O Ye of Little Faith

Last night was a significant milestone in the development of Outside Light. We knew the pressure was on - it was to be the End of Holiday BBQ, Mike Kerslake was videoing it, Tom from New Life conducting interviews with young people and Outside Light leaders, and we were expecting to be visited by our (genuine) friends from the police, out of uniform but no doubt interested on a professional level as to just how the evening would pan out. BUT the big question was, would it rain?

Umpteen burgers and sausages defrosted, a couple of gallons of hot chocolate made and, other lovely people from New Life and Holy Trinity Church recruited to give us a hand, I for one was certainly nervous and felt under pressure that it could all be a washout. But I had no need to be - Monday turned out to be one of the best evenings so far. No rain (as usual), great time and a first rate opportunity for us to engage with one of the residents; for Tina and Josh (police) to chat to the youngsters without the barrier of their uniform; and for Gabby from Woking Council to find out why these kids spend so much time in the car park next to the houses, when there's an open playing field opposite and they could instead stay away from people who don't much like them.

Our usual team were joined by other members of Holy Trinity Church, Eric, Malcolm and Christina, each mucking in and rolling up their sleeves to serve these young people. My evening was spent, as usual, running around collecting stuff I'd forgotten to bring :o) You'd never guess I did memory training twenty years ago and have a surefire technique that can help me recall lists of up to 15 items with little difficulty. The big problem with that system is that I have to remember to use it :)

When the evening was in full swing, Phil told me he'd just been visited by one of the residents who had complained, fairly vocally, about the number of young people hanging around. Tina (police), Gabby (WBC) and I took a walk around to the resident's house to see him. The gentleman is, I think, representative of many residents who live in that area. He finds the kids intimidating, dislikes their litter-dropping habits, rejects their behaviour (they're noisy) and doesn't understand why they're there.

I've sympathy for all of his points of view. However I know from meeting the kids that they're not violent, individually they're really polite; many ARE, though, thoughtless; they lack focus and they're there - as was eloquently explained by a small group to Tina, Gabby and me - because the car park has floodlighting. They'd be somewhere else outside, if it was away from houses, if that had floodlighting instead. 'We'd be over there' said one, pointing to the Multi-Use Games Area, 'if it was lit up'.

In the context, therefore, of understanding what motivates these kids to group together at night, Monday night was a valuable insight not just for us, but for Tina and Gabby. Maybe we can all build on that and work together to find solutions to the questions we're left with. How do we provide positive focus for these young people? How do we better the relations between them and residents? How may we best serve them?

In the midst of all this was George, with his shoulder bag, wondering amongst these kids, having conversations - really powerful conversations - what he described as 'the best night I've had doing this work'. Here's George's account. He wrote this while he was still high on the Spirit. It's vintage George and I hope it'll get across to you his enthusiasm for our Lord and desire to share Him with others...

"I can't believe we have been going out since April and I can't believe where we are at. Sometimes it is just good to pause and reflect. What a journey, and we're only 5 months along. Look back at those earlier blogs and be amazed at what God is doing - but there is sooo much more He wants to do.

Not for the first time I felt dazed when arriving at the rec. We have faith that there is some sort of plan before we arrive but you just don't know what you're going to arrive into. For a bit of fun, try and picture us as an army, God's army going into battle; weapons of the Spirit ready, barbecues armed, hot chocolate machine on, sword of God's word ready to fire.

We didn't quite arrive in helicopters, however I think that what we do on a Monday parallels quite nicely with the approach an army might take to a theatre of war situation. What struck me last night (other than a beautifully cooked burger), was that on arrival it was hard to know where to begin. Picture groups all over the field; where do you 'attack' first? I radioed for back-up, my commanding officer sent me off in a couple of directions, (not both at the same time, thankfully). He is a great commander as he knows exactly what is happening all the time, what to do, where the biggest need is.

I saw my colleague Captain Hazelden off in the car park conducting an information raid. I found an area where the young lads were coming to me, telling me stuff about their lives, talking about starting college etc. One lad was scared of being in a minority, he doesn't like big groups - which was kind of ironic given the feeling the residents have about him and his friends.

He fired a shot of reincarnation at me when I asked him what he thought life was all about, we kept getting interrupted by sniper attacks and I couldn't get a decent shot off. My commanding officer assured me he had some inside information and this man would soon be back in our cross-hairs. It wasn't long before operation Outside Light had thrown in a couple of smoke bombs, the smell of the barbecue hit the car park and drew the crowd over to the field. Brigadier Durrant was flying back and forth to barracks bringing in supplies. Field Marshalls Hill and Pepper were cooking up a storm on the barbecue. But the distraction and genuine acts of love and kindness had lowered the barriers for me to come in with some heavy artillery, I hit about 20 of the young people with gospel tracts.

One group were determined to fight back and I took a couple of hits, persecution and ridicule mixed in with some swearing. I radioed in to my commanding officer, He sent the weapon of mass construction, (the Holy Spirit), closely followed by this group asking me some great questions. The Holy Spirit enabled me to share the gospel with the four of them, the big guns came out and they were really struck by this black book with the words "holy Bible" written on it. It penetrated and we were soon into some deep debate, I was struggling to hold all of them, then Major H Morrow swooped in to cover the rear and was engaged in battle with two of them, which allowed me time to focus on the other two.

We had a great conversation, one of the lads allowed me to link up with our Commanding Officer and to pray for him, I challenged him to do his own praying at home later that night.

I loved it; no, I love Jesus; I love Him. Before I go into battle I hate the thought, I dread the conversations, I am not sure how I am going to start them; but if any of us didn't feel fear and anticipation then it would be all about us. Thankfully it is all about Christ - without him none of us would be here and we would certainly not be talking to these people in power without Him!

We are part of an army, lets not give up fighting the good fight. Operation Outside Light needs more soldiers; full training given, the best weaponry in the universe provided, survival not guaranteed, rewards are immeasurable...let me lay a challenge, if God said he would give you £10,000 every time you went out or shared the gospel would you do it? I am ashamed to say I know I would do more, yet we are serving something of infinitely more value than money and with infinitely greater reward...Outside Light needs you, God wants you!


George "


TUESDAY

Well, if you'll recall, Tuesday for much of the day was what might be described as 'inclement'. Again we had planned a bbq for Old Woking but this time the sun came out later in the afternoon and God gave us yet another great weather evening to enjoy. In Knaphill on Monday there must have been 60+ kids. In Old Woking there were perhaps only 30 but somehow they managed to consume the same amount of food - maybe more. Within minutes of arriving and before setting up the bbq, a 16-year old girl bravely came up to me and asked if we were 'funding' everything ourselves. 'Are you loaded?' And, 'if you're paying, why are you doing that for us?'

Happily I've been watching George and found it relatively natural to simply say that, 'What we are doing is a practical demonstration of God's love for you' and from there to share the Gospel. We got onto how she believed God probably exists and that she prays to Him when she's got problems. Seems odd, doesn't it, for this sort of conversation to be happening with young people. If a Martian landed on earth and took his 'knowledge' of their behaviour solely from the newspapers, he'd be forgiven for thinking that all teenagers were shallow, unthinking, uncaring and completely lacking any spiritual dimension. But here was a young girl who was thoughtful enough to ask how and why we were caring for her and her friends, and brave enough to admit her feeling that God is someone she can turn to when things get rough.

There followed another evening abundant in conversation, with George being sought-after by young lads keen to read his tracts and to ask questions. Helen (Len) found herself having interesting conversations too, with one particular girl about the life that her friend is living - which was quite disturbing and worrying.

After all the burgers had been polished-off and the bbq put away, Nancy and I went in search of 'James' who surprisingly hadn't turned up for a burger but had spent all his time playing football at the other end of the field. We started walking home with him and encountered an older man moving bikes that had been left outside his house. More Holy Spirit stuff came out of this conversation, resulting in an invitation to him to join New Life on Sunday. He's a 'history' and was happy with our offer to pray for him. We must have spent 10 minutes with that chap and interestingly James and his two mates hung around to walk back with us. That's an interesting dynamic - not sure if they were looking after us or we were looking after them.

Our walk back to Jame's house was hilarious. Really, every other word is a swear word but these are punctuated with the kind of wit that would have Billy Connolly fans rolling in the aisles. Nancy and I both tried listening to the funny bits - varied conversations ranging from the number of planets in our Solar system, to the number of galaxies there are, to how he hates hedgehogs because they frighten him. I know it doesn't sound funny here, but that's the art of a great story-teller. It's the way you tell-em, in other words. I've said before, I've reason to believe this boy will be powerful for Outside Light in years to come. His ability to tell stories is going to be a part of that, I feel certain.

When we got back to church, Phil and George were in the prayer room with "Sam's" mate, "Joe". You'll remember that Sam's in prison. Joe had come along to the church knowing that Phil and George were going to be there. He wanted to talk about Sam and about various other stuff going on in his life that's worrying him. He was happy for Phil and George to pray with him.

Getting together at the end of the evening we talked of the possibility that we might be able to run an outside church for young people. This seems natural and Nick, our vicar at Holy Trinity Church, is encouraging us to explore this. We also deeply feel the need for prayer-walkers, especially in the Knaphill area. It's significant to Phil that for years before the Gloster Road group got started, there were people from New Life walking the area and praying for it and its residents. We all believe that this has softened-up the area and has made the people there more accepting, and the devil incapable of response. In Gloster Road the feeling is that this area is wide open to Jesus - but in Knaphill, we believe there is much spiritual battle still to be done. We'd love it if other churches in the area could help us in this and prepare and anoint the area in and around Knaphill, soaking it in prayer, laying the salt that's the Word of our God and preparing the way.

Below is a video - poor quality picture - it was dark - really just to let you listen in on a typical conversation with a couple of younger boys. It's not word perfect - and you'll hear the voice of a boy who's reading from a cartoon tract about someone called, 'Mr Nice Guy, who is nice but sinful. It gets interrupted by another young boy but then continues - it'll give you a bit of a feeling for the process of sowing the seed that we have the privilege of taking part in.