Following my Primal Vision post I was encouraged again to see this on TSK’s blog. The newspaper reports are from 1955 and outline how the Rev Tony Reid was given freedom to do missional works in the pubs of Soho and is reported under a title of ‘The Church must come to the people.’

It’s amazingly encouraging to read of something like this. I am finding the isolation of pioneering is really starting to bite. Quite often I think I am alone in truly understanding what I am doing. Actually, that is not true – actually most of the time I do not think even I am understanding at all what I am trying to achieve. Most days I act out of obedience to what I think God is asking me to – and I’m only human so could be so so wrong! To see and read of someone else ‘going there’ in a very different time before me is strangely encouraging!

I smile as the reporter tries to work out this mission in his report … the second page of the report (which you can see on TSK) asks:

‘but the problem I was trying to work out in the Soho club, whilst the father was talking quiet practical Christian love and faith over the whisky glasses was: Can you relate the Christian faith to a mambo in a basement dance hall? Can you take a Christian mission into a night club, a public house, a tenement with bedraggled washing on the area landing and haunted by hungry cats?’

Can we indeed? The answer is ‘yes we can’ and actually it’s not a choice of ‘can we’, ‘must we’ or even ‘we need to in order to survive’. We are called to imitate Jesus and the example he set us – the gospels show that it was in these places with the people that he was found. These are the places where love is needed and where love needs to be shown.

Interestingly this reporter seems to come from an age before the press were cynical and looking to knock or belittle. He goes out of his way to support the Rev Tony Reid by stating: ‘what is nonsense is to suggest, as has been suggested, that this is a con-man mission …they are a group of sincere people who have a questioning and intelligent approach to Christianity.’

It’s a shame that those intelligent Christians today, such as Mark, are not treated with the same level of openness, honesty and integrity.

As I said to read and hear of Rev Tony Reid is encouraging – it does not take away the feelings of isolation or misunderstanding, but its great to read of such mission that I can relate to – I’ve love to know if Tony Reid is still alive because it would be amazing to chat with him.