Introduction and disclaimer

This is the central portion of a letter I wrote in October 1990. It was to a certain quite well-known senior Church of England clergyman, whom I had known since before I went to University. I have kept names except where they are irrelevant to the discussion. There is a raft of biographical detail omitted both before and after the events described here - please see some of the other pages. Please remember that I don't subscribe these days to many of the views I expressed here back in 1990, but I thought it more honest to reproduce exactly what I said then. I've put a few explanatory comments here and there in blue where I thought it helpful to do so.

Quick Dramatis Personae

Alan and Eileen Vincent

were the leaders of the church I was at between 1980 and 1986.

Rachel and Gordon Hickson

(not mentioned by name in the original) are the daughter and son-in-law of Alan and Eileen Vincent.

Bryn Jones (d. 2003)

was at the time a prominent "house church" leader based in the North of England.

Terry Virgo

was, and still is, a prominent "house church" leader based on the South Coast of England.

Pete Byers

was one of the elders at the branch of the Vincent church I went to.

I now pick up the letter after the introductory comments and personal discussions...

All this brings one on to the sad and depressing details about churches, and scandals not being restricted to the C of E... Hopefully the link can be apparent. As was mentioned in several places a key problem with your difficulties is that the freehold persists whatever happens and however the person disgraces himself short of gross immorality or criminality. The problem is manifest in a different form with the house churches. However the parallels are there. Perhaps I am inclined to think that the C of E way can't be that bad after all. The facts do get exposed. Even if you can't pin corruption charges on Rev D (although I must admit that from the tone of one or two comments in the article it seemed to me that you could if you really set your mind to it).

Another aspect of the House Church situation is more akin to those old Kremlin photographs where the line-up photographed a few years ago is retouched so that the heretics no longer appear. People fall out, but the leaders can't or won't admit it, so the chairs at the front are repositioned and the speakers or programme is re-arranged to exclude them. The join is made seamless. The heretic, notwithstanding the fact that last year or last month he spoke 3 nights out of 5 is not mentioned. Books he wrote aren't for sale on the bookstalls, although last year it was implied that their inward digestion was an essential prerequisite to qualify for anything better than "also ran" status at the Judgment Seat.

Yet the staggering thing is that people go along with it all. Obviously we can't hear everything about the finer details of rows and so forth, but the real world is full of people who fail to get on and there's no sense in pretending otherwise. The bible records Paul and Barnabus falling out. It also seems to show that Paul was wrong, or at least wrong in the long run, and yet Barnabus never features again. Yet it doesn't skip without explanation from Paul and Barnabus in one verse to Paul and Silas in the next. On the other hand the change in alliances and enemies in House Church circles remind me of bits in 1984 where the population isn't supposed to notice (a bit like last year Iraq was nice and Iran was nasty and now it's the other way round.... well it's only one letter different isn't it and who cares if you gas all your Kurdish population out of sight as long as you leave our oil alone). (This was of course written in the build-up to the first Gulf War).

Another interesting phenomenon is the ego trip which so many leaders seem to have gone on. I coined a phrase for it; they get "Overawed with their own magnificence". I think that it was a clincher for me. Whilst you may be dealing with fine, anointed even, preachers, their preaching ability doesn't mean that they know how to handle money correctly, for instance. Even when you ignore the advice of 2 accountants, 1 solicitor and even a barrister specialising in tax law, ultimately escaping by a hair's breath from being prosecuted for tax fraud.

Anyhow, generalities apart, specifics now follow. I think I last saw you round about 1982 or so. The story was that the church I had been in had been subsumed (the leader, to put it at its bluntest, had had his marriage break up) by the movement led by Alan Vincent. He was leading a church group which had started many years ago in a village called Bedmond. Alan had been a missionary for many years in India, and he still visits there often. He had gone, out, so he says, convinced that God was an English Baptist, and had discovered fairly rapidly that He is or was neither of those things. He came back to England and allegedly the Baptist church which had sent him out couldn't swallow that truth, so he found his way into the Bedmond church, and rapidly led it. Most of the people at the Bedmond church had been recent converts at a Billy Graham crusade in 1965-ish I think, and they were glad of an experienced leader.

The church went on for some while, and they became part of the house church movement led by Pastor "Wally" North (who was in fact the father of most of the parts, indeed I believe that Bryn Jones came originally from his fold, although he wouldn't have anything to do with him now). After a few years, Alan went back to India for a second period, handing over the leadership of the church to a man by the name of Pete Palmer. Alan returned about 1976-ish, just as Pete Palmer was leaving, and once again resumed the leadership of the Bedmond church. Fairly soon afterwards though, Bryn Jones came on the scene, and the church went all the way up to Harrogate in 1977 and 1978 for the Dales Bible Week, led by Ern Baxter and Bob Mumford respectively. (The Dales Bible Week was a huge fundamentalist camp-style teaching week held annually in North Yorkshire, England for several years in the late 70s and early 80s). However Bryn Jones was, so I gather, now decrying Wally North as a heretic. I have to say that only very recently (writing this in 1990) have I heard the doctrinal ground (singular) on which Bryn Jones fell out with Wally North. I don't propose to go over it here, and frankly I think they are both wrong and if you heard it, you'd probably come up with a fourth opinion, and it wouldn't take you long to find a fifth and sixth. I am sure that you would agree with me that the issue is of overwhelming unimportance, unless perhaps you were looking for an excuse to have an argument. It's funny though, you'd think it was akin to disbelief in the Trinity or something the way the lines are drawn. I have my own theory these days about what was really going on, and I am sure you'd agree that frankly it's more to do with people wanting to run things than the finer points of theology.

So Bryn Jones apparently gave Alan something of an ultimatum, to cut the links with Pastor North, or to be left out of his thing. Well Alan duly announced the severing of the links, but many people were hurt by that, some of the people who had clearly loved the ministry of the people in Pastor North's group. One of them was a certain Pete Byers, another a certain Pete Inchley. (For some reason almost everyone here is called Pete something). Nevertheless they closed their mouths and stayed. So 10 years ago I appeared on the scene there. Looking back, I can see that I allowed myself to be pushed around by a series of events which were not of my doing, and I wish I had thought about it a bit more clearly. But then, I didn't. It was a very difficult time for me then, but I struggled on. Alan by then was seeing less and less of Bryn Jones. The distance was a factor, and also there was the work of Terry Virgo in Brighton. Although Terry had started under Bryn, I think that there had been something of a rift. Terry is a convinced Calvinist, and Bryn is an ardent Arminian (and so is Alan, I come back to this point later. Perhaps it is an underlying issue in the subsequent split). Certainly Bryn faded out of the picture, and Terry moved centre stage down South. I think there was a certain uneasiness about Bryn; certainly there was never any of the more obvious empire-building. As an aside, whilst it never happened in my neck of the woods, I am sure that it was true that people's gifts were compared with their wage packets in the Bradford church and its branches.

Personally I think that there is another aspect to this which never seems to me to have been talked about, namely the appearance of evil. It may not be a good idea to stay overnight in a young lady's house, but I doubt whether anyone would be watching the front door and marking off who went in or out. Yet they seem obsessed with sex. In the Christian school 7-year old boys were punished if they came however innocently within 2 feet of 7-year old girls. Frankly I think that is putting ideas into heads which wouldn't otherwise entertain them for another 7 years anyhow. But maybe I'm wrong. Whether or not that appears evil, to closely scrutinise what the hoi polloi give on the one hand, and on the other hand provide Bryn Jones with a £¼ million house and a £60,000 car whilst not publishing the accounts (Well, they say that "anyone can see them who wishes to", but try and ask to see them without your motives being questioned and without your getting consigned to a dustbin marked "Unsound/Life in a mess/Demon possessed". And you still wouldn't see them) seems to my tiny mind a far worse appearance of evil. In fact I'd go further, and say that it is evil, not in just appearance, even if Bryn was left it all by his grandmother. But again, you don't find this out until much later.

Coming back to 1980, Bryn left the picture, and the Terry Virgo group, then called Coastlands after a passage snatched incongruently out of Isaiah 41 (now called New Frontiers, with an "N.F." logo, a most unfortunate choice if you ask me because that's the initials of the extreme racist political group in the UK, the National Front, however since then it has been changed, at least on his website) took on Alan Vincent, Terry as the Apostle, and Alan as the second-in-command of the group, the Prophet. (If you would argue with those terms, hold your fire for a minute, there is worse to come). Give Alan his due, he was and probably still is a good preacher and teacher. I can't see that you'd have grounds to argue with 90% of what he says (I'm tempted to add that you wouldn't have grounds to argue with the other 10% of what he preaches if he practised it!). I think that he can be compassionate and understanding when you catch him aright, and frankly I have to say that I was quite sure that he was an outstanding Man of God back then.

In 1980, the church group outgrew Bedmond, and purchased a redundant URC building in Garston, the group splitting geographically into two. Later on, with muggins on board, a group started in St Albans, and shortly afterward one in Hemel Hempstead. The Bedmond church building was sold off as Bedmond was a small village and hardly anyone needed it (this broke a few hearts). It has now reverted to being an Anglican church. Another group, based in Stanmore, started up, under the leadership of one Frank Gamble. The St Albans group, which started in early 1982, was lead by Pete Byers (one of the Petes mentioned earlier). It seemed an exciting venture, but looking back I see that it was very barren, very empty and very lonely for me. But the whole ethos was that you had to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. If there is one thing I've learned since, it's that everyone has problems, but no one actually is a problem.

Around this time a large school building became redundant in Hemel Hempstead. The Hemel group had been looking for a building, and this was super. The county council didn't know what to do with it, and one member, in fact of the St Albans group, was keen to start a Christian school (using the ACE system, if you don't know what that is, you don't want to, if you do, you'll know what I mean). So the Hemel church, and the hastily-started school took over the redundant building. The council only let them have it for a year at a time, as they were ultimately planning to sell the site for redevelopment, but the church and school were led to believe that God was giving them the site. Much time and effort was poured in. So Bourne Valley church, and the Kings School, came into being. It seemed amazing, and so much went well. However there was always the threat of the council not renewing the lease, but they did in 1983 and 1984, for the very last time, they said, up to July 1985. In 1985 the school had done nothing about moving again, and although I didn't know this at the time (how many times have I used this phrase?)

I gather that the council, acting in extreme anger, for the sake of the children, renewed the lease for a further year, saying that there was no possibility whatever of a renewal. 1985 was a very painful and difficult year for me; perhaps the most painful of my life. Perhaps I will be able to describe it later. In the middle of 1985, a two-line item appeared in the church notice-sheet (this was distributed through all four groups). Apparently Alan was leaving Coastlands, Terry Virgo's group, although Frank Gamble, at the Stanmore Group, was staying with Terry Virgo. That was all. Suddenly Terry, who used to come frequently, and Frank, who often came and spoke, and a quarter of the people were gone. No explanation. Nothing. It was so strange. Yet life went on as though they had never existed.

Yet something was missing, for me anyway. It didn't quite gel. (I have since discovered that Alan was slung out, for acting unilaterally contrary to the previously-discussed and agreed policy of Terry's group on about 3 or 4 major issues. Additionally Terry considered, again in conflict with Alan, that far too many eggs, financial and spiritual, were being put into the School basket). Then in September 1985, the situation referred to above having been, as it were, resolved (give my mother her due, she alone provided the straw to clutch at the right time), a strange situation arose involving me and Alan. It was just a small incident, but in a nutshell Alan was insisting that I ran my business in a particular way. Now I realise that Alan was desperately seeking to fund the purchase of the Bourne Valley school site in Hemel from the council, and to put it bluntly, was planning to milk me. However when I questioned what he was saying he reacted in extreme anger. Just for a minute, then he recovered his composure. Yet somehow in that moment so much changed for me. I really saw him in such a different light; not immediately perhaps, but the rot had set in.

The school and church had promised to vacate the school site at the end of July 1986. Yet Alan was determined to buy the site. He went to the USA and had an appeal put out on Pat Robertson's TV programme. I may be wrong, but I think he may have also had an appeal put out on the programme of one of those people who time was later to publicly find in the wrong bed or side of the jail door. Yet remorselessly July 1986 approached, and nothing had been done to find a new site, and only peanuts in comparison to the likely price of the site had been raised. Again and again people said how they had "come to faith" that God would give the site. I have to say that there was a disgraceful episode where "pledges" were extracted from people, to second mortgage, or even sell altogether their houses to help buy the site. Everyone was encouraged to scrape everything together. By this time, I really felt sure that there was no way this thing could go ahead, so I pledged nothing and gave nothing. I even remember spending half an hour persuading (successfully as it turned out) a girl who was dithering between "pledging" and buying a car to opt for the latter. I was giving her a lift at the time, and she's quite fun, so you can't say that there was an ulterior motive, in fact the opposite. Even more disgracefully, the pledges were called in, and never repaid when the school was lost. I am quite sure that that was illegal.

The last week in July arrived. Alan went on holiday for a few days, and the other leaders started to arrange to vacate the school in accordance with the previously-given undertakings to the council. There was a rota for everyone to help shift kit, and the programme was hardly under way when the phone rang at my house. It was the phone chain person. "The elders have come to faith that God will give us the school", he said. I was aghast. He asked me to phone on to the next people, and I refused outright. Instead I sat down, and I wrote to Alan a letter saying that this action was equivalent to the temptation to jump off the temple, and I disassociated myself absolutely from that decision. I got no reply. Alan stayed on there until the council obtained an Order for Possession. The papers were full of it. The local goodwill was lost overnight. Yet still they believed that they could yet buy the site. In the end the site was bought by Tarmac at about 5 times the maximum figure that the church was thinking of, and although it was obviously dead, Alan made some fruitless attempts to contact the Tarmac board. By this time I was sufficiently disillusioned to go up to him and say that maybe he ought not to do so himself, but ask people in his church who might be able to make such negotiations, have the contacts to do it, and above all wouldn't be tainted by having their names at the top of documents issued by the High Court, but to no avail.

When I first went to Bedmond, the whole vision was of a concept of church-planting. Starting from Bedmond, new churches were seen as like "strawberry plants". Eventually the plant would grow on its own, and put out new shoots itself. The idea was that people would not go a long way to church, but there would be a church and witness in every street. Then Alan went to Korea, and saw the world's largest church of Paul Yonggi Cho. His wife Eileen wrote a book about what she saw, God can do it here. (She wrote a sequel to it called Something's happening, which is the Christian bookseller's answer to the Beano Annual [A well-known UK comic book for kids]. Whilst claiming to be disguising names and places, she in fact only changes the name of her own daughter and son-in-law. I recognise every single person mentioned in the book apart from two, and can tell you that no one story is completely true, or else it is true as far as it goes, but with so many details and conclusions are left out that the result is untrue.)

Early on in the book she describes a prayer meeting in which Alan had prayed out loud for an army of 10,000 men (he was concerned about the Hare Krishna place not far away, and their army of "evangelists") and where a moment later a "clear young voice" gave a confirmatory prophecy, from where Alan got the conviction that a large church, with 10,000 men, plus a similar number of women, 2.whatever children, aunts and uncles and so forth giving one of 50,000+ was God's will for him. Sounds very convincing, but the funny thing is that she doesn't mention that the "clear young voice" belonged to her own daughter, Rachel Hickson. Somehow neither she nor Alan remembered that, but a lot of other people did.

Whether or not that was all valid, the result was a backtracking on the "strawberry plant" idea (Alan subsequently claimed that he had never suggested this; however I remember him giving a talk one evening in 1981 or so with a picture of a strawberry plant sending out runners labeled "St Albans", "Hemel" etc.). Once again unknown to the plebs, the move was on to be one church. However this was not accepted at first by the leaders of the autonomous churches, but he wore them down, except for Pete Byers at St Albans. The argument apparently dragged on for a year, through to October 1986. Pete then said to Alan, so he later told me, that he wouldn't agree with the concept but would no longer oppose it. So late in October 1986 we had a new definition of church structure given in two evenings. There was now a local church, with local elders, local apostles and local prophets, with above them a whole new concept of an Area Church, with Area elders, Area apostles. All a massive hierarchy with guess-who at the top. Things were wearing thin.

Finally the dreadful day in December 1986 came. Apparently Alan wasn't happy about Pete Byers not opposing all this, he wanted his wholehearted support. Pete refused this, and he got slung out. By sheer accident I was at his house when the "Left boot of fellowship" was applied. Pete wanted to come the following day to say goodbye to his friends but this was refused. Pete Inchley was also around at the time. The following day I went along and Alan spoke about Pete. He said that Pete had determined to go, that they had tried to dissuade him, but "deceived of Satan", he had insisted. A single girl, an unmarried mum, who'd known Pete well, suddenly jumped up and said "Isn't he even coming to say goodbye?", and got the reply "we wanted him too but he wouldn't come". Pete Inchley jumped up and publicly accused him of lying and the whole situation got really messy, but we were all sent home. I'd heard 2 direct lies, seen the law broken, and some very dubious theology presented, so I had no hesitation in going round to one of the other elders and telling him that I was leaving forthwith. He said initially that I should go round to see Alan if I thought he was lying, as he was sure that Alan was telling the truth, but he argued himself completely round in a circle, as he had said that the motivation to go, and refusal to say goodbye, was from Pete to start with, but concluded by saying "If Pete had come, there would have been a scene" (of course there was anyway!). There seemed little point in my taking that up. I did however write to Alan expressing as clearly as I could my reasons for leaving. Again I received no reply.

Pete started a new church in his home, and out of loyalty I and Pete Inchley and his family went along for 2 or 3 weeks, but both of us had a very strong conviction that we must not go any longer. Since then, alas, Pete Byers has gone to no church, and lives very much in the past of Pete Palmer and the old days of Bedmond. Pete Inchley goes to a sort of brethren-ish place in Hemel, near where he lives. Most of the people stayed on there, but there were another couple of upsets in the ensuing year. A dodge whereby the school was directly financed by money given to the church under deeds of covenant, (for non-UK readers, that was an arrangement, now superseded by "Gift Aid", with the tax office whereby you can give money to charities out of pre-tax income) about which counsel's opinion had been sought (and subsequently ignored) at the insistence of one of the elders at Garston, a Chartered Accountant, and someone else at an associated church, a solicitor (I referred to this earlier) was finally caught up with by the Inland Revenue.

Someone else later got the "Left boot of fellowship" treatment, but I have to admit that in that instance my sympathies were with Alan. At round about the same time the recipient of the said boot arrived unexpectedly at my door, and I knew immediately that somehow that (a) he wanted me to give him money (b) exactly how much (c) that I should say "no". Really strange. Maybe I should have said so at the outset, but instead he launched into a 45-minute diatribe into AV and his descent down the proverbial tube before coming to his inevitable point. However in my answer I said that he had known of me for some 6 years, for many of which he had been in the same church, he had never once invited me to his house, come to mine, enquired after my welfare or volunteered information about his, that as far as I could see the same was true of everyone else who he encountered (unless of course the person concerned was an attractive young lady [One in particular being the young lady referred to earlier in connection with the dilemma she had about "pledging" and buying a car. In those days he agreed with everything AV said and was a major pressure on her in the opposite direction.]) and after all that he comes to my house as though it were some kind of bank.

I haven't heard from him since and I still haven't(that's Gordon Hickson) is now the Big White Chief in what is now called the West Herts Community Church. He and Rachel run a ministry called Heartcry http://www.heartcry.co.uk. The original vast site for the massive empire has gone (there was a spot near the M25 and not far from Bedmond which came up for sale in 1987, but this idea rapidly faded again thanks to the Inland Revenue fiasco). So where, I can hear you asking, does all that leave yours truly? I think that my answer would be in many senses I feel somewhat chastened by an experience of abuse of power on a massive scale. I think that the popular rumours, by and large, of the house church movement, are incorrect, but there is a structure which does provide an intolerable power to certain types of people. More frightening than that is that the most incredible abuses of that power can take place without any question from the plebs / sheep / hoi polloi. There is a very real fear that opposition in the most trivial fashion constitutes rebellion, and rebellion (1 Samuel 15 quoted here) is as witchcraft. Only Terry Virgo's group is Calvinist, and thus the doctrine is plugged that it is possible to irretrievably lose Salvation, so one would be batting a very sticky wicket arguing at all. I personally find it encouraging to discover that, contrary to anything previously said, God hasn't actually deserted other forms of churches and (dare I say it) that does include the C of E. I have to admit that I have problems with the Bishop of Durham, and even more so with the Bishop of Oxford who they seem to have on the radio every 5 minutes with a oceanful of ice-cold water to pour over anything worthwhile. This letter is long enough, so I won't go into details of my encounter with a member of Gerald Coates' group of churches who came to work for me from the beginning of 1988 to August 1989. I'll save that for another time. But that was a tragedy in itself and nearly brought the business down. After some final remarks and conversation about my then girlfriend the letter closes here.