A life in letters: Carluke Gospel Hall

(Best read in conjunction with the artcles on Carluke and on the Martin Memorial Baptist Church.).

Having attended a Brethren Church before we moved to Carluke in 1962, my parents and I left the Martin Memorial Baptist Church in the town in 1970, where we had been members, and moved to Carluke Gospel Hall. I still remember the names of some of the elders - Mr Wallace, Mr Brownlee, Charles D. Pollard, men whose decisions seemed to be to be incontrovertible.

A key feature of Brethren meetings was (and remains) the ‘morning meeting’ when members gather around a table in the centre of the room bearing bread and wine. In those days women were not permitted to take part audibly in these meetings, but the ‘brethren’ would, as prompted by God announce hymns to be sung; pray audibly; give short Bible-based ‘words’ or sermons. The service culminated with the giving of thanks for the bread and wine, and the sharing of both as they passed from person to person. In my experience, where people are genuinely open to God, such a service can indeed have a sense of being ‘led’ by the Spirit of God.

 
For me, however, these services burdened me with guilt at what I felt was my hypocrisy. Outwardly, I claimed to be a Christian believer, and yet for all my seeking of God, God seemed remote, disinterested. I believe my issues were both spiritual and psychological, the one exacerbated by the other.

On Sunday afternoons, except during the summer when open-air gospel services were held in the Market Square, there would be a Bible teaching meeting at the hall, and then an evening gospel service at 6.30pm, often followed by a meeting for young people, or hospitality in someone’s home.  We were often in the house of Charles and Sheena Rose, I remember – he was one of the local postmen.

At a time when I was particularly angst-ridden, in December 1973, something very unexpected and significant happened on Sunday 15th when, sitting in Carluke Gospel Hall, and later at home, at last I had the sense of God’s acceptance and love which I had yearned for. I knew at the time that it was a significant moment, and I still see it in that light

It was not the end, or the beginning of the end, but it was perhaps the end of the beginning. Since then in terms of spiritual journey and discovery, I have travelled far, and see now much more clearly than I did then.  And that December day did not mark the end of my neurotic anxiety, the symptoms of which worsened over the next 15 years before they began to improve through better treatment. But from then on, I had at least a memory of knowing myself loved by God, and at best a sense of God’s continued creative whisper within me.

I was involved in various ways in the work of the Gospel Hall, apart from singing excruciatingly at the Market Square open air meetings!  Initially, I attended the small Youth Fellowship myself – I recall Andrew Weir, the leader talking intently at one year’s end about his certainty that the Lord must surelt return in  the coming twelve months. For all my experience of being accepted, it would be many, many years before I could hear talk of the Lord’s return without being gripped by panic that those I loved would be taken, while I would be left. And there were the Sunday evenings when young people in the fellowship were invited to the house of Charles Pollard and his family, in Wilton Road. Mr Pollard was, if not officially the ‘leading’ elder, certainly the dominant one: it was not easy to question his views even if you wished to.

I taught a Sunday School class of young girls, perhaps aged 8-10. In some ways, I was dedicated. I would drive through the Crawforddyke housing estate and round many of the children up in my car, and take them to the Hall – today we would recognize the complete inappropriateness of my doing this.  I bought them each a weekly packet of polo mints with no concern for the state of their teeth.. And we occasionally had them to the house for parties – I remember my mother was distressed to discover after one such event that one child had peed on a padded dining room chair! But when it actually came to teaching the kids, no lesson plan was used, and we were left on our own to plan the lessons. I gave very little attention to what I was teaching – I occasionally used a book of sermon outlines by a Brethren author - and how best to present it to connect with youngish children.  I remember one lesson, speaking about the parable of the Vineyard in Isaiah 5. God plants a vineyard, does everything possible to encourage strong, healthy fruitfulness and is disappointed by its failure to produce good fruit.  I did this with a mimimal of preparation, and persevered despite the bored, bemused faces in front of me.

And I continued writing plays based on Bible stories (but never of course featuring Jesus himself, for depicting Christ in this way was deemed to be inappropriate.) These were performed by the teenagers in Ena Beattie’s Girls Club at their annual social events, often chaired by me. It became increasingly difficult for Ena to persuade the girls in her class to commit to learning their lines.  I think I also occasionally gave short sermons at the Gospel Hall, and certainly took part in the Bible study sessions which were led by the elders on a mid-week evening, but I was still saying what I thought I was expected to say, rather than what I actually thought.

I remember the Hogmanay gatherings at the Gospel Hall. Perhaps arising from a tradition of offering sanctuary at a time of year when members might have a history of over-indulgence, we met sometime after ten for tea, and singing and chocolates, and prayers, and hugs after midnight.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I felt I belonged there, but it seemed a safe place: outside, the darkness of an alien world, when at any time the Lord might come, and in myself I still felt desperately insecure.

In the mid-1970s, we began driving over to Airdrie every Sunday to attend Ebenezer Hall, Coatdyke which my grandparents had been members for a while: my parents also worshipped there when they were first married.

Part of the reasoning behind this move lay in my parents’ desire for me to meet a wider range of people, which they felt would be beneficial for me; I think there were also some other issues relating to Carluke Gospel Hall. 

I don’t suppose I had much of a say in this, and even if I had, I don’t know that I would have any firm ideas. As earlier in the Baptist Church I had no one in the Gospel Hall whom I would call a personal friend, no-one with whom I could be real, no-one in whom I could confide.

A life in letters: Conversion 2

Until it came to the second Sunday in December in 1973, and the 6.30pm gospel service at Carluke Gospel Hall which we were by then attending. Over the autumn, the tension and despair had heightened. The Winter of Discontent had led to power cuts, the three-day-week, a miasma of crisis. In October there was war in the Middle East. Surely the end of all things was at hand, and still I couldn’t find the door.

The speaker that Sunday evening was one of the local ‘saints’ John McEwan. He read the passage from the Bible he was about to preach on. It was Jesus’ story about a rich man, outside whose house a beggar named Lazarus habitually stationed himself, asking for alms from passers-by. The rich man’s heart, however, was untouched by Lazarus’s need. In time, the beggar died and was taken to heaven, or, as Jesus put it in the symbolism of the period into ‘Abraham’s bosom.’ Later, the rich man also died, and found himself tormented in hell. In anguish, he begged Abraham to send Lazarus across to where he was to place on his tongue a drop of cool water. ‘Not possible,’ said Abraham. ‘No-one can cross from where we are to where you are, or from where you are to where we are.’

‘Well, if that’s not possible,’ implored the once-rich man, ‘then restore Lazarus to life on earth to warn my five brothers about the reality of this place so that they will take heed, and avoid finding themselves here when they die. ‘But your brothers can read the prophets’ warnings about what lies beyond death any time they want,’ Abraham replied. ‘But don’t you see?’ said the once-rich man, ‘They would really believe if someone returned from death and gave them the warning personally.’

 As John McEwan read this story in the old language of the King James Version of the Bible, my eyes and heart raced ahead of him, and I reached the punch-line of the story, which spoke to me powerfully – ‘But Abraham said, “If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen if someone rises from the dead.” ‘

In a millisecond, I realised I’d been assuming that because of the spiritual mess I perceived myself to be in, God would have to do something extra, something beyond the ordinary if he were to reach out and rescue this particular lost sheep. But I also recognised that not only had I ‘Moses and the prophets’, in the Old Testament part of the Bible, but I had in my hands the New Testament as well, with its story of Jesus coming among us, and still I was slow to believe. And the accuracy of Abraham’s diagnosis of human nature in the story was proven by the fact that though I not only had the whole Bible, but also evidence that a man (Jesus himself) had been raised from the dead and had returned to tell us about his experience, yet STILL I did not believe. And I saw clearly that what God had done for me was enough to draw even me back to himself.

I can’t think of any purely psychological explanation why this verse should have spoken to me so powerfully while any number of other sermons and Bible readings I had listened to during the dark years had left me superficially anxious, but untouched at a deeper, healing level, and I believed then as I believe now that God himself met me in those words and brought them alive to me.

That evening as usual I helped run the Bible Class after the evening service. With the teenagers who attended, we were working through one of the Bible study courses produced by an organisation called Emmaus – I think it was called Lessons for Christian living.  Among the questions we considered that week there was a comment which went something like this: ‘Perhaps you are not sure that you are a Christian. If this is the case, you can pray now, and ask Jesus to enter your life.’ This simply confirmed to me that God’s invitation was open to me, and that night at home I prayed, and unlike so many of my other Sunday-evening prayers, it seemed that my words were carried upwards into the very heart of God, and I was touched by joy, peace, and hope. But the real change had taken place in the corrugated iron hall in Church Lane when my heart leaped in response to God’s voice: what happened at home later was merely a confirmation.

‘I became a Christian tonight,’ I said, breathlessly, to those who were close to me.

‘Don’t be silly! You’ve been a Christian for years.’

 I turned, and walked slowly away. I felt as though I had taken to share with them my most precious treasure, and it had been dashed out my hands.