Moving to St Albans
The first few months I lived in Hertfordshire I stayed in Hemel Hempstead whilst I was selling my flat in Leamington Spa. I stayed with a Christian family in Leverstock Green near Hemel Hempstead before I moved to St Albans.
Each weekday morning I commuted to Borehamwood in Hertfordshire to work and I passed through St Albans and I decided to buy a new flat there. I eventually moved to a maisonette as it is called (like a flat but with a separate front door, shown, the flat is upstairs) in a block of 4 in Camp Road, St Albans, about a mile or so from the City Centre.
I never really thought about going to other than Anglican chuches and I went to St Paul's church, a largish local church. I went to a home group during the week but never really said much about anything to the people at work.
People would occasionally say about "witnessing" at work, but I was never really comfortable about this idea. I always felt that the "targets" were living better lives than I was. At heart I was pretty lonely I suppose. I'd never had a girlfriend or even come close. I quite frankly envied the lives of people at work who had families. The legacy of boarding school and Cambridge (which at the time I was there was 8 to 1 male students to female) quite honestly haunted me down the years.
However something happened to change all that.
Chris, Sue and the Jehovah's Witnesses
At work I was put next to and became friends with two people, a guy called Chris, and a girl called Sue (not to be confused with a later Sue!).
Chris and I were invited to dinner by Sue and her mother and family one evening and we had a pleasant evening.
A week after that Chris was away and I found myself chatting to Sue at work virtually the whole day. I had to go out to a garage to have my car attended to and Sue (quite wrongly) came with me and we continued to chat whilst I was waiting in the garage and after we got back.
It would be fair to say that the atmosphere was absolutely electric between us.
Then suddenly Sue told me about her and her family being Jehovah's Witnesses. Obviously I knew all about them, and how "wrong" they were, and I felt like an umpteen thousand volt shock had gone through me.
Suddenly all that was developing between myself and Sue disappeared - indeed Sue said (and to this day I remember her exact words) "Don't you fancy me any more now I've said that?" and I mumbled something incoherent.
There followed a long and interesting few months in which I found myself arguing finer points of theology, and learning a lot, with J.W. people, Chris becoming a Christian, Sue leaving the J.W.s but marrying someone else, and me wondering what had hit me. Chris accused me very strongly of negligence in saying nothing about my faith for so long and letting him go off at tangents with J.W.s.
Elim Pentecostal Church, St Albans
The experience at work really shook me out of my complacency. It seemed to me that the Anglican church I was at was far too complacent and I needed somewhere much more aggressive about its faith than the Church of England. So after visiting 3 or 4 churches in St Albans, I found myself at a recently-started church, the Elim Pentecostal Church.
This was led by a young pastor, Ian Meredith and his wife Shirley. I was to stay there for about 3 years and make a good few friends. After all that time I finally - reluctantly - got into the tongues-speaking thing - which incidentally I can still do, even though I no longer believe in any of the theology behind it. One guy I got to know quite well, but never really regarded as a friend, was a certain Chris Williams. He was a person of very strong opinions. Sometime later he became an "elder" in the church, something I never really agreed with, but which was to have profound consequences.
A happier friendship was with a certain Dawn Buckingham, a very personable and attractive girl who ran an arts studio near the cathedral in St Albans. This became an informal meeting place for many people inside and outside the church. She broke the hearts of most of the single men in St Albans (most definitely including mine!) by marrying a guy called Graham Wells. I gathered that most of the single women were swooning over him and their hearts were broken too!
Dales Bible Week
In 1978 the church went up to the Dales Bible Week, a huge charismatic festival held near Harrogate in North Yorkshire at which the speaker was Bob Mumford, from the USA who at the time strongly peddled the idea of "shepherding" or "discipling" other people and most of his addresses concerned this issue. We were also introduced to a certain Alan Vincent, the leader of a church in a village called Bedmond between St Albans and Hemel Hempstead. I also encountered some of the people I'd known from before University in Harrogate, one in particular was on the staff at the Bible Week.
Whatever else anyone might have said about that and subsequent events I went to there was a real "class distinction" between people (like me) who had to live in muddy tents and the "big cheeses" who addressed us each night wearing their neatly tailored suits. During that time I went round to see Brandon Jackson, the C of E guy I'd known back before I went to Cambridge. He was a little alarmed to see me involved with the Dales Week people and he counselled me strongly to "be on my guard". We returned to St Albans, and started to have a lot of visits from Alan Vincent and his people from the Bedmond church.