The Witts End Evangelism Campaign 20

"I want to buy the farm at Piddledon and turn it into a Christian Conference Centre," said Rufus. The comment was met by varying degrees of shock and awe from the residents who were gathered around him in the lounge.
"I think we have quite a lot of life," said Louisa. Pastor David had a look on his face like Theresa May watching Election Night Special.
"Louisa," said Pastor David.  "We might have quite a lot of life but there are only 6 of us left and we're all over 65.  That's why I want to sell the farm."
"I don't think the situation is anywhere near that bad," said Angie.
"It is," said Sarah.  "David's just stating an obvious fact.  There are 6 people living here and they're all over 65.  You can't deny that."
"We haven't got a Christian conference centre in the south west of England," said Rufus.  "Such a centre is badly needed."
"I have the right to live here forever," said Harry.
"Forever won't be very long, Harry," said Pastor David, "you're already 85.  What are we going to do when we're all over 80?  How will we cook the dinner?"
"Live on sandwiches," said Maria.
"Maria very kindly opens a tin of pilchards for me," said Louisa.
"What will we do when every single one of us is too old and arthritic to operate the ring pull on a tin of pilchards?"
"Use a tin opener," said Harry.  "I could never open those things with the ring pull anyway."
"What will we do when we're all too old and arthritic to use a tin opener?"
"A packet of ham can be opened with a pair of scissors," said Harry.
"You can get ready meals from the supermarket," said Maria.
"And how far away is the supermarket?  There are no shops for 5 miles."
"You can drive there," said Harry.  Pastor David looked at Maria.
"What will you do when your ankles are too old and arthritic to work the pedals, and you're so nervous and scatter brained that you can't negotiate a busy roundabout?"
"I won't tell anyone," said Maria.  "I'll keep driving."
"I'll wear a suit and a cloth cap," said Matthew, "so people will think, there's a silly old duffer who can't drive anymore, and they'll avoid me."
"None of this makes any kind of sense," said Pastor David.  "We'll sell the farm to Rufus, he'll make it into a badly needed Christian conference centre and give us the rights to the cemetery where our friends are all buried, and with the money we make, we'll put you all in a good private old people's home."
"You can't put someone in an old people's home," said Matthew.  "They'd die of a broken heart."
"They'd die of a broken neck if they fell down the stairs here," said Pastor David.
"We need a new vision," said Matthew.  "I want to do a tent campaign."
"A tent campaign?" asked Pastor David.  "We haven't done one of those for decades."
"Maybe that's the problem." said Angie.  "We're too happy to grow smaller and die."
"Brilliant idea," said Sarah.  "Yes, Darling, let's have a tent campaign."

 

A few weeks later Matthew was reading a book in the living room, when Simon said, "Magnus is coming to stay tonight.  He's come to join us on the Witts End tent campaign.  You'll be able to accommodate him in your room, won't you Matthew?"
"Yes, fine."
"Can you make up the bed and put a clean towel on it, folded up, in case he needs a shower?"  Matthew went to his room and made up the spare bed.  He was just folding the bath towel when Magnus arrived, carrying a wooden board and a small tea chest.
"Hello Magnus," said Matthew.  "I was just making the bed."
"Hello," said Magnus.
"Why have you brought a wooden board?"
"I sleep on a wooden board on a Wednesday."
"Why?"
"If you don't deprive yourself of a comfortable bed, how can you deprive yourself of other things?"
"Magnus, between you and me, this sounds like a terrible life of pressure and deprivation."
"I thrive on pressure and deprivation.  Look Matthew, I've got all my worldly possessions in a tiny tea chest.  This is all I own.  I met an African brother who told me that if you owned something, it would have a hold on you.  I bought the tea chest at a jumble sale."  Magnus then took out a copy of a book.  "This is my new book, 'Living the Sermon on the Mount.'  I base my whole life on the Sermon on the Mount."
"Why do you base your whole life on just three pages of the Bible?" asked Matthew.
"It's easy to remember.  Just read the Sermon on the Mount every day for a year and you'll know it off by heart."
"Wouldn't that get boring?"
"I thrive on boredom, pressure and deprivation."
"Magnus, if you live your whole life according to the Sermon on the Mount, you avoid having to resolve moral dilemmas.  If you read the whole Bible, you might have to consider whether Gideon fights a just war or whether it is a sin to tell a lie if it saves someone's life.  In the Sermon on the Mount, you get the impression that morality is black and white."
"That makes it easier to tell people what to do.  Get them all marching to the beat of the same drum, in perfect unity, with a strong vision for the church."

 

Matthew and Karl spent several days putting up the tent at Witts End.  The next day they went out to do some door knocking.  A woman saw them, through the double glazed door of her flat, as they were carrying their brightly coloured leaflets.  She came running down the stairs.
"Would you like a leaflet?" asked Karl.
"Certainly not," said the woman.  "Don't you waste one of those things on me.  I'm not religious and I never will be."
"I think that people like Pastor Todd are, not from sheltered backgrounds, actually, from rather privileged backgrounds," said Matthew.  "They think the rest of the world is like them.  They don't understand people like her."
"The people out there in the world are not really bad people," said Karl.
"I'm surely she's a really good person," said Matthew.  "I'd like her to baby sit my grandchildren, if I had any.  But she really hates God."
"They don't really hate God, they've just never heard."
"They don't want to hear," said Matthew.  "Young people in this country know more about gay rights than they know about Jesus, and know more about the quoran than they know about the Bible.  But they like it that way.  If they saw a Bible on the bookshelf in a shop, they wouldn't grab it with both hands and say, ooh, a Bible.  They'd look at it and say, I'm not religious.  However litte they know about God, they've already made up their minds."  Karl shook his head.
"No, no, Matthew.  God loves people.  He reveals himself to them.  People like her are an exceptional minority."
"Karl, the exceptional minority are the people who are the slightest bit interested in God." 

 

They met some teenage girls who were standing on the street corner.
"Hello," said Karl.  "We've come to tell you about Jesus."
"We'd never have guessed," said a girl in a parker anorak with short hair.
"You're fanatics," said a girl in a duffle coat with long hair and glasses.  "A fanatic is someone who rams religion down other people's throats."
"I was holding this leaflet in my hand," said Karl.  "I wasn't ramming it down your throat."
"We go to a Christian school," said the girl in the parker.
"Do you believe in Jesus?" asked Matthew.
"Definitely not," said the girl in the duffle coat.  "One of the teachers at school is a fanatic.  He reads the Bible every morning.  Then he prays."
"What do you think of him reading the Bible?" Karl asked the girl in the parker.  She shook her fist.
"I hate it, I hate it."
"If you hate him reading the Bible, is that his fault, or is that your fault?" asked Matthew.
"He goes about it the wrong way," said the girl in the dufflecoat. 

 

Matthew and Karl left the girls and continued along the road.  A girl of about 10 wearing a black muslim head dress came up to them.  She looked shocked.
"We don't believe in Christianity," she said.
"I think you're right," said Matthew, "or you wouldn't be dressed as a muslim."
"Why did you come here?" she asked.
"Because Jesus commands us to go," said Karl.
"Go somewhere else."

 

The last remaining half dozen members of Piddledon Farm community sat in the tent at Witts End with a dozen or so remaining members of their congregation.  The evening drew on.  It became dark.  No one had come to the meeting.  Pastor Todd arrived in the car park in his second hand SUV off roader.  He got out of the vehicle and came into the tent.  He walked right up to Matthew, who was standing in front of the stage.
"Why is there nobody here?" he asked.
"Witts End is a hard estate, Pastor Todd," answered Matthew.  "We were met with ridicule from some of the unsaved when we went out witnessing this morning.  You wouldn't believe how unsaved some people are." 

"God doesn't fail, you failed."
"I don't think anyone failed," said Matthew.  "It's just the way things are.  People's hearts are hard.  They don't respond to the gospel."
"That's nonsense.  God loves people.  He longs for them to come into his kingdom."
"But people don't love God.  People don't long to come into God's kingdom.  Some of them would rather go to Hell than spend eternity with God and the angels."
"God doesn't fail, you failed."
"Pastor Todd, I think the problem is the idea that exists in your mind, that one day every street in England will be woken up at 6 o' clock on a Friday morning by the lorry making its weekly food delivery from the farm."  Pastor Todd beamed at Matthew.
"What a wonderful vision.  How healthy.  How economical."
"But it isn't going to happen.  We've been trying to plant new communities for 50 years.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  Piddledon Farm has six people living in it and they're all over 65.  The community where you live is even older and even smaller."
"God doesn't fail, you failed."
"Well, who needs God when they've got Pastor Todd?  If God only has one d in his name, why do you need two?"  Pastor Todd looked as if he was wearing open toed sandals in the garden on a hot summers day and the garden wall had collapsed on his feet.

 

"We're about to say grace," said Maria.  "While we say it, why don't we pray?"
"Go on then, you pray," said Pastor David.
"Oh Lord, thank you for the food and the lovely time we will have together this evening.  I pray, even now, that you will bring more people to this meeting."  Everybody sat around the table, eating sandwiches and cakes and making cups of tea.  A group of two teenagers and two younger children came into the tent, attracted by the prospect of a party and free food.
"Can we come in?" asked the teenage boy.
"We haven't got a form to fill in," said Sarah.
"You don't need one," said Pastor David.  "I just need to make a phone call to their parents."  The boy's teenage sister produced a mobile phone from her pocket and handed it to Pastor David.  Pastor David called the number on the phone which was marked Mum.
"Hello," said Pastor David.  "I'm just calling to let you know that your children have come to a meeting with the Christians from Piddledon Farm."
"Mog," said the children's mother to her partner. "The children are with some Christians at a place called Piddledon Farm."
"Piddledon Farm, Jenny? isn't that the cult that brainwashes people?  It was in the paper.  It breaks up families, kidnaps children and puts them to work farming the pigs under electric lights at three o' clock in the morning."
"Wendy's always wanted to work with animals.  Yes, that's fine.  Thank you for telling us."
"Sit down," Matthew said to the children.  The teenage boy had cuts on his arms.
"Don't think I'm crazy because I cut myself with knives," he said.
"No one thinks you're crazy," said Matthew.
"But I did cut myself with a knife, really," he said pointing, "while I was doing the washing up one night, I got so angry."
"What are your names?" asked Maria, trying to change the subject.
"I'm James Bashford."
"I'm Wendy Bashford and these little ones are Kyle and Katie."  Maria gave them each a plate.
"Help yourselves," she said.  "We have sandwiches, biscuits and cakes."  James had a tablet in his coat pocket.  He picked it up and began looking at pictures on it.  Sarah saw a picture that really frightened her.
"Ooh!  That is so disgusting.  That is horrible."
"It's natural," said James.
"No it's not," said Pastor David.  "Put that thing away."  Mavis and Brenda had a problem they wanted to discuss.
"When I go to the toilet, I see bits hanging down," said Mavis.
"I'm eating a corned beef sandwich," said Matthew.
"You need to see a doctor," said Brenda.
"But if I go to the doctor, he'll shove that big tube right up my bottom."
"It might just be piles," said Mavis, "which is all I've got.  But it could be cancer.  You can never tell.  Better safe than sorry."
"But they'll shove that big tube up my bottom in the hospital.  That's what they did to Louisa.  They did it more than once to Louisa."  Kyle had eaten too much cake.  He started coughing and tried not to be sick.
"Oh, you poor little thing," said Mavis.  "It doesn't taste very nice, when you're being sick.  It doesn't taste very nice."
"I imagine that it tastes pretty much like this coffee cake I'm trying to eat now," said Matthew. 

 

When tea was finished and the others were clearing things away, Matthew climbed onto the stage behind the microphone.
"Matthew," shouted Pastor David, "get down off that stage.  You can't lead any meetings.  I've just had a text message saying that you're not a church leader anymore."
"But I've wanted to be a church leader since I was 15.  I took part in my first meeting when I had only just turned 15."  Matthew began to cry.
"I'm sorry about that but you did say some very strong things to Pastor Todd."

 

The next afternoon the children returned with their mother Jenny.  At least, they were with Jenny when they arrived.  Jenny sat in the tent by herself.  The children wandered around.  Matthew and Karl were walking down the street, doing some evangelism, when they saw Kyle walk right out in front of a lorry.  Karl pulled him out of the way.  Matthew led Kyle to where his mother sat in the tent.
"Kyle went out into the road," said Matthew.  "He walked right in front of a lorry.  Karl had to pull him out of the way."  Jenny threw her arms around Kyle.
"Oh, there, there, you poor boy.  Did the nasty lorry frighten you?"  Katie was walking around with a tin of cakes which she had opened.  She looked hopefully at Maria.
"Can I have a cake?"
"You can have one later," said Maria.  "Let the evangelism team finish what they're doing and when they all come back we'll have a cup of tea together.  Then you can have a cake."
"No!" said Katie.  "I want a cake, I want a cake."  She stamped her feet and began crying.  Wendy had sat in a car in the car park.
"Get out of the driving seat," said Matthew.  "You'll knock the handbrake, and it'll go rolling down the hill."  Wendy burst into tears.  Matthew was upset by this reaction.  "What did I say?  I wasn't shouting."
"No one's ever told her that she can't do anything before," said Jenny.

 

That evening, Magnus got onto the stage behind the microphone.  He was holding his new book.  "I have written a book called Living the Sermon on the Mount.  I have published this book on Amazon.  The world will never be the same again.  Politicians will read this book.  No more wars.  No more poverty.  Millions of Christians will read this book.  True disciples of Christ.  No more backsliding."
"I know how publishing a book on Amazon works," shouted Matthew.  "They publish 3,000 copies and they just sell one book a day.  It's not going to change the world."

 

Jenny returned home and left the children in the tent.  Late that night Pastor David gave the children a lift home.  Mog opened the front door.
"What did you bring them here for?" he asked.
"They're you're children."
"No they're not."
"But you're they're father."
"I'm not their father."
"You're married to their mother.  Whose children are they, then?"

"They're Jenny's children."
"They're Jenny's children by a different marriage," said Pastor David.

"What's marriage?" asked Jenny.