Hi Everyone For some time I have read through all 140 pages on the forum. It has brought back many memories, some good and others terrible when I have read how people have been treated in a consistent and disgraceful way by those who claim to be Christians and pastors who are expected to look after the flock. As I have read peoples experiences I wanted to make comments but felt I would wait till I knew what the overall picture was and as time goes by I hopefully will be able to make contributions and add to what were some happy times and memories to this forum amongst friends. I joined Struthers in the early 70’s and stayed well into the 80’s at Glasgow under Mary Black. As I have read peoples experiences I have realised that I managed to get of lightly but not unscathed, probably because I was sleeping through some of the terrible sermons. My first experience of the church was at Partick Burgh Hall where Mr Black held weekly meetings for those seeking the baptism in the spirit. It was open to every denomination and most weeks people came and received the infilling of the spirit. Some stayed and others went back to their own churches to spread the fire. At the time I remember thinking that Friday night was my Sunday service where I met, experienced and worshiped God. Will post some more later God bless to everyone

For me I found the Friday night meetings spiritually wonderful. I was part of a group of young people who were members of the Church of Scotland. The meetings were simple format with Mr Black preaching on the five references to Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Alison Black played the piano with no music and if a new song was introduced she followed one note behind she had a wonderful gift. Mary Black led the singing. There was one occasion Mr Black fell asleep during the meeting and had to be woken. Being young and on fire for God I was a little shocked when I heard that after the meetings these spiritual giants in my eyes went out and bought fish and chips before they drove back down to Greenock. After about a year Mr Black announced that they were going to set up two new churches one in Glasgow and the other in Cumbernauld, long before Diane Rutherford was anywhere to be seen. I think it was a man called George Sharkey who was appointed leader of that church. The youth group I was with set up three school meetings in Drumchapel on the outskirts of Glasgow. Mr Offered came up several times to support us, a lovely man he was leader of one of the Greenock Churches. After some time Mr Black called us together and told us that Miss Taylor had told him to close the Drumchapel meetings and that Mary Black was appointed leader and meetings would be held in central Glasgow. We were told if we wanted to carry on we were free to do so but a difficult thing to do when you are young and believe they have the ear of God.

The new church under Mary Black met for some time at the YMCA and Christian Institute in Bothwell Street and also later at the City Hall. All the Drumchapel people attended and also older people from the Friday night meeting. Mary and Jenifer Jack led all the meetings. Later the church bought a building in Knightswood. It took a year to repair and decorate with several of the tradesmen from Greenock coming up to help, it helped to unite us all as one church rather than them and us. MB and JJ continued to undertake most of the preaching. JJ’s style was in these days to read a parable then retell the parable in a breathless sounding voice then talk a little more about the parable. MB would give us a bible passage then select one verse and talk about it with no connection to the reading. We had many sermons based on the Song of Solomon which seemed to be her favourite book of the bible. As others have pointed out none of the leaders had undertaken any bible training apart from listening to Miss Taylor and following her preaching style. Mr Black was very knowledgeable due to his brethren background. Others that were asked to speak occasionally from amongst the Glasgow congregation. Jim McIlree, Wesley Gault who came from a bible preaching church in Northern Ireland which was good, Grace Black and myself. We were not encouraged to use notes when we spoke which applied throughout the church as a result Mr Black once had a sermon where he ended up with seven final points. Personally I found that during the week God would give me a passage to speak on, I would spend time thinking about and reading. This could last for a few weeks and then I felt ready. Every time without speaking to her that Sunday MB would walk into the church and ask me If I would like to preach and I would say yes because I was ready. This would happen every time and she never asked when I was not prepared. To cut a long story short one day I said to MB I was thinking of going to Bible College to understand scripture in a better way. She suggested I speak to Miss Taylor which I did and she advised me not to go. I decide to accept what she said. Several weeks later I felt drawn to another bible passage and after some time was prepared to speak. MB came into the service and just walked past me. Perhaps I had got things wrong. Unfortunately this happened several times and I understood that I was never going to be asked to preach again by MB. I believe that if you do not use the gift God has given you it will wither and die. My friend Jim Robertson was leading the church at East Kilbride and I still felt committed to Struthers so I went over to help him and Mrs Kerr.

Interesting stuff Jock, and quite an insight into various aspects of Struthers. Seems to me there are lots of experiences listed on these pages, but a number of common themes. Not all identical of course, you wouldn't expect that, but still enough similarities to see a pattern.

One is of course the disdain for any sort of learning that took place outside of the Struthers meetings. As you say, Mr Black was quite knowledgable, as he had a strong teaching background in the Brethren, and I believe he also did some sort of formal Bible training. None of the others did however, and quite a few people lost out because they were discouraged from further learning.

So sad, as there were indeed many people "on fire", and the reason they were on fire was in many cases because of the vision they were given at Struthers. How sad that this was accompanied by an arrogance that the leaders had some sort of privileged access to God and that everything else was subservient to that. That is so unscriptural and damaging.

I also find it interesting to see the idea of "the anointing" working. I have to say I can relate to what you say, but I am no longer sure it is wise to rely on that sort of "feeling of being anointed", the problem being that we are imperfect human beings and you only have to look at your story of how MB acted to see how that idea can lead to arrogance and spiritual bullying.

I guess the main point is probably what I have said before, that it is really not a good idea to use these things in isolation, as they should be subject to the balance provided by scriptures, the counsel of the saints, common sense etc.

Look forward to your further insights!

I forgot to mention earlier that before I started going East Kilbride I told MB what I planned and she said nothing and did not wish me well.
Originally Mr Black had been asked to come up to East Kilbride and take meetings for those interested in the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I think there were about twelve people and after some time Jim Robertson was asked to take over that meeting and it became a new Struthers Church. He moved up from Greenock to live there. However, over time some people had to move away from the area others left and by the time I came along there was just Jim, Mrs Kerr and older man called Jim and a young man who eventually married Mr Cleary’s daughter and he moved away. The church was financially self-sufficient and a building came on the market that was bought and done up. Jim preached most Sundays, morning and evening. I helped him with visiting homes, leaflet distribution we held film nights in the local school. When new people moved into the area and gave us a visit they did not return as we were such a small congregation. Jim went to see Miss Taylor to ask her what he needed to do or what he was doing wrong. She told him she did not know and was unable to give him any help. What struck me was that there were people living in the Southside of Glasgow near East Kilbride who drove all the way over to the Glasgow Church every week. Sad to say Jim died suddenly and the building was taken over by another Christian group. I left Struthers and started to attend an Elim Church near my home.

I thought many of you would be interested in this short video (less than 3 minutes) about empathy and how connecting with others can help when people are struggling.

[youtu.be]

I find it strange how those in SMC seem to believe you have to study to learn to be a teacher/ plumber/ brain surgeon, yet do not need to study to learn either theology or how empathy can help people.

I think this short video really clarifies for me one of the great gaps in the approach of SMC leaders. When did you last hear one of them saying something along the lines of - "I know, I have felt like that too."

Is that not one of the key messages of Christianity - that Jesus has experienced all out feelings and temptations, which is why he understands what we are going through? Interesting that Jesus can have empathy with our situation, but the SMC leaders are far too spiritual to understand our weaknesses and failings.

Four weeks after I had left Struthers I received a phone call from MB, the first time this had ever happened after twenty years. She asked how I was getting on and that she had not seen me for some time. I was amazed as she very rarely spoke to me unless she was asking me to do something at the church. I told her I had decided to leave and was now attending another church. She said could I perhaps come down to Greenock and speak to Mr Black on Saturday. I did in fact drive down and attended the service. At the end I was taken aside and told Mr Black what had happened and how I felt as a result of being side-lined. Over the years I had seen this happen to several people at Glasgow so I knew this was not an isolated case or my imagination. I had always thought highly of Mr Black and enjoyed his preaching and ministry. He said that he had no problems with me but the difficulty was the MB found me irritating. I was a bit stunned and he said could we put these things behind us and could I come back to church. I did not ask what areas were the problem although, as reported in a sermon I later read by Alison Speirs on the Latigo21 site, there were a number of young men at Glasgow who had a sense of humour that MB did not like, and managed with great triumph, got rid of them. On the following day I went to my local church and during the communion service I was praying and thinking of going to the Glasgow meeting that evening. At that point the Pastor came up to me and asked me if I would be willing to give my testimony that evening. At that point God saved me from what would have been more years of unhappiness and fear.

Jock

Good to hear from you and read your honest and well-balanced comments. I remember you with great fondness and you were one of those I had in mind in my previous post (page 146) when I mentioned older people who had a lot to offer and were overlooked (I know you were still young at that point but you were a longer term member who seemed to suddenly be sidelined ).

I remember your humour, generous spirit (you even let me borrow your car at camp!) and down-to-earth approach. I'm so glad you appear to have moved on to places where you were welcomed and appreciated.

Too many struggled for years believing they had done something terrible and/or could never live up to what the Struthers leaders demanded. They wrongly accepted what they were told - ie that what those leaders demanded was exactly what God was demanding as they were anointed and had direct access to God in a way others didn't. As we know, this proved to be an unhealthy and destructive approach with no checks and balances or accountability.

After some encouragement from a friend, and after reading Jock’s remarks from Feb 2019, I felt the impetus to make my own contribution. I remember Jock for his warmth and his laughter – the salt of the earth – bless you, Jock! (and thank you, GlasgowGirl, for your supportive remarks too)

I could split this story into about 4 or 5 posts, but am deciding to do it all in one, so thank you in advance for your patience, if you care to keep scrolling on to share in my experience.

I was a member of SMC from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, a period of my life from age 16 to my mid-twenties.

Here are a few of the key positive take-aways for me:

1) The affirmation of the contemplative and mystical tradition of the church and the primacy of a lived experience of divine love and mutuality in all things

2) The synthesis of the power of music, silence, Scripture, spiritual experience, and gathered worship as the ground-beat of life.

3) An encouragement to express my gifts in preaching, teaching, and music

People marvel at me when I say I was part of Pentecostal church in the 70s where almost all the pastors were women (including the “bishop” figure, or chief pastor), and that the women generally modelled celibacy as a gift highly-suited or even most-suited for leadership. How could a community like that be possible, puzzled inquirers have asked me?

People find it even more mind-bending that one of the most powerful consistent memories I have is knowing that if I gathered with a group of 50 teenagers on a Friday night “youth” event, we would, as a culture and a normative experience, expect to sit in silence and contemplation for 30-40 minutes before we did anything else. (and then we would erupt into song for 45 minutes, and preaching for 45 minutes, and praying for another 20-30 minutes). We were high on the Spirit instead of being high on drugs – what else would be the explanation?

We were widely treated as being some form of a cult because of the intensity of our commitments and the things that looked like unusual phenomena that went along with them – the more obvious being the Pentecostal way of vocalizing in prayer and speaking in tongues. We took some pleasure in seeing ourselves as the persecuted faithful, and I am sure it only boosted our sense of our mission to know that “the world” did not understand us, and rejected us – whether that was parents, teachers, or other churches. It just looked to us like John’s gospel, or the Book of Acts. We could see ourselves there.

I appreciate what Jock says about how Jennifer Jack (JJ) perhaps saw the Song of Solomon as her favourite book.

The beauty of this was that it fitted both my experience of the Wesleyan and Methodist tradition, and some of my earlier experiences of life in church – namely that “love divine, all loves excelling”, was what life was and is all about. “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine”. I have tears of gratitude for the beauty of that, and I am so deeply appreciative of Jennifer for that. Christ as the lover of our soul. Thank you, Jennifer!

Elizabeth Taylor of Greenock (always “Miss Taylor”) was the inner power and guiding voice of the whole organization, and Hugh Black (always “Mr Black”) was the external ambassador and evangelist for the doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. That was our distinctive feature. (I notice that the current Archbishop of Canterbury says that he starts each day in prayer speaking in tongues - let us not forget this!)

I recently watched this 90-second clip from a Rabbi about the way that lobsters grow, and it seemed like an apt analogy for so much of my life, not only in SMC, but also since then.

[www.youtube.com]

The lobster shell is rigid and never changes, so as the lobster inside the shell grows, it has to periodically crawl under a rock, shed its shell, grow and new shell, and then return to its next instalment of life in the ocean, until its further growth requires a new shell.

Another of the ways that I in the past have looked back at my time in SMC as the trunk of a deciduous tree that is tethered to a stake, and starts out being trained to grow in a very straight line, and then only later starts to allow itself to grow and spread its branches to achieve its next stage of potential and become fruitful.

Whether I use the analogy of the lobster or the analogy of the staked sapling, I can certainly say that I experienced both the confidence and strength of feeling connected to authentic experience of Christ mediated through a biblically-based community, that sought to stand in continuity with self-sacrificial living, and did so in a highly committed and structured way.

Some weeks I would be in worship 12 times in a week. It was almost like being a monk-in-training!

“Wha’s like us? … They’re a’ deid!” The problem was that everyone held up to us as worthy of emulation was dead, and by implication and sometimes by outright remarks from the top, it seemed that in terms of other Christian community, no-one living was worth associating with, or pure enough for us to mix with.

One of the assumptions HB brought to the table from his upbringing, in his own words, was that “all clergymen were assumed to be unsaved until they could give evidence to the contrary”. In hearing JJ talk about her Pentecostal church upbringing, I remember no corresponding interest or comparative assumption that she spoke of. That’s the way I remember it – I am guessing she did not have the same rigidity in her start in life and in her basic initial religious community and spiritual experience as HB did.

Jennifer had a special role in my life as my pastor. She gave me the freedom and encouragement to develop my skills on the piano as a young accompanist for the congregation. Not that we needed accompaniment, because we could sing with full voice a cappella, and there was nothing quite like a Saturday night meeting at Jamaica Lane, Greenock – the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would have envied us for the voices of ordinary people raising the roof in praise like nothing else I have witnessed.

Jennifer gave me the freedom to run my own outreach program, and so consequently to develop the opportunity to preach. We gathered kids in an old industrial wasteland by the canal where we had room to be unhindered in our singing and preaching. After feeding kids barbecued sausages, and generally making friends and having our own kids invite their friends, we sang songs, preached, prayed, and saw a difference in people’s lives. I remember laying hands (prayerfully, that is) on one young girl and this special light came into the van with us as she accepted Christ. She saw it and I saw it and felt it too – it was a tangible and visible light – a rare vision (1 Samuel 3). We expected to see miraculous things around us.

Our vision was to be youth evangelists, in the manner of a John Wesley, or a William Booth. We went from 5 kids on a Friday night to up to a group of 65 kids. We would drive around in our vans and cars to pick up youth and cram them into the back of the van to get them there – it was a massive logistical undertaking and would never meet any of today’s standards for safety. We were wonderfully naïve about that.

Our parents did not have to worry about their boys being into “cigarettes, women, and booze” – as all of these items, by verbal expectation, modelling, and cultural silent agreement, were simply off limits. Instead, our parents worried about religious addiction. Were we putting our own Pharisaic purity in judgment over the pathway of compassion towards the sufferings of others? Were we just interested in “saving souls”, while unable to articulate any kind of “social holiness” (John Wesley) or being able to see people wholistically, and not just “spiritually”? I am sure we needed to do that spiritualization at some level, before we could see the world differently at a later stage.

It was a strange experience, and no doubt good for me in the longer run, to be in a church environment where what if felt like was that to be male was to be a second-class citizen, and to be desirous of marriage was just proof of masculine weakness and inadequacy in spiritual matters – we were just not up to the task!

There were no written rules, no creed, and no membership tickets. Everything was by attendance and apparent consent (or heavily stated expectation).

Some of the odd ways this showed itself was almost like a Close(d) Brethren version of traditional Roman Catholic religious orders – ie, there was a model of proclivity towards celibacy combined with an expectation of obedience (except that it was an unwritten law)

The trouble was that unlike RC orders where you have a structured novitiate, followed by a public process of making a first vow and then later making a deeper vow, I was unable to discern any real public accountability or public process for how this worked out.

This had the virtue of living the oral tradition, rather than written tradition, and seemed very much in line with the idea of being “led by the Spirit”, rather than by the letter of any law.

At the same time, it really was based on the influence and the personality of the leadership. And that, for me, was the danger line in terms of differentiating activities that are “church-like”, and activities that are “cult-like”.

I could not sustain it, and I did not know what to do about it, or how to talk it about it, or with whom. Alongside mystical joy and mystical divine love, there was inner pain. The pain was in the silence of my own room and my own heart. I knew there were other ways to be Christian that I could admire and follow. It was one thing to be “distinctive”, it was another to act as though we were above everyone else.

As an opinion from a distance, I cannot say other than that HB brought the innovation of woman’s preaching voice and community leadership to a closed-door Brethren vision of the world, without in any way making a significant dent in the exclusiveness of the tradition from which he came.

In that regard, SMC was aligned with the 20th Century Pentecostal and charismatic movements in terms of its experience, but entirely separatist in terms of its ethos and culture.

There is a saying in business leadership that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and translating that to my experience of SMC, I would say that the lobster-shell that confined me, and the stake that tethered me, were simply that culture of exclusivism and authoritarianism which in the end of the day prevented my further growth.

There was simply no more room for me, and I had to crawl under my rock to grow a new shell that was safe for me to find a different level of my own growth. I think a lot of this happened subconsciously first, and I wanted to deny and avoid the dissonance. If you see someone report that they are being healed as you pray for them, it’s easy to feel that you are so much on the right track, and also difficult to imagine (perhaps like Peter in Act 11) that you have only just begun, and that there are kinds of hidden prejudices that you have inherited in your culture which are causing pain to others (also like Peter in Acts 11!).

I felt confined, distressed, and was living a compartmentalized life. I remember once saying to a group of people who were later assessing my own gifts in ministry: “I lived in the Book of Acts on weekends, and then in the Book of Job from Monday to Friday”.

I went on to study theology, and to start to connect the dots of church history. I learned about the Donatist/Augustinian controversy of the 4th century. Was our vision a vision of a “pure” church, where we do not mix with the outside world of sinners, or was the church I am called to be part of actually like the parabolic field of Jesus in which I would accept that, even there, not just in the “world”, that the “wheat and tares” grew together until the end of the age?

I learned about the 3rd century Montanists in Turkey who were essentially led by woman, spoke in tongues, and relied on prophetic visions for their ministry. SMC was not unique. I learned that the high middle ages produced more than 1200 commentaries on the Song of Solomon as an expression of love between Christ and the church, or the soul - and that the rabbis and Jewish tradition often does the same in expressing mystical love between God and Israel or God and the soul.

I could see and appreciate patterns. I celebrate what I learned and experienced. I grieve what I lost and how I hurt.

One of my long-term mentors, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr (a prodigious author and speaker, as well as someone who has been shaped by a 1970s “baptism in the Spirit” experience), says “whatever pain you do not transform, you will transmit”.

I live with gratitude for what I have learned through SMC, and with a full expectation that wherever I am now in my life and my faith, I am sure that there is some other level of growth and “pain-transformation” waiting for me and longing for the ending of my present structure so that some vision and experience of Christ even more expansive and all-encompassing than my present one can take a hold of me. Without that ongoing transformation, I will probably just inflict pain on someone else too, no matter how unknowingly, instead of advancing “from glory to glory”.

For me now, there is a different sense to the phrase “outside of the church there is no salvation” (extra ecclesiam nulla salus – Augustine, and many others). SMC had its own silent or implicit version of this, it seemed. For me now, wherever there is recognition of community, there is a process of healing happening. Wherever grace goes, salvation goes. If we can recognize Christ in the leper (ie – the excluded - St Francis), if we can recognize Christ in the evolution of every atom and subatomic process in the universe, then we can see Christ everywhere, not just in my denominational version of “church”. It’s actually even more mind-blowing than my old version of this – and without the guilt and confusion parts! I may have needed the first version at some level for security, and now my deepest security comes from mystically seeing it everywhere. And that mystical seeing was actually and even unwittingly perhaps supported by my experience of SMC, even if was theologized in pre-inclusive language.

I can resonate with people who say they were so hurt from their time in SMC they need or needed individual therapy - or some other deep path of healing and alternative form of safe community.

And I can also imagine, that without some form of transformative pathway of inclusion and acceptance, many of us will continue to live in pain and transmit pain.

Perhaps a forum such as this can help heal, rather than simply confirm our woundedness and leave us stuck in it.

My own recovery and healing may have come through telling my stories and having someone else witness them. At another level, I think it also occurred through finding different kinds of spiritual communities and teachers that successively opened me up to more, through the “expulsive power of a greater affection/attraction” as we used to hear it expressed in SMC (Oswald Chambers)

I can only from a later point see some of the assumptions, blinkers, and harmful attitudes of exclusion or indifference I myself have had to whole groups of people – and that has no necessary or particular link to, or origins in, SMC.

I will leave you with an article I first published for the local paper in 2011 entitled “time to grow up” ~ in my official capacity as the minister/pastor//priest of an Anglican community in Canada. (After the last US election, I posted it in a little different form – I’ll leave you to guess how!).

[www.pqbnews.com]

“It was Thomas Merton who said that we spend our lives climbing to the top of the ladder only to discover two things: first of all, there is nothing at the top anyway, and even more ominously, we had the ladder against the wrong wall the whole time!

It takes courage to hesitate and to question ourselves in order to act contrary to inherited conventions. Of course, one of the best and most deceptively ironical ways to stifle this spiritual growth is by means of religion.

Rather like the Samaritan woman at the well in our Gospel reading last Sunday, we avoid the issues of our life by diverting attention to the red herring of correct religious practice — should we worship in this temple or the other one down south? (John 4.20)

I remember my family relocating from the midlands of England to the west coast of Scotland when I was turning 11. On arrival at school, my misfit accent gave me away, so I was encircled by a gang of boys at a convenient opportunity and pinned up against the playground wall with only one question: “Catholic or Protestant?” It’s a tad dramatic to say my little life depended on it, but it felt that way at the time, and the wrong answer would have led to ostracism and a physical beating. My gasping and important inspiration in the moment was “I think I’m a Methodist ….” Apparently I may as well have said I was Zoroastrian or Hindu — I was OK since I did not belong to that other crowd along the road that wore a different-coloured uniform.

The psychological category of mythic membership is a necessary stage for an 8- to 12-year old’s spiritual evolution, whose tribalistic limitations we can only see from a more adult perspective. Tragically we sometimes get stuck there. Case in point, how much of the suffering of the Libyan people in 2011 can be attributed to this level of maturity in the political leadership?

Jim Marion surmises in EnlightenNext magazine (Putting on the Mind of Christ — the Inner Work of Christian Spirituality), that many adults, including Christian leaders, have not heeded St. Paul on putting away the things of a child (1 Cor. 13:11), and are “still predominantly stuck in the rigidities and separatism of mythic consciousness.”

Our planet can ill afford leadership and social participation that comes from a pre-adolescent mindset.

For our consciousness to develop from the particulars of our originating tribe to what Jesus refers to as the universal “weightier matters” (Matt.23.23) of justice and compassion, we all need to climb down the ladder of our previous fear-based certainties and move into global and cosmic citizenship. No-one is exempt. We either grow, or we stop growing. We either pray ‘thy kingdom come,’ or we inherently limit ourselves to the juvenile intention ‘my kingdom stay.’ Come on down, and start over!

Dear Glasgow Girl and Enkrateia many thanks for your kind words it is good to encourage each other when there was so little at SMC. Even the leaders could not accept encouragement themselves. I remember telling MB that she had sung beautifully during the meeting and her reply was “it wasn’t her and that all the glory should go to God” All she needed to say thank you. When I was reading your posts Glasgow Girl I did think to myself from what you said that we probably had been around Glasgow at the same time. I think I had a Mini at the time of Wiston.
Here are some memories of Wiston over several years. One breakfast in the house we had all had our porridge and the waiters brought in the next course which was eggs, bacon and black pudding whereupon Mr Black leapt up and told them to take everything back to the kitchen and we all had nothing else to eat that morning. Later in the meeting he explained that black pudding was made with blood and in Acts it tells Gentile believers were not to eat anything made with blood in line with the Old Testament teaching.
One night one of the leaders was going to bed late and heard some voices coming from one of the rooms. She popped her head round the door and found three of the young ladies from Greenock fast asleep with a tape of Miss Taylor playing. They were never seen again!!!!
You may remember the open air swimming pool which we did swim in although it was cold. Latterly it was emptied and used to contain rubbish. One year several of the English visitors wanted to be baptised and Mr Black was in the pool with them I don’t think they realised how cold it was but they were very brave. I can’t remember who but with us all standing round the pool a small boy fell in at a critical point in the service.
One year all the men were playing a serious game of football. Probably Scotland verses England. Mr Black wandered up onto the field and stood in front of goal. I think running with the ball was too much for him. The winger ran up passed to him and the goalkeeper not wanting to be excommunicated dived the wrong way allowing Mr B to score. He then wandered off feeling quite happy with himself.
Personally I always found Wiston spiritually beneficial and enjoyed the meetings, they passed so quickly. The surroundings were very beautiful and I enjoyed wandering through the woods listening to the wind blowing in the leaves.