If I remember it correctly this was the title of a TV documentary on a charismatic community which I'm sure would have been shown in the 1970s and which has been in the news during the last few days.
Bugbrooke is a large village in Northamptonshire and a church there gained a reputation in the early days of the charismatic movement for its radical approach to the Christian life. Originally based around the local Baptist Church, led by Pastor Noel Stanton, it morphed into a live-in Christian community and later became known as the Jesus Army and more recently the Jesus Fellowship Church.
For those of us involved in the early days of the charismatic movement there was often a huge shift in our understanding of the Church which sometimes led to a strong interest in the possibility of living in community as a way of most clearly expressing what it meant to be the Body of Christ. I personally visited at least 4 such communities, one near Coventry, one in York headed up by the late David Watson, one called Post Green in Dorset hosted by Sir Tom and Lady Lees, and also the Bugbrooke community. The latter was certainly the most interesting. My visit there came about because a number of students who attended the Baptist church I was leading in Kent joined the Bugbrooke community after graduation. In time this led to an invitation to visit one Bank Holiday Monday to see how it all functioned. My host, previously a student from my church whom we'll call Peter, was enthusiastic about the community to say the least. In fact I believe his real motivation for inviting me to Bugbrooke was to see if I would be willing, with my family, to join the community myself. My day there sticks in my mind strongly even decades after that visit. I was impressed and unimpressed.
On the positive side there did seem to be a genuinely strong sense of community. I met some single young women who had also been part of my church as students, and I sensed that they felt they might never get married and were therefore happy not to be living alone, but part of a vibrant community and with plenty to do in terms of work. This was because Bugbrooke had started a number of community businesses and members of the church worked in them. There was a very strong emphasis on evangelism, care for the poor and a passionate desire to model New Testament Church life.
Not so impressive was what seemed to me to be a very strong pressure for unmarried church members to adopt a permanently celibate lifestyle, an intrusive amount of instruction on the sex lives of those who were married and an implied: this is the only way to live, atmosphere. And then there was Noel Stanton.
Noel was single and particularly drove the celibacy message. He was a very intimidating personality, clearly had a strong leadership gift and he could preach. I was introduced to him and then later in the day sat in a tent for a Bank Holiday celebration, where after a time of enthusiastic, and certainly charismatic worship, Noel got up to speak. Two things stick in my mind. Firstly, he said that some people in the tent weren't smiling and if that continued he would name them publicly. I was really frightened and placed a fixed smile on my lips for the rest of the meeting. Secondly, he preached a really powerful message on Colossians 3 which has remained one of the most influential messages I've ever heard.
Some time later Peter fell out with the community and then through writing and with personal contacts became vitriolic about his treatment there. I decided to ring Noel Stanton about this. He expressed how very grateful he was for my call, as he said ( and I can believe it), many people received anything bad they heard about Bugbrooke without ever contacting the church leaders to check it out. He said that Peter had left over advice he was given concerning marriage and that they probably hadn't handled him as well as they should. This somewhat endeared me to the man. So years later again, when he rang me and asked if I would take him to a NewFrontiers Leadership Conference in Brighton, I gladly invited him to an evening meal and took him along to the meeting.
And now I am sad, disappointed and frustrated, but I'm not really surprised. Allegations have been made by a number of former church members about both sexual and physical abuse in the community, some of the accusations of sexual abuse being levelled at Noel Stanton himself, who died some years ago. I gather that present members of the church are pretty shocked about these revelations and it seems it is leading to a closure of the church, at least in its present form.
So here we go again, another ministry that went wrong and while I repeat these are allegations, one can see that the combination of a powerful leader, strong and somewhat eccentric teaching on sex plus a tight community could so easily give rise to what is being alleged.
We are living in a different world today and I look back with incredulity on my early years in the Baptist ministry, when quite often during an afternoon of pastoral visitation I would call on a young wife and spend an hour or so alone with her in her house. The thought of doing that today would be incomprehensible. So was I never tempted or was I just asexual? For me it wasn't like that. I was a Pastor and I felt it like a sacred trust that I could visit any of my church members and there was no way I could break that trust.
I've observed this before in a Blog, that while I believe in accountability to others, in the end we have to be accountable to ourselves above all. I've seen too many casualties in the last 50 years and I can feel pretty heartbroken about it.
Senior leaders, you often have strong personalities you are able to get people to follow you. Be aware of how near you could be to abusing others in some way. Your ministry is to serve, not to control and manipulate.
We must be diligent to make sure that women feel safe and secure in our churches. Paul talks about there not being a hint of sexual immorality. (Eph 5:3) Women in our churches should feel appreciated, listened to and absolutely confident that no leader would ever act inappropriately towards them. If this sounds a bit old fashioned, so be it.
Watch your life and doctrine closely. (1 Tim 4:16). In the end it's not really a leader more senior than you or the group that you meet with who are ultimately accountable for you - it's between you and God.
Love Jesus and love his church.