By Henry Kingsnorth

This story goes back a few years, but it is still worth sharing.

We were at the Cavalcade in Little Venice on our boat, Trinity. A man (I will call him Bob, not his real name) was walking past our boat when he noticed our BCF and Canal Ministries logos. He started a conversation with me, asking what BCF was all about.

He invited me onto his boat, gave me a glass of wine, and we began talking about the Bible. I very soon realised that his knowledge of the Bible was on a much higher level than mine. I found out that, as a child, he had attended a Plymouth Brethren church with his parents.

That part of the story came to an end when his wife came in and the subject changed. That was that—boaters move on.

But the story continues.

The following year, I phoned him to see if he was going to the Cavalcade again. He told me they had relocated to Fazeley (Tamworth). That caught my attention, because BCF were planning a mission there and we were involved in it.

So we met up at a café in Fazeley and carried on the conversation we had started a year earlier. He told me that he had gone to church with his parents until the age of 21, when he could decide what he wanted to do. At that point, he stopped going—and never went back.

I told him that we and the BCF team were going to the local pub that evening, where James and Hazel Bell would be singing Christian songs and canal songs. I invited him along, and he came.

During the evening, I mentioned that James and Hazel would also be playing their guitars and singing in the Church of England church on Sunday. Bob hadn’t been to church for about 50 years, and music and technology had moved on quite a lot. He said, “They don’t play guitars in churches.”

“Well, they do now,” I said.

“And we don’t have song books—we have overhead projectors.”

He was amazed, and his interest was growing.

Then I told him that one of the BCF team was going to be baptised by full immersion. That really surprised him. He said, “C of E churches don’t do that.”

“Well,” I said, “this one does.”

That really got his attention. He said he might come. I told him, “There’s a seat next to me—see you at 10:30 tomorrow.”

And he came…

…and found Jesus. Hallelujah!

And there’s more—Ernie, the man who was baptised, had only come on the mission because his wife, Sandra, was a Christian. By the end of the mission, he too had found Jesus.

Another Hallelujah.