, the other expressions of cold religion which, even if appearing to be spiritual, lack any power and truth and so become a deception. It’s all around us.
– my foolish (in the eyes of the world) but Holy Spirit boldness which characterised much of my Salvation Army ministry years especially. Was hated, despised and sometimes rejected for it; ridiculed in-house among my ministry peers for being ‘too Army’, being spiritually and methodologically uncouth – ‘he’s a primitive fundamentalist and a trouble maker’. I sense I’d be even further beyond the pale these days.
– the call to repent of the ways and times I’ve allowed others voices to temper my passion and expression of the gospel, and recognising the schemes of the enemy to diminish gospel ministry.
Those two Glasgow years seemed to last for a lifetime. It was hard and exhausting, and yet a good number of the most powerful stories of God at work were from that time…stories I still recount to this day.
The bottom line, I guess, is that I need God to shake the building, empower by the Holy Spirit, and send me out again to proclaim his word with boldness (Acts 4:31).
Andrew S M Clark 