Episode 5 City of Faith

Here you have a wonderful city that exudes Christianity.

You're walking over thousands of years of history.

And it's all around you,

in your cathedrals and churches around the Mall.

And obviously, the legacy of St Patrick.

I think, to be fair to Armagh,

people do their very best to get on.

They do their very best to be a community,

to look out for one another.

I think that is an expression of Christian concern

and Christian love.

So, I think it has a tremendous opportunity, Armagh,

as a beacon of light.

SACRED MUSIC

We are standing here on the historic Mall.

As you look around, you see the different traditions.

Here, you have the dominance of the spires

of the Roman Catholic cathedral

and they're majestically reaching to the skies.

Here you have the tall spire of the Presbyterian Church.

Beside it, The Mall Presbyterian Church.

The Brethren Church over there.

On this side of the Mall, you have St Mark's.

Of course, tucked up around the hill,

in the shadow, almost, of the cathedral,

is the little Methodist church to which I belong.

Then you ask yourself the question,

here are all of these architectural witnesses to the gospel.

The people who built them wanted to make a statement,

a statement of faith, this is what we believe in.

Look at us, this is what we believe in.

This is about faith, this is about a message of love and reconciliation.

This is about a message of, there's more to life

than just living here, there is a hereafter after the here.

But then you look at this Mall

and you look up at that end of the Mall up there and what have you got?

The jail.

At this end of the Mall, you have the courthouse.

You go in there for your sins, and you go up there for your punishment.

But surrounded by these churches, we are saying, hold on,

it doesn't have to be like that. There's forgiveness around.

It's a message that says, there's another way of doing things.

The churches are all exclaiming that loudly and saying, come, follow me.

We have a better way of doing things.

Being a Christian isn't easy

and if anybody thinks Christianity is for wimps,

I'd say they're in for a shock, because what Christianity will do,

what the Lord will do, He'll make you be a man.

What I mean by that is, He will make you be accountable.

He will make you stand up and you have to be transparent.

You can't live a double life.

I worked for the weekends and I loved going out at the weekends.

I loved socialising, I loved the craic,

I loved the banter and drink was a big area of that.

Every Sunday, my wage packet would have been gone

and I would have begrudged giving my mother £20 for housekeeping.

But that was my life, there was just drinking, partying.

When Monday came, you put your head down and worked until Friday came.

Pretty sad really, but that was it.

I had fought the voice of God for a long time.

I knew that I needed to be saved,

I knew there was an emptiness within me.

Even though I probably would have been seen as being like most people,

happy-go-easy and enjoying the craic but inwardly, there was a void.

I was constantly just twisting with drink in me.

There was this one point and it brought it to a low.

We were in a bar on Boxing Day.

There was a fight that had broken out between myself

and another fella and it was totally my fault, it shouldn't have happened.

The biggest shock for me that night was my mother's face.

She was in that bar and my mother looked at me in utter shock,

utter shame and disbelief that this had just taken place.

That was probably the biggest wake-up call, that my life was just a mess.

That was the beginning of the end for me,

because I had realised, I am sick of this.

I had come to an all-time low, I'm only 24 years of age

and I feel I've done everything.

I just feel my life was spiralling out of control

but I believe it was the hand of God on my life.

Everything I touched, He made fall.

I live in my home farm, just outside Keady in a place called Temple.

I have been living there for 47 years now.

I have been there since I was born. It is a small family farm.

Dad was a full-time farmer and he kept cattle, as I do now.

Whenever I would get holidays or weekends,

I was running about after him.

Good times together, just farming and feeding the cattle

and all the things that has to be done around the farm.

We grew up in a happy, loving family farming environment.

# Echoes of mercy, whispers of love

# This is my story, this is my song... #

There's probably a lot of moments where

I have felt God's presence in an awesome way.

# This is my story, this is my song... #

A lot of times,

you just feeling the tangible presence of God as people gather.

That's quite biblical, because scripture teaches us

that where two or three are gathered together, I am there as well.

In His presence, there is fullness of joy.

We are doing this ordinance of communion to never forget the price

that you paid for us to redeem us, to make us free and we thank you, Lord.

Mum and Dad would have been strong Christians.

I knew that if my dad and mum were ready for heaven

and if anything happened and I wasn't right with God,

that I would go down the other way, to a lost eternity without Christ.

It was just like the Holy Spirit was saying,

you need to make the decision to follow Christ.

Everyone has their cross to bear and I think that's a tremendous help

I have had and carried down this past 30 years.

That's a good dog, come on!

'When you're working for local government in the public service,

'you strive to do the best for the people you work for,'

people who work for you and most of all, for the community you serve

because that's what public service is all about.

These are all bits and pieces in Omagh, you wouldn't want that stuff.

I never get a chance to get these all in order.

That's going into Buckingham Palace.

MBE.

Buckingham Palace.

It was nice to get it

and nice to think that you were appreciated for your services

in local government,

but it isn't the most overriding factor in my life.

I wouldn't swap my faith for it, let's put it that way!

Then going back a few years,

this is the photograph of the former City Hall in Armagh,

which was bombed in 1972.

It always sticks in my memory because I came down the stairs

and saw the two brown cases after we got the alarm.

I suppose it was like jumping Beecher's Brook

at the Grand National - I cleared them,

with a gusto, and out through the front door

and within ten minutes, that is what was left of the building.

This is with John Major and myself and Jim Nicholson.

That is the Queen on her visit to Armagh to convey city status.

The visit of President Clinton and Hillary Clinton meeting Margaret

and myself on the Mall before he gave that very famous speech,

the peace speech, in Armagh,

the speech of the peace process in many ways.

The idea of service to others, being not selfish for yourself

but selflessness, I think that is

what the Christian life is all about.

You can look at all of these people, they all have power,

but what is important is how they use the power

and responsibility that they have.

That is the Christian ethos, and I think, from my perspective,

it's critical.

PREACHER: All that is required for you to be saved

and experience God's salvation

is belief or faith in Jesus Christ.

-Thank you, God, for our food. Amen.

-Praise the Lord!

This one night, there was a sense that I knew that God was calling,

that I had to give my life to God.

The night I was saved, I was sitting in that corner there.

I came back in here at around nine o'clock.

I came home from the meeting

and I'd felt I hadn't heard from God, I felt nothing and I felt numb.

I think I'd fought so much inwardly against God

because I had heard the gospel message being preached.

I knew that not only did I need to be saved but that God loved me

and he wanted to save me, he wanted me to turn to him

and quit trying to do everything myself.

I had a whole life going on,

that I knew was going to be shattered.

Everything I stood for, everything I was involved in, everything I did,

my whole lifestyle, my circle of friends,

everything we did together was absolutely contrary to what

God's people would be doing or what you'd be expected to do.

I got to the stage where I realised that

all these things I think are important, they're not,

because I'm still sitting here by myself, on my own.

I do believe it was a test, a test of, if this is what you want,

this is really what you want to do, you make the move.

It was a leap of faith,

it was one of the hardest decisions I've had to make.

That's when I made the decision that I want to get right with God

and that's what I did that night from this living room on 28 December 2002.

That's where it all happened, where it started, anyhow.

As a small boy growing up, we lived above our shop,

which was a small garage,

and sold motor and other types of material and goods.

We had lots of neighbours and we played together.

On 12 August, over 60 years ago,

I was visited by John, who was a great pal of mine.

I can recall that I wasn't all that well,

I think I must have been sick with something or other,

because John came up to see me in the bedroom

and as small boys do, I suppose we played and chatted.

Then afterwards, when he was leaving,

there was a most horrific accident

and John was...

..killed,

I suppose there's no other way of putting it,

by a milk lorry.

I witnessed the scene.

It is a scene I have never forgotten or will ever forget.

Or don't want to forget.

I suppose that was my first experience of death.

Until then, one didn't have an appreciation, as a child, of death.

What I learned from that in many senses was obviously,

you don't live for ever.

Death can come very quickly.

Even as a child, you can experience it.

But how painful it can be.

This was horrendous, obviously, for the family.

Losing a child, I cannot imagine how you would cope with that.

But Mrs Sherry did cope with it and what shone through that

was her faith, which created an impression on me,

and the faith of that family.

The dignity, the compassion within the family and the neighbours

and friends who rallied round.

As I reflect back on that, it was really Christian care and concern.

That was my first understanding of that.

We would have went to Mountain Lodge in the evening time.

My mum and dad at the start of the '70s would have started

going there to Mountain Lodge and I would have went with him.

My dad, after he was there for a number of years,

he would have become a bit more senior

and when we went into the main body of the church,

he would have stayed in the entrance hall just to welcome people

and then he would have come in and joined us after that.

I would say we were probably one of the last ones in that evening.

I think the singing had already started. Then we just filed in.

That was the old text on the wall. It still was there 30 years ago.

"The coming of the Lord draweth nigh."

We moved into our pew, which would have been roughly here.

The hymn books used to be in the front, so you grabbed a hymn book

and the pastor would have called out the hymn.

We were singing away, as we do.

The next thing we heard, as the pastor has said,

it was like pebbles being thrown up against the window.

Whenever you are not used to the sound of gunfire so close,

you probably wonder what is going on.

These doors burst open and Dad ran.

I can just see him out of the corner of my eye.

Just running up and I think he shouted, "Get down, get down!"

So we all got down.

I remember getting down just under the seats as best we could

until the bullets all stopped and everything was just very silent.

I can remember getting out of the seat and going up the aisle

and following where Dad had went. I member seeing him, lying.

I remember asking a lady, was he dead?

She said, "Yeah, I think he is, son."

'My sister recalls how I came back out of that room

'bawling at the top of my voice.'

We never realised then, my dad had...wasn't there any more.

-REPORTER:

-The Pentecostal Church was filled today with police

and soldiers, not worshippers.

The killers describe themselves as the Catholic Reaction Force,

an unknown grouping, with a title implying revenge

and narrow sectarianism.

-Hello?

-Hello. How are you?

-Doing all right.

'The Bible talks about faith being a gift

'and we all get different measures of faith.

'I think God has given me a great measure of faith.'

That was you at your sweetest, when you were all wee angels.

-Mmm.

-Mmm. What happened?

THEY LAUGH

'People would say, "How do you know you are saved?

"I would say, "I know I'm saved, because I know I'm saved."

God has put such a mark within me.

You weren't bad, by any stretch of the imagination. Wild, maybe,

but you have changed and you have settled and you do know

your responsibilities now.

I can't ask more out of life than that for you.

'Thank you, God.'

Thank you, God.

CHILDREN REPEAT PHRASE

'My whole desire has changed, my attitude changed,

'my thought process changed. I used to work all day and night.'

I put that into perspective and started working a normal 9-5 or 8-5.

'I started to spend time with my family.

'My whole life changed, in that area.'

'I have an oldest boy of 17, coming now.

'All of a sudden, it was, my sons are precious to me.

I want to build relationships. My life's too precious

to be walking about Monday to Friday with my head down and the drink.

I want to enjoy my life.

When I got saved, I became a better father.

There were years I didn't realise, I didn't appreciate, what...

-When I got saved, I started to invest in you...

-Filled a bigger bond.

Filled a bond. We have a bond, thankfully.

I think before I got saved, anyway, my relationship with you...

I was too selfish. It was all me, me, me.

'Me and my father didn't have a great relationship,

'but when we both became Christians,

'at separate times and different places,

'God saved the both of us and now we have a great relationship.'

So, God restores.

GOSPEL SINGING

'Faith, for me,

'is something that God has given me. Faith is that I can see God,

'that even when things are not going how I thought they would turn out,

'I know that He is in control of my life.'

GOSPEL SINGING

There will be 1,000 reasons come against you, to discourage you from

giving your life to the Lord, but you know one thing,

I will say this, I wasted at last three years fighting with myself,

thinking that this world offered better.

I was fortunate that God was still patient with me and I came to a point

where I could. Forget about who you are and what people think about you,

even what you think of yourself, because quite early on,

when I got saved, I talked about not being a man who could follow through

on things, and that is true. But I thank God that He follows through

on all things.

CHORAL SINGING

If we had all the answers now, there would be no mystery.

If we had all the answers now, there'd be no need for faith.

Faith means you have to have faith in something you can't see,

can't touch, can't feel, but you know that, somehow or other,

this is right.

CHORAL SINGING

We are mindful of what God can do.

God is almighty.

And so, we should have a reverence and an awe for God.

'I can't imagine myself without faith.'

I suppose it is the fuel that keeps you going.

'You will have your ups and downs.

'You will have your trials and tribulations,

'but you have that sort of relationship with the Saviour

'and you have that understanding that there is hope for you

'and there is hope for everybody.'

CHORAL SINGING

'There is one hymn that sums up my belief,

'because it talks about people coming together.'

"All praise to our redeeming Lord He join us by His grace

"And bids us each to each restored Together seek his face.

"And if our fellowship below In Jesus be so sweet

"What height of rapture shall we know

"When round His throne we meet."

To me, that sums up my belief.

'I feel sorry for anyone who can lift a gun or plant a bomb...

'..and kill a fellow human being.

'You do wonder, at times,

'and over the years, you sort of just say, you know,'

"Why? Why did it have to be us?

"Why Darkley? Why a church?"

'There is a lot of bad things happen to good people and,

'because of my Christian belief and Christian upbringing

'and my relationship with God, I don't hold any bitterness

'towards them. It is my duty, as a Christian,'

to forgive those who sin against me, as The Lord's Prayer teaches us.

Although I am sure that tonight may be difficult for some of those

that are present with us, this evening is not

so much about how our friends died, it is about how they lived.

For all three, as elders of Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church,

were devout Christian believers.

'It is like what Jesus said about the house that was built on sand -

'you can't build your life on the sand, cos if you build you life

'on the sand and the rains come, then the house will fall down.

'He said, "Build your life on the rock."

'Thankfully, that is my testimony that, whenever the storm came,

'those 30-odd years ago, that my house

'and my life was built on a firm foundation, on a firm rock.

'And, as a result of that, the storm, the tragedy,'

it didn't sink me. I was kept firm. And that is the key.

CHORAL SINGING