'And the Spirit Came' : A Testimony

In the mid 1970s, although brought up as an Anglican, at the age of sixteen I was acting as organist of a Methodist Church in my hometown of Harrogate. There I met a group of young Christians - most of whom were in their early to mid-twenties - who called themselves ‘Charismatics’. I didn’t really know what this name meant, but I realised that they had something I didn’t have - a strong sense of living in relationship to Jesus Christ and knowing his love and presence in a special way in the power of the Holy Spirit.

As I got to know these people better, they invited me to join a study group that was meeting on Sunday evenings in the Methodist manse. They were studying a book that was hugely popular at the time, ‘When the Spirit Comes’ by Colin Urquhart – an Anglican Priest who had had a profound experience of the Holy Spirit and then led his church into renewal.  

If I’m honest, I was as fascinated by the book’s cover as I was by its contents. The first edition (published in 1974) showed Urquhart standing at the altar in Mass vestments, and I was intrigued that Charismatic renewal could happen in a sacramental or catholic context as much as in an evangelical  one (more of which later).

The book made for dramatic reading. In hindsight there is now much in it that I would question and challenge, but at the time it fired my imagination. Soon, with the help and encouragement of my friends, I had made a commitment to follow and serve Christ and invited the Holy Spirit into my life.

At heart, however, I was still an Anglican, and I would often call in to my local parish church and pray quietly in tongues before the reserved sacrament in the Lady Chapel.

Some of my friends took me along to another Charismatic Prayer Group which met monthly on a Saturday evening. Although I was excited to join yet another group, there was something here that didn’t feel quite right. I have to be honest and say that I took an instant instinctive dislike to the group leader, and I had a sense that the feeling was mutual.

The group was studying the Book of Revelation (as a bishop friend once said, “Well they would wouldn’t they?”). It was deep stuff, some of which felt beyond me, but I remember being struck by the fact that the Devil (who was usually referred to as ‘The Enemy’) was actually mentioned far more in the discussion than God was. Indeed it seemed that some members of the group were quite obsessed with evil and the concept of ‘Spiritual Warfare’.

My unease deepened still further when we moved into a period of free prayer. One member of the group – a young man who appeared to be struggling with a number of issues, both physical and emotional – said that he was suffering from severe headaches. The group leader prayed for him and laid hands on him, then announced that he was healed.

“But I’ve still got headache”, the young man said.

With no attempt to hide his irritation, the leader replied,”No you haven’t! I’ve told you that you’ve been healed, and you have been. The enemy is trying to deceive you.”

“But I do still have headache” came the distressed response.

“If you have headache, it’s because you don’t have sufficient faith and you’re playing into the hands of the enemy.”

I can’t remember much more about that evening, except that I felt upset, angry and profoundly disturbed at what had happened.

I do recall that for the next week or so, I felt spiritually oppressed in a way that I’d never experienced before and I began to wonder whether this Charismatic thing was really for me or indeed whether it was even authentic. 

The crunch came when I confided in a couple of my friends that I was worried that I might be gay. They immediately told me that I needed to be healed of this affliction, and I remember them praying that the Lord would free me from (I quote) ‘this personality defect’.  When it became clear that ‘praying the gay away’ hadn’t worked, they began to say that maybe an exorcism was needed.

Despite my confusion and the self-hate that I often felt at that time, something told me that I shouldn’t go down this path. When I prayed about it, I had a strong sense of God saying that I shouldn’t be trying to change who I was.It may have taken me many years to properly reconcile my sexuality and my faith, but even at that early stage I was certain that exorcism would have been an extreme, irresponsible and inappropriate response to my situation.

In hindsight, I realise that I had experienced some of the more dangerous - even abusive - excesses of the Charismatic movement – excesses of which anyone bearing the name ‘Charismatic’ should beware. At the time, however, I effectively threw the baby out with the bathwater; I rejected all things Charismatic and for decades poured scorn on anything or anyone bearing that label. I returned to the Church of England and shortly afterwards discovered the riches of Anglo-Catholicism. I became a ‘card-carrying’ Anglo-Catholic, and it was as such that I eventually trained for ordination.

Having been a priest for thirty-three years, it is only relatively recently that I realised that my Charismatic spirituality had always stayed with me, albeit subconsciously. Although I would eschew anything claiming to be ’spirit-filled’ and pour scorn on any contemporary music used in worship, I always had a profound sense of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit, not least when Mass is celebrated with all the colour and drama of catholic ritual, and I certainly believed in a God who acts supernaturally. (How could one believe otherwise whilst claiming that bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ at the Eucharist?)

It was shortly after I came into my present post that I experienced a major epiphany and a re-awakening of that which had remained largely dormant for so long.

One of the three churches in the benefice – and the one at which I lead worship most regularly – All Saints, Wigston Magna - has a good Catholic liturgy, and there are some delightful people in the congregation.  But the worship felt dull, the church was very inward-looking, and there was a strong sense that it needed an injection of new life. What I wasn’t sure about was how to bring this about.

Then God intervened!

Several months into the job, I was at a very low ebb and feeling rather discouraged.  Someone in the congregation who was unhappy with my appointment and some of the changes I was making wrote a long letter of complaint about me to the Churchwarden. Several pages long, it felt like a character-assassination rather than any kind of objective critique. Whilst I acknowledge that I have faults, the contents of that letter and the vitriol with which it was written could have brought me to breaking point (which may well have been the intention).

To my surprise, however, as the Churchwarden and I talked through its contents, I had an overwhelming sense of the love and protective presence of God. There was an almost palpable sense of being ‘shielded’ from the barbs that were aimed at me. That night, as I prayed, I found myself praying in tongues for the first time in many years and I felt a great surge of confidence that God’s Holy Spirit could and would work through me if I held fast. That negative and potentially destructive episode became a major springboard for my ongoing ministry.  

Over the following weeks, the image that kept coming into my mind was that of the ‘New Fire’ – the bonfire lit outside the Church at the start of the Easter Vigil, from which the Paschal Candle (representing resurrection and new life) is lit, along with the words, ‘Bring my new fire to this place’. Whilst I was delighted to have experienced this great ‘boost’ and to have been so energised by this experience, I knew that this wasn’t something that I could or should keep to myself. God had done this for a reason, and it wasn’t just for my benefit.

At this point I was struggling to make sense of how Charismatic renewal could be married up with a catholic tradition. A ‘Google’ search led me to On Fire Mission. It described itself as  ‘……a network, rooted in the Church of England, which is dedicated to promoting Charismatic renewal blended with the riches of Catholic spirituality’.  I noted that there was an annual Midlands Renewal Day held in Warwick in October, so with some trepidation, I ventured along.

I was blown away by what I experienced there. The fusion of the Catholic and Charismatic, the Spirit-filled and the Sacramental felt absolutely natural and right. The music was so uplifting that I found myself doing the very thing that I had so often uncharitably mocked in the past – spontaneously raising a hand in the air as a sign of joy and praise. The ethos was genuinely inclusive, the people friendly and welcoming. It felt like a homecoming.

This experience inspired me to set up a monthly celebration of Mass in the parish following a similar pattern. The choice of name was obvious – ‘The New Fire Mass’.

When I chatted to various friends and advisers about this, they all urged me to set up this new service on a Sunday evening. I was totally opposed to this, mainly because I didn’t want ‘New Fire’ to become something ‘specialised’ and separate from the mainstream worshipping life of the parish. Our folks are not always keen on attending things in the evening, and I was concerned that only those who were genuinely interested in renewal or curious about something new would come along. Instead, I wanted the service to replace the 10.00am Parish Mass on the third Sunday of the month so that the whole congregation could experience ‘New Fire’. 

I knew that some would like it and some would probably hate it, but at least their opinion would be based on experience rather than mere prejudice. I also believed – correctly as it turns out – that some people who might have instinctively disliked the idea would actually find that the reality appealed to them far more than they expected. Most of all I wanted to make it clear that this was part of our ordinary round of worship and was open and available to everybody.

I took the proposal to the Parochial Church Council expecting a mixed response and considerable resistance in some quarters. In the event - much to my surprise and delight - they voted unanimously in favour. Even those who were not attracted to anything contemporary or different spoke about the need for such a service. 

This left me with one problem. What were we going to do about music? I was talking this over with a member of our congregation who happens to sing and play guitar and who it turns out had been a worship leader years ago when he worshipped in a more evangelical setting. He told me that he knew one or two people who would probably be willing to join a small worship band once a month. Our organist also turned out to be very keen on playing keyboard in this new band. Another prayer answered!

The New Fire Mass combined traditional catholic ceremonial with contemporary music. For a handful of our parishioners who discovered they had Charismatic leanings, it both fed and became an expression of that spirituality. Others simply saw it as a more relaxed, modern celebration of Mass. Everyone could therefore connect with ‘New Fire’ at the level that worked best for them.

So, we were renewing the liturgy, but what about the spiritual life of the parish and the discipleship of its congregations? How would this renewal come about? Indeed, I began to wonder if I’d really done things back-to-front. Maybe we ought to have first sought spiritual renewal at the individual and collective level and let the renewed liturgy flow from that rather than vice-versa?

It was at my two-yearly Ministerial Development Review with the Archdeacon that this subject was discussed at some length.  He asked me an interesting question. “How much time and space have you had to explore and make sense of this major shift in your own spiritual life and to work through its implications for your ongoing ministry?”

The truthful answer was “Not much”. As a result, it was suggested that I should take a three month sabbatical to explore the subject further.

In 2018,during that sabbatical, I read a lot about classic Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, I attended the four day residential On Fire Mission conference at High Leigh for the first time, I visited various Anglo-Catholic parishes that have experienced charismatic renewal and talked with a number of clergy associated with On Fire Mission.

When I returned to the parish, I invited our church members to an evening meeting at which I talked about my experiences and findings. I expected between half a dozen and a dozen people, but in fact thirty turned up. I again expected very mixed reactions, but most of them were clearly quite enthused by what I said, and as a result we have a growing number of people who now attend the Midlands Renewal Day whilst several also recently undertook OFM’s training in Prayer Ministry.

As news of our ‘New Fire Mass’ spread, people from other churches – and even other geographical areas – started to come along to see what we did. Others indicated that they would like to do so but weren’t available on a Sunday morning. As a result, we decided to introduce an additional bi-monthly service on Sunday evening at 6.00pm. This service is called ‘ABLAZE!’. It’s more overtly Charismatic than ‘New Fire’ (I often describe it as ‘The New Fire Mass on steroids’) and is aimed at those members of our congregation and visitors from other churches who want to move further into Charismatic spirituality.

As ‘New Fire’ and ‘ABLAZE!’ have developed, the city centre church of St Andrew’s Jarrom Street has also developed a monthly Sunday afternoon Charismatic Catholic celebration known as ‘Spirit Space’. It has its own ethos and in some ways is quite different from what we do, but there is a lot of overlap between the two congregations, and it’s good that we can support and encourage each other. It also demonstrates that the Charismatic Catholic movement is manifested in different ways and is alive and growing. 

As I write this, we’re in ‘lockdown’ due to Covid 19, and our churches are closed for worship. There will be all sorts of challenges to face when they re-open, and it will be true for the church as it will for all society that there will be a ‘new normal’ rather than simply a return to the ‘old normal’. I suspect this will include a new interest in spirituality and a hunger for a living God, not only amongst those already in the life of the church but also amongst those on or beyond its margins.

I believe worship that is both Spirit-filled and Sacramental will help to feed that need and I pray that the Holy Spirit will come once more and move mightily among us leading us further into renewal.