Spring Harvest is an evangelical Christian festival which has since 1979
been held annually around Easter at a number of holiday villages across the UK,
several thousand people attending at each location. Certainly in my experience
of the event in the early 1990s the packed programme offered all-day activities
for all age groups – a rolling programme of workshops and seminars culminating
each evening in a large-scale ‘Celebration’
at which a long session of worship singing was followed by an address. I
attended Spring Harvest twice, in 1991 and 1992, both times at Butlin’s
Wonderwest World Holiday village just outside Ayr.
I attended some of the evening Celebrations, but found them discouraging
and intimidating. I felt an onlooker, observing dispassionately through the
lens of my detachment the exuberant expressions of praise to God which pierced
the air around me. And when, after what
seemed like an eternity of praise, the preaching eventually came, I failed to
connect with it either. The Spring Harvest organisers had thoughtfully set up a
small alternative event held at the same time as the evening Celebration for
those who felt daunted by it, and I attended this on a couple of occasions, and
found the quietness and gentle conversation helpful.
As so often I was perplexed at Spring Harvest by the negativism I felt
towards intercessory prayer. I remember lingering outside a session which was
being led by someone with a passion for breathing new life into Scotland
through participation in prayer chains and other prayer ministries. I was
perplexed that, through what appeared to me to be my deficiencies in faith and
practice I felt no sense of identification with this.
By 1991, openness to charismatic gifts and experiences had become increasingly
mainstream within the evangelical community, and Christians attended Spring
Harvest in the expectation of encountering God in a charismatic context. I was
still under the impression that I should appreciate, and have some sense of
blessing through the experiences and practices in which other evangelical Christians
told me they were drawn closer to God. I reckoned, for instance, that the Holy
Spirit, if he were present, would resolve the deficiencies in my praying.
And so my principal reason for
attending Spring Harvest was my knowledge that a pastor who had, with a ‘ministry
team’ from his own fellowship visited
Airdrie Baptist Church some years before to encourage encounter with the Holy
Spirit and the embrace of charismatic gifts was leading a series of seminars on
the same subject. These I knew would
culminate in an opportunity to seek the Spirit’s presence in a deeper way. This
was my chance. Surely I reasoned, I would not once again let God down by my
lack of ardour or sincerity. Surely this time, in a context where God’s
presence was so tangible to so many, the gift which he so much wanted to give
me and which I so much wanted to receive would at last be mine.
The final Holy Spirit seminar was held very late at night, after the
evening’s Celebration but I was in my seat early, still rather weak as a result
of mild food poisoning I’d caught from one of the more dubious offerings from
the Butlin’s kitchen. I waited impatiently as the speakers covered the ground
with which I was so familiar on ‘how to receive the Holy Spirit.’ And then the moment came as I’d known it
would when those who wished to receive the gift were asked to stand. I was the
first on my feet. Those who were standing were not invited to come to the front
of the room for individual prayer - instead, one of the leaders prayed publicly
for us all, and then the seminar was over.
‘Wasn’t that wonderful?’ said
a woman standing near me, her face bright with joy. ‘Oh yes it was, wasn’t it?’
I lied, forcing a smile. For once again I felt only emptiness and
disappointment. Once again it did not occur to me to blame God for failing to
come through, or the seminar speakers for not alerting those who stood at their
invitation to the fact that not all those on their feet would necessarily feel
any different. The fault must be mine. Somehow, I’d failed, I’d screwed up
again, I’d let God down. As the seminar was breaking up, I approached the
pastor and asked if I could have a word with him. I suppose he was tired at the
end of a long day, but rather than spending time with me there and then he
invited me to meet him in the speaker’s lounge the next morning.
I went at the agreed time, and there he was, sitting in a chair drinking
coffee. I sat with him briefly in that very public environment and told him
something of my hunger for God, and my frustration at God’s inaction. He may
have prayed for me briefly, and then he suggested that I read the book Something more by Catherine Marshall,
the widow of the Scots-born Washington preacher Peter Marshall (1904-1949).
After writing a biography of her husband, A
man called Peter (1951), she published a series of books about her own
spiritual journey, including Something
more, (1974) in which she describes her increasing openness to the Holy
Spirit. I had already read this book, without it having any deep impact on me.
Perhaps the pastor was trying to help me to see that for some people
encountering the Spirit is a gradual thing, a journey rather than a crisis, but
I do feel that he failed me that day. It can’t be easy dealing with those who
present themselves as the casualties of your ministry, but I would have
appreciated, and benefited so much from more gentle, engaged probing; from
challenging words; from a warm hug. As it was, I went away nursing my sadness.
I bought another copy of Something more
and began re-reading it, but I didn’t connect with Marshall’s experience, and
after a few chapters I gave up.
Back in Airdrie, I had occasion to visit a Church of Scotland minister
and his wife, both of whom were charismatic in their theology and practice. I
described to them my experience at Spring Harvest. ‘Would you like us to pray
with you?’ they asked, and I invited them to go ahead. I sat in a chair, and
they stood one on either side of me, their hands on my head and shoulders, and
prayed. I felt nothing, but I was grateful for their concern. Afterwards the
minister’s wife said to me ‘I felt my fingers tingling as we prayed. The Holy
Spirit is in you.’ I found this comment slightly zany, and yet I was encouraged
by it too.
I returned
to Spring Harvest in 1992, but my sole reason for attending that year was to accompany
my fiancée Lorna who was going with a friend. I can’t remember anything about
the sessions we went to. I was full of wonder and amazement that this lovely
woman had agreed to marry me. The only event I remember at that Spring Harvest
was a late-night performance by a band who sang a number entitled ‘Small price to pay’ – presumably a reference
to the cost of Christian discipleship. The band’s front man quipped that a
friend had thought the song was instead about a cheap wig!
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