Forging a Bond with Jesus

BUT for asthma and the grace of God Andy Caldwell might have been licensed to kill – instead he is on a mission to save in Plymouth.

The senior pastor of Mutley Baptist Church had one hero in mind when he left school: James Bond, not Jesus Christ.

"When I was growing up I wanted to be a pilot in the RAF and be some kind of James Bond, to go into intelligence work," he reveals.

"I was on course for a scholarship to be an officer but when I had my medical I was told I had asthma and would not be allowed to fly.

"I was desperate. I said I'd do anything in the airforce. But they told me I wasn't even fit enough to be a bandsman. I was gutted."

A taste of adventure did follow, in two stints with police forces on different sides of the world. He was even destined to do some undercover work that 007 would have relished – smuggling banned merchandise into a totalitarian regime.

His calling, though, turned out to be to an authority even higher than M and a cause way above the earthly dealings and human loyalties of MI5.

He became a minister in 1997 and is now at the helm of one of Plymouth's most vibrant churches.

Mutley Baptist has a membership of 430 and a growing congregation which stood at 790 at the last official count late in 2008.

The church has a presence in the community as impressive as the imposing Mutley Plain building. More than 70 organisations operate from the church.

There are those you'd expect, offering activities for all ages, from tots to pensioners.

There are some you might not, too, including an art group, help for prostitutes and lunch clubs for the homeless.

The Mutley effect goes far beyond Plymouth, too. The church sends missionary teams around the world. This year alone dedicated Christians from Mutley helped in projects in Papua New Guinea and in August two teams are heading to Uganda and Mozambique.

To an outsider like me that adds up to the Mutley Baptist Church phenomenon. Just about every time I come across a Christian getting stuck in with a good cause in Plymouth, they seem to be a member of the Mutley congregation, I tell him. No wonder that the church is bucking the trend by attracting more worshippers.

Andy frowns at that idea – and it takes a lot to wipe the smile from this habitually cheery man's face.

He shifts awkwardly in his seat and says: "I wouldn't be happy if you wrote that.

"Congregations may be falling nationally but in most churches in Plymouth that is not the case.

"There are many churches doing fantastic work in Plymouth. There are some great ministers in the city who talk to each other and work together.

"I think Plymouth is blessed."

He singles out two citywide organisations, the local branches of national initiatives, that are particularly impressive. The first is Churches Together, which supports and encourages people from different traditions to work and worship as one. The other is Plymouth Street Pastors, another interdenominational body, that sends volunteers into clubland on weekend nights to offer support to vulnerable people in the drink-fuelled and often violent environment.

I change tack. So how about I write that I arrived at Mutley with the impression that his church was unique in its reach and energy, but that Andy was quick to put me right?

Again he looks troubled. "I think that would look contrived," he says.

Andy feels even less comfortable with my suggestion that he, with his youthful enthusiasm and energy has made a big impact since his arrival at Mutley Baptist (four years this autumn).

He shakes his head. He knew of Mutley before he became their pastor; few in the Baptist Church have not – the size and outreach of the Plymouth congregation is well known.

But Andy did not realise quite how big and how widespread was the Mutley reach. He followed Ian Coffey, a "brilliant and accomplished" pastor who is even more well-known than the Mutley Church, a highly regarded figure in Britain and Europe.

"I was out of my depth (at the start)," Andy confides. "There were hard days."

He credits his team of pastors with helping ensure the continuing success of Mutley: Andy Campion (associate), Steve Campion (youth), Emily Davies (associate youth), Anne Brindley (families) and Fiona Spicer (buildings).

Part of the challenge was being pitched into a city with such large areas of deprivation, compared to his previous ministry.

Before coming to Plymouth he was a pastor in Heathfield, a rural area of east Sussex. He was head-hunted – that's my phrase; Andy is too modest to use that term – for the Mutley job.

In Heathfield he helped grow the congregation in size and commitment.

That would come as no surprise to anybody who has met Andy.

He has an infectious vitality and enthusiasm about him, which radiates goodwill, a general feeling that the world's problems are challenges that can be solved.

He is self-effacing, too, and reassuringly down-to-Earth. When he talks about God he does so with evangelical zeal, yet in an accessible way that includes rather than alienates the sceptic, the agnostic or the outright non-believer.

Growing in Dorset and then in Buckinghamshire he had not been a churchgoer, until a crisis hit not long after the shock of failing to get into the RAF.

His girlfriend of three years ran off with, ironically, a flying instructor. Andy was only 19 and he was hurting. A Christian friend took him to a church where he found people with faith "a bit odd" and yet something stirred.

He went for a walk in the woods and had one of those, 'if there is a God, where are you now?' moments, except that Andy actually cried that out loud – and got a response.

"This is going to sound nutty," he says sheepishly. "I heard an internal voice that was not my own say, 'Look down'.

"Between my feet was an acorn. The voice said, 'pick it up' and I did and the voice said, 'as you have picked this acorn up, so I have picked up you. You are mine'."

Andy didn't commit to God then. Instead it took a second crisis to bring him closer to that point.

He had a spell in the Thames Valley police and at the age of 24 got a job in Hong Kong as an inspector.

The shock came when he was thrown out the Hong Kong force after he was accused of cheating in an exam.

He was seen taking something from his pocket during the test – in fact the object was his asthma inhaler. In his other pocket were some revision notes, which he should not have had in the room even though they were irrelevant to the questions asked.

Perhaps more importantly, in what was a sensitive time leading up the hand-over of the British dependency to China in 1997, he had already made enemies within the Hong Kong force.

For a second time in his life Andy had had a career dream of an adventurous career shattered. He had relished the challenge of working in Hong Kong, which at the time was plagued by a series of staggeringly violent gang-related robberies and murders.

The shock was all the greater because of a sense of isolation, not least because he was thousands of miles from home.

"I started drinking fairly heavily even though I had no money – I was sponging off police mates – and sleeping around a bit," he says. "I remember waking up in a stranger's bedroom and thinking, 'this is wrong'."

Again he found himself out in the open, calling on God and again he got an answer, this time telling him that he should 'teach and lead'.

Unsure what the instruction meant, he stayed with some missionary friends near the border with Hong Kong.

He heard that two Christians were planning to smuggle Bibles into China. That was a highly illegal activity – the Christian church on the mainland is tightly controlled, the Bible was banned and this was only five years after the violent expression of the democracy movement in 1989. Anybody caught could be expected to face a long term of imprisonment, whatever their nationality.

Attracted rather than deterred by the risk, Andy leapt at the chance to help with the smuggling. "I thought I could be a James Bond for Jesus," he jokes, and soon found himself on a flight to the coastal city of Shanghai with his co-conspirators and 3,000 Bibles in their luggage.

"The other two both spoke Mandarin (the mainland dialect) and I didn't but they stuck out a mile," Andy says, laughing at the memory.

"They were high-fiving each other, saying 'praise the Lord' – mad Christians.

"We were walking up to the customs bench at Shanghai airport and I thought, 'we've got no chance'. The people in front of us were stopped and had their luggage searched and the people behind us were stopped but we walked straight through.

"It was as if we were invisible, the most amazing thing that had happened in my life."

The Bibles were duly handed to their contacts in the underground Christian church. Andy won't give any more details for fear that even today the Chinese receivers could face persecution.

He returned to Hong Kong and then the UK where he was offered his old job back in the Thames Valley force, but Andy felt by then that the call to 'lead and teach' was directing him to become clergyman.

In 1994 he started his three years of training at Spurgeon's College in London. It was in the capital that he met Jo, now his wife. They have three boys aged eight, six and two. Jo is an active member of the Mutley church, too.

Early in his new calling and career he felt drawn to Mutley, even though he had never heard of the place at the time. He made a note and thought nothing of it.

Years later when he was more aware of the significance of Plymouth Baptist and its reach, Andy came across the note when he was clearing out some papers, and not long after that he got a call out of the blue from senior figure at the church.

"They had looked at 55 people for the Mutley job," says Andy. "Some had turned them down, some they had turned down. They turned to me because they wanted somebody young with some passion. I had been recommended."

First impressions of Plymouth were that the city immediately felt like home, even though he had no links here.

"I just loved it," he says. "There is a great quality, a steadfastness about Plymouth."

That character trait applies to the church he leads, to, and perhaps partly explains why Mutley has attracted so many adult converts who have come to Christianity after crises in their own lives, including some well-known names in the city, among them Plymouth Argyle striker Rory Fallon, Jo Stewart of the Plymkids theatre company and Debra Searle, the Atlantic rower and adventurer.

Andy himself is less attracted to physical adventure these days. The self-preservation instinct that kicks in with responsibilities of fatherhood is probably the explanation there he reckons, and he restricts himself the lower-key thrills of surfing and snorkelling when he is not working.

He is now so much more comfortable in his own skin than he was when he was a young man, which I am sure explains some of the success of the church he leads. Andy is a charismatic man who engages readily and naturally. The fact that he colours with a tinge of incredulity his accounts of God talking to him, adds an appealing layer of self-effacing charm and vulnerability.

Take for example, Andy's revelation that even some devout Christians are sceptical about the origin of the internal voice that has spoken to him at crucial moments in his life. He says: "When I told the interview panel Spurgeon's College about the voice, one of them told me, 'You are a nice guy but you are clearly mad if you think that God speaks to you like that!'."

Andy laughs out loud at the memory, more, I think, at himself than at what other says about him.