One time when our children were young, we were attending a little church in Pitsea in Essex, not too far away from where we lived. Malc and I were responsible for putting a church magazine together at that time, along with some friends. Talk about a hand-made magazine – we created the content, printed, folded, and collated the pages, and stapled them all together into an A5 magazine, 4,000 copies each time. Then we delivered them to 4,000 homes locally.

On this particular evening, Malc had a need to print off some more pages on the very old duplicator (I think it was an old Roneo duplicator) which resided in the upstairs of the empty Manse attached to the church. Our son Darryl always followed his dad around and so he naturally wanted to go down to the church with him to help with the printing. Now, Darryl had to go to school the next day but he insisted he wanted to go along as well to help dad.  Malc had planned to meet a friend, who often helped with the printing up at the church so off they set to print the pages they needed on the old duplicator.

So Malc later recalled that the printing did not go well. The machine relied upon having a wax-coated stencil to print from – and that often ripped or came apart. The ink seemed to have a mind of its own and often leaked where it should not, so that meant cleaning up and starting again.

As the printing progressed Darryl was getting tired and Malc proposed taking him home to his bed and leaving his friend to carry on, but as they were sorting something out on the machine, they noticed that Darryl had curled up in a corner and was sound asleep.  “Ah, well’ May as well let him sleep now,” said Malc.

But it was getting really late and in fact, by the time they had finished and were leaving the church, it was around three in the morning. And who do you not want to turn up just at that point, when you are tired, covered in ink, and pretty fed-up?  You got it - the police. Over the hill came a patrol car with two policemen. They saw the two dodgy-looking men carrying boxes of ‘stolen items’ from the church, with their young accomplice dragging behind them, and swiftly pulled the car into the curb and jumped out. (They had most likely had an uneventful evening and thought it was about to change.)

“Do you mind explaining what you are doing coming out of that church at this time of night?” said one of them.

“What do you have in those boxes?” asked the other one.

So Malc explained that they were members of this church and had been printing a church magazine and showed them their inky hands and the contents of the boxes.

“Nothing in these boxes of any value,” said Malc. “Well, not to anyone else but important to us.” And he went on to explain the whole nightmare evening they had printing on the old duplicator.  The police were happy with their story and let them get on their way.

Surprisingly Darryl still actually managed to get up in time for school the next morning although as I recall, Malc was less than bright-eyed and bushy-tailed come the next day.

It all seemed a lot of work to produce the magazine in those days but one Sunday after this event a young man named Peter came into the church asking questions about Jesus and how he could get to know Him – directly as a result of receiving one of our magazines through his letterbox.

And this young man did indeed come to know Jesus as his Lord and Saviour and also went on to be baptised by full emersion, at the church, just as the Bible encourages all believers to do.

We can’t possibly know how many people were influenced or encouraged or challenged by our church magazine but when Peter became a Christian we praised the Lord for his new life.

Jesus said: “I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”
(Luke 15:7)

Will you come to Jesus and receive Him as your Lord and Saviour?  You can.  Find out how right here.

 

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