Episode Transcript
Chapter 1: Born out of Spiritual Travail
The whole story of Halford House began with a group of people
who became deeply burdened for the area in which they were
living. At the most there were eight people involved. All of the
group were young people in their late teens or early twenties apart
from Ernest and Dora Townshend. None of us were famous or
exceptional in talent. Ken and Gill Douglas and Eileen Johnson are
now safely with the Lord, as well as Ernest and Dora Townshend.
My sister Teresa and I are the only ones still remaining of the
original eight.
The Holy Spirit’s Burden
It was a colossal burden that was conceived in us by the Holy
Spirit which would not let us rest. I had some experience of
intercession whilst in Egypt and had seen a number of my fellow
servicemen come to the Lord. However none of us, including
myself, had ever been involved in intense corporate intercession.
I had witnessed it with two elderly sisters who had prayed for
situations all over the Middle East, and this had deeply impacted
me. I returned from Egypt in August 1951. I had spent three
years in the Royal Air Force and experienced genuine fellowship
amongst those who were believers in Egypt. When I returned to
Britain and to the Richmond Upon Thames area, I felt like a “fish
out of water.” It was as though God had no home in Richmond.
There were plenty of evangelical places of worship, and all the
evangelical paraphernalia that went with it, but little spiritual
building of the House of the Lord. All eight of us shared the
same burden. Although we did not fully understand it, the Holy
Spirit placed on all our hearts Isaiah, chapter 62:1—3 and 6—7.
This became an intense burden with no relief and no escape,
except through intercession.
The Hebrides Revival 1949—1952
At that time all the talk in evangelical circles was about the
Hebrides Revival. Between 1949 and 1952 a widespread revival
swept through those islands in answer to the prayer of some of
God’s people. There were two elderly sisters, Peggy and Christine
Smith, who received a burden from the Lord from which they
could not escape. They were eighty-four and eighty-two years
old. Peggy was blind and her sister was almost bent double with
arthritis. As a result they could not attend worship and turned
their little cottage into a sanctuary of intercession. Night and day
they sought the Lord. He gave them the promise:
For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams
upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed,
and my blessing upon thine offspring (Isaiah 44:3).
They took this Scripture and prayed it into fulfilment, standing
with the Lord until He performed it. There was also a group of
men in the same district who met together in a barn to intercede
for the same awakening and revival. They also received a promise
from the Lord that:
If my people, who are called by My name, shall humble
themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their
wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive
their sin, and will heal their land (II Chronicles 7:14).
In the same manner as the two elderly sisters, they persisted in
intercession until it happened. These two sisters and these brothers had understood a vitally strategic essential in intercession.
They had understood what the Lord meant when He gave us the
pattern prayer in Matthew 6:9—13, and in particular the words:
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”
This kind of intercession which resulted in the Hebrides Revival
came as a consequence of their understanding of the will of God.
First, they had the Word of God and the revelation of His will for
the Hebrides, and secondly, by the power of the Holy Spirit and
the grace of God they prayed it into being.
When the Holy Spirit was poured out upon those islands,
men and women were saved everywhere. Shepherds in the hills,
who were caring for their sheep, fell on their faces and were saved. Fishermen fell on the decks of their fishing boats and got saved.
Likewise, many were saved in meetings and others in their homes
and cottages. There were many outstanding miracles which took
place during those days.
The story of the Hebrides Revival had an enormous challenge
for the eight of us. If the Lord could do it in the Hebrides,
could He not do it in the Thames valley? I had read Charles
Finney’s Lectures on Revival, and said to the other seven, “If you
want to be disturbed, you should read, in particular, the chapter
on ploughing up the fallow ground.”
It had deeply disturbed me
because Finney had said that if we want awakening and revival,
we have a responsibility to break up the hard ground in our lives.
It was exactly what had happened in the lives of those sisters and
brothers who prayed into existence the move of the Lord in the
Hebrides. For example, amongst the group of men that met in the
barn was a young deacon who rose and quoted Psalm 24:3—4:
“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand
in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart;
who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord.” (AV).
Turning to the others he said: “Brethren, it seems to me just so
much humbug to be waiting and praying as we are if we ourselves
are not rightly related to God.” Then lifting his hands towards
heaven he cried: “Oh God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?”
He got no further but fell prostrate to the floor, an awareness of
God filled the barn, and the power of the Holy Spirit was let loose
in their lives.
The eight of us talked together about breaking up the fallow
ground. We wondered whether the burden we had was truly from
the Lord, or whether it was emotional, a result of all the talk about
the Hebrides Revival. We therefore covenanted together to do
an extraordinary thing; we would not speak about revival, read
about revival, or even pray about revival for one whole month.
If at the end of that one month this burden was still with us in
the same power we would know it was from the Lord. Thus for
the whole month of August 1951, we neither spoke about revival,
nor read about it, neither discussed it, nor even prayed about it.
At the end of that month we found that the burden in us was
greater than ever, it was like a pain in our spirits. I was only a
young Christian, but I can only describe it as incurable pain.
I could not get it out of my system. It was there like a deep, deep
anguish of the Holy Spirit.
Costly and Committed Intercession
On the first day of September 1951, we started to pray, and we
prayed every evening of September, October, November and
December until Christmas of 1951. Our times of prayer began
just after 7.00 pm and went on until between 10.00 and 10.30 pm.
In the middle of it we had the severest smog that London had
ever known in which 3000 people died. Fog is thick mist and is
natural; smog is a mixture of smoke and fumes combined with
mist, and can be a killer. For 10 days we could not see across
the street. At one point, during those days, all transport ceased,
but it never stopped our prayer. We walked about three miles
across Richmond to the home of Ernest and Dora Townshend.
In those times of prayer and intercession, we were never less than
two and never more than eight. We prayed every night and on
Saturday we would pray from 2 o’clock until 6 o’clock, so that we
could attend the young people’s meeting in the church to which
many of us belonged. We also got permission to pray in the vestry
of that church on Sunday evenings so that we were not a faction
or division, and we prayed for the service as well. In fact, we never
cancelled a single session of prayer during those four months.
One Single Burden for Prayer
We only had one single burden in our intercession and we never
deviated from that burden. We did not pray for Nepal, or China,
or Australia, or even Japan; we simply prayed for Richmond and
the Thames valley. Every evening of prayer lasted no less than
three hours. Now we all know how hard it is to sustain prayer
for half an hour even when there are many items that need to
be prayed through.
As I recall that time, I am still amazed at it.
It is like a dream. However, I remember that when we began
to pray we could do nothing else but pray. At the end of those
three hours it was rather like a tank that had been drained of all
its water, and one could get up from one’s knees with a feeling
of relief. Notwithstanding, the next morning the tank was full
again. One felt uncomfortable, as if one had a pain inside and the
only way to let it out was in intercession. I have often likened it to
physical birth. Once an embryo has been conceived it grows and
there is no full relief until birth.
It was my first real experience of corporate intercession on
this level. It was the Spirit of God who was in us keeping alive
a burden. Our intercession covered the whole varied life of the
Richmond area. We prayed for all kinds of different places and
those who were in them—for example: public houses, every kind
of shady joint, bars, nightclubs, hospitals, schools, and colleges,
for local government, for the mayors of both Richmond and
Twickenham, and of course, for churches, both alive and dead.
We had a burden and it was a two-fold burden; firstly, that God
would do a new thing in His people, and secondly, that He would
start to save the unsaved straight off the street. We had no idea
that one of the nightclubs we prayed for, the Astor Club, would
be closed down by the police for immorality, and we would
actually get possession of it and meet there for one whole year.
That possibility never entered our heads when we were
praying for it!
Koinonia
Those four months of prayer with the same burden were an
incredible experience. We felt as if we were in a sovereign flow
of God’s power. As we have already pointed out, we all know
how hard it is to pray for one subject for even half an hour.
We prayed, however, for virtually one subject from all angles
for three hours every single day right up to Christmas 1951.
Out of that came Koinonia, the interdenominational “get together”
of young people in the Richmond area just to worship the Lord,
to wait upon the Lord and fellowship together. We would take a
subject and discuss it together and then have a Bible study on it.
The commencement of these sessions was on the first Friday of
January 1952. We called it Koinonia, which is the New Testament
Greek word for “fellowship” or “sharing” or “having something
in common.” Within a month of the first session, nearly every
evangelical church in the area was represented in spite of it not
being advertised. Our naming of this gathering of young people
elicited quite an amount of criticism from older Christians in
the churches. They said it was a Russian word, and they thought
that because I was in my early twenties I was politically leaning
towards Marxism, and that this would be a great danger for the
young people in the fellowship.
The Bible studies in Koinonia, by the grace of God and the
anointing of the Holy Spirit, became life-transforming for the
young people who attended. The first Bible study in 1952 was
entitled: “The supremacy and pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus.”
This one study seemed to impact permanently everyone who
came. We spoke of the Lord Jesus as the centre and circumference
of the Bible, the centre and circumference of the natural
creation, the centre and circumference of salvation, the centre
and circumference of the Christian life, and the centre and
circumference of the Church.
This one study probably had more
impact than any other that followed. Other subjects, for example,
were the Lord’s Table, Communion, Believers’ Baptism, the unity
of all believers, etc. Many young people got saved during the
Bible studies. There was such power in the fellowship. The whole
session was alive to God, and we expected Him to speak to us.
After prayer and fellowship together, we decided that we
would have three Fridays a month for Bible study and one Friday
a month for a kind of evangelistic outreach. We called this time
a “squash,” because so many people would crowd in. In fact,
the first one we had at the Townshend’s home was so crowded that
we had young people all over the ground floor in all the rooms,
up the stairs and into the bedrooms. We had made a stipulation
that only those who brought an unsaved friend could come to the
squash; the others were to go to the prayer meeting. A pastor of
one of the fellowships spoke on that occasion. Three people got
saved that night. We also felt that we should take places that
the world widely used and with which it was comfortable. So
we took the restaurant of the Ritz cinema, we took the Cadena
restaurant which was well known and in both of these we had an
evangelistic meeting.
The most unusual place was when we took the largest Thames
launch steamer and sailed up the river Thames from Richmond
to Hampton Court and back. Once everybody was on board
they could not leave and a number got saved that night on the
steamer! Each of these evangelistic times was preceded by a
number of sessions of prayer.
One young man, Ron Howes,
who was a Congregationalist but unsaved, came along to the
sessions of prayer and found the Lord. He married Mildred
Perkins and they were faithful in the contribution they made to
the fellowship from almost the beginning—Mildred in playing
the piano at the meetings in the early years and Ron looking after
the practical side of the house and the stewarding.
The Lifting of the Prayer Burden
The most extraordinary fact was that with the advent of Koinonia
the prayer burden that had been so intense in the eight of us
lifted. At first we wondered whether we were retreating from
the original call which God had given us. However, when we
tried to pray, it was just words. The impetus of the burden had
lifted. We fellowshipped together and realised that to carry on
with the prayer burden would be like “flogging a dead horse.”
Later with the wisdom of hindsight we understood from the
Lord that Koinonia, and what followed, was the answer to our
intercession. From this we learnt one single but vital lesson.
As in everything to do with our salvation—our Christian life and
our church life—so it is with the ministry of intercession; it begins
with Christ, it is empowered by Christ, and it ends with Christ.
A Church Within a Church
The criticism and condemnation that we received from the
majority of Christians in our area was enormous. The rumours
became facts in the eyes of many. We were accused of being
Mormons, Russellites (Jehovah Witnesses), and even of having
tendencies towards Marxism. It was claimed that we worshipped
the devil, that the money came from the devil, and the people
converted amongst us were converted to the devil! Is it any
wonder that these young people, numbering now approximately
100, were horrified, especially those who had been recently saved
amongst us! They knew the truth and could not believe how real
Christians could say such things.
I was also accused of giving illicit sex instruction to the young
people during those times! The accusations became so bad that
a titled lady friend of mine, a missionary to India who was on
board a boat going out to that country, was asked by a bishop of
the Church of England: “Is it really true that Lance led a group of
young men and smashed the manse of the pastor?”
I remember once at one of the Koinonia sessions in Berwyn
road, a young lady shot in. She never took off her hat or her coat,
but she went straight into a corner and sat bolt upright in a chair,
took a notebook out and a pencil at the ready. Gradually, as the
time went on she relaxed more and more. She had been sent in
by a Sunday school superintendent of one of the churches of
the area to take notes of the séance we were supposedly having.
No wonder she was nervous. However, she got so blessed that
she stayed. The superintendent then said: “Lance has a devilishly
hypnotic influence over people”.
The pastor of one of the largest and most powerful evangelical
churches in the area to which I belonged asked to see me and
the other leaders of Koinonia. He gave us an ultimatum; either
we went into the organisation of the Baptist church or all who
were members of his church would be expelled. That came as a
thunderbolt to us. We were confused and not sure what course
to take. We had at that time adopted the normal Baptist and
Congregational practice of a majority vote.
I gave them a pep talk
on not splitting the church, which was a famous church and had
missionaries all over the world. A narrow majority felt we should
go back into the organisation, but a minority felt it was wrong
to go back. Now it turned out that the ones who said it would
be wrong were right! The moment we went back into the church
organisation and had our meetings announced from the pulpit,
it was as if all the power left us. A curtain seemed to have come
down upon us all.
We realised that we had made a huge mistake, and through
it we learnt one of the greatest lessons it is possible to learn.
We do not put matters right by retracing our steps and seeking to
undo the mistake we have made! Why did we make the mistake
in the first place? It was for the very reason that we did not seek
the Lord. When the Lord said to the children of Israel “go over
into the land,” and they would not, the Lord said, “I am no longer
with you, because you have disobeyed me.” Then they said,
“We will go over.” Moses said, “Do not go over because you made
your first mistake when you did not listen to the Lord and trust
Him. Now you think you can rectify that mistake by simply
undoing it instead of hearing the Lord and in faith obeying Him.”
From what we learnt in that situation we threw out the majority
vote and went by the principle of unanimity. We sought the Lord
in prayer and heard Him; we were to wait for His direction.
Within a month the same pastor came and said, “It seems to me
that this coming into the church organisation has divided it more
than your being outside of it. Therefore, I think it is better if you
take the whole thing outside.” Our rejoicing knew no measure.
Once again the power of God came to us, and our gatherings were
full of life.
Nevertheless we were a church within a church. Less and
less fellow believers would speak to us. They would not shake
our hands or greet us in any way. My old Sunday school teacher
would turn his head the other way. People I had known from the
day I was saved turned their back on me. They would not say good
morning or good evening to me. I was not alone in this treatment.
We all had this kind of experience.
Many of these believers were
those we loved very greatly and we had received much from
them spiritually. It was for all of us a time of anguish. We had
become a church within a church! We decided that we should
seek the Lord. So for three weeks we sought His face—some of us
with fasting. We said we will not make a majority block decision;
we will each one do what the Lord says. There were 18 of us out of
approximately 100 who felt they should resign from the churches
of which they were members. The rest felt they should remain.
Reduced to Eighteen Believers
It was not easy to be reduced from 100 to 18, and at the beginning
we felt lost and confused. Everyone, it seemed to us, spoke against
us. However, we took the one step that we had discovered to be the answer in any situation, however difficult it could be. Together
we sought the Lord. We were, apart from the Townshends,
all young people in our teens and twenties. Dora Townshend’s
sisters, Helen and Grace Wheelwright, joined us at that time.
Suddenly we were alone without the structure and organisation to
which we had been accustomed. We were “green” youngsters and
had no idea what to do. We just fell into the arms of God because
for us there was no other possibility. It was the best position to
be in! All the illumination and the revelation that came through
His Word and the experiences of Him into which we came began
from this position. The Lord took us as little children and led us
all the way. Literally, He led us by the hand.
As we sought the Lord He gave us His Word, confirmed by
more than one witness. In other words, the Scriptures which He
gave us, as we were seeking Him, were on the heart of more than
one person amongst us.
The first was: “Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence,
touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; cleanse
yourselves, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord. For ye shall
not go out in haste, neither shall ye go by flight: for the
Lord will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your
rearward.” (Isaiah 52:11—12).
A second was: “Therefore thus saith the Lord. If thou return,
then will I bring thee again, that thou mayest stand before me;
and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as
my mouth: they shall return unto thee, but thou shalt not return
unto them. And I will make thee unto this people a fortified
brazen wall; and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not
prevail against thee; for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver
thee, saith the Lord.” (Jeremiah 15:19—20).
The third was: “The word of the Lord also came unto me, saying,
Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of the rebellious house,
that have eyes to see, and see not, that have ears to hear, and hear
not; for they are a rebellious house. Therefore, thou son of man,
prepare thee stuff for removing, and remove by day in their sight;
and thou shalt remove from thy place to another in their sight:
it may be they will consider, though they are a rebellious
house.” (Ezekiel 12:1—3).
These Scriptures were a great encouragement to us.
They confirmed the position we had taken. At that time we did
not know our Bibles so well, and it was a great comfort to us
that through some obscure parts of His Word He spoke to us.
We understood clearly from the Lord that we were never to
go back, but that we were to go forward with Him. Secondly,
we understood that we were to remain within sight of the churches
we had left.
At the beginning we met in a home. The first time we ever met
for the Lord’s Table was on a very foggy morning in November
1952 at 20 Berwyn Road, East Sheen. We were about 20 people
on that first occasion around the Lord’s Table. I spoke from what
the Lord had given me in Proverbs 3:5—6: “Trust in the Lord with
all thy heart, and lean not upon thine own understanding: In all
thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths.” As we
simply trusted the Lord and His directions and did not lean upon
our own understanding, the Lord led us into everything.
One of the rumours that went round the churches was that I
had always wanted a church. It was, so it was claimed, my idea
from the beginning, and it was an obsession of mine! However,
I can honestly say that it had never occurred to me or to any of us
to have a church. We never thought we would move out from the
others. We thought the new thing that God was going to do would
be in all these churches. It would be new life, new power; it would
be revival and awakening. It was a terrible shock to us when we
found ourselves finally outside of it all.
We were on our own and totally ostracised. No one would
touch us. Yet in the Lord’s wisdom it protected us from being
swamped by multitudes of spectators, the “Sunday go to meeting
Christians.” Those who came to us were either saved in our midst
or had run the gauntlet. They were Christians who were hungry
for something more of the Lord. Brother T. Austin-Sparks was one
who ran the gauntlet, because he had much the same experience
as we did. We enjoyed his fellowship and that of other brothers
from the Christians meeting at Honor Oak.
