BCM UK: Going Beyond the Call of Duty
My first impression of BCM UK as a new Bible Club Movement missionary from the United States was the selflessness of their volunteer leadership. I myself had grown up attending a BCM Bible Club in upstate NY. While in Bible college, I’d worked at BCM’s Camp Sankanac, then became a missionary in Syracuse, New York. Oscar Hirt, BCM’s president at the time, asked me to relocate to the UK as the Bible Club Movement’s representative there. I arrived in the UK in 1971 and spent the next twenty-six years there in ministry with BCM all over the United Kingdom, managing the National Office along with being involved in camps and clubs.
Early Bible Club in England
From the beginning, what impressed me most was the personal sacrifice and dedication of our BCM personnel across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, in their commitment to reach the children of their nation with the gospel of Jesus Christ and raise up a new generation well-grounded in God’s Word. Many were housewives who nearly emptied their living room each week to accommodate children for an hour of club. Others were working people, both men and women, who would go right from the office or factory to lead their clubs. Still others were young people who had been clubbers themselves and now wanted to assist their leaders.
Many of those early leaders did not own cars so had to walk or take buses to their clubs. I remember one telling of being newly married and asking God if He really intended her to invite a roomful of children onto her new carpet. But she did! The average home then in the UK was not at all spacious. A 12-foot square living-room would be filled wall to wall with children, hence the need to move out the furniture.
Teen camp in southwest England
When it came to my first year of Bible Club Camp in the UK, I was amazed to find that here again the staff were folks who were giving up a week or more of their summer holiday to work at camp. Added to that, they also paid a fee to be there, albeit sometimes not the full fee the campers paid. Some wives stayed home with small children so that their husbands could work at camp. Or, where accommodation allowed, the little ones came along with their parents.
One of our most faithful camp volunteers was the mother of two boys who came to camp. Though already in the early stages of MS (multiple sclerosis), she wanted to help with the camp. She came the following year, then the next and for about 20 years following, 2009 being her last. Those last few years she came in her wheelchair, but she still managed to join in the program for at least part of the day. Even today she remains a keen supporter of camp, knowing the powerful spiritual impact it had on her boys.
It is no wonder that having grown up with leaders like these, quite a number of our BCM UK missionaries have emerged from the ranks of Bible clubbers and campers. Stanley and Irene Paget, Kate Macnab, and Angeline White are just some of the current missionary staff in the UK I can think of who “came up through the ranks.”