It’s interesting in the UK you now have people that travel round the world telling us all how to do church, whether it’s house church or church to the poor and that we’re all too posh and yet, whether they are actually doing the business at home is, I think, pretty debateable. There are some remarkable PR merchants out there in Conservative Evangelicalism and we are the suckers for buying into it. We are not fund raisers, we’re not movement leaders, most of us are just pastors and so get on with the work of pastoring.

 
A friend of mine once came to our congregation and, because of the name ‘International Presbyterian Church’ and the links with Schaeffer and L’Abri, expected us to be a large church. I also think, because of my ability to exaggerate, he expected there to be a bursting, vibrant congregation. At the time we were meeting on Sunday nights in the church lounge. There were at a max 40 people there, the music wasn’t that great, I didn’t preach very well, the service sheet had lots of spelling mistakes in it and I remember the look on his face as he came in during the second hymn. He didn’t have to say it but you could tell he was thinking ‘Levy, is this it?’

Now on one level I remember being very put out by my friend’s attitude and yet, on another level, he had a real point. We were well known as a congregation, people knew of me from different things and yet at home we were tiny. Big reputation outside but small inside.

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