Wandsworth Salvation Army Boiler Room
In Autumn 2004, Wandsworth Salvation Army became the first corps in the country to be reborn as a boiler room.
All the cliches spring to mind: it's a giant leap forward, it's a dream come true, it's history in the making. When we started talking about Salvation Army boiler rooms nearly two years ago, the whole thing felt a very long way off - but the one thing we felt quite sure about was that the first one would be Wandsworth.
Wandsworth SA probably isn't the place most people would start a boiler room. It's fairly small and, in their own words, they're a "motley crew" whose congregation has completely changed three times in the past nine years. This isn't, I hasten to add, because they put people off church so badly; it's because they have become a place of transition: "heal them up, get them set free and then send them out to spread the gospel". They call themselves a "corridor church" - so what on earth is a corridor doing becoming a boiler room?
Anyone who's followed the history of boiler rooms will know that they are all monuments to God's liking for the unexpected and the unpredictable. He chooses the weak and foolish, the illogical and seemingly wrong options. Wandsworth SA would say they were all of those, but what they would also say is that they know a dependence on God that few other churches achieve - mainly because too many other churches don't seem to need him - and a dependence on other churches which leaves no room for inter-denominational squabbles. Wandsworth has unusually high levels of church unity. The churches don't just meet each other on committees, they actually work together.
So God chose a small, "weak", highly dependent congregation to spearhead The Salvation Army's journey into boiler rooms. Yet the journey for Wandsworth hasn't all been easy. There was the building which they believed God was telling them to pray for, but which didn't become available in the end. There was the sometimes uncomfortable process of working out how their vision for boiler room fitted with the visions of the other churches in the borough. There were the long periods when no doors seemed to be opening, and when church life seemed to be getting more complicated instead of more glorious!
But they held on to the promise and, after some painful moments of praying, fasting, giving things up, handing the vision back to God, and releasing everything they could think of back into his hands, they suddenly had a major breakthrough. It wasn't the kind of breakthrough we long for, where a kind of heavenly explosion picks you up from where you are and lands you exactly where you want to be. It was the kind of breakthrough you get when the signal changes to green and the train starts moving again. After this, God sent resources, people and connections, and the launch took place with guests and representatives from 24-7, the Salvation Army, and lots of the other churches in Wandsworth Borough.
From it's conception, the Wandsworth BR has been quite unlike any of the previous boiler room models. It wasn't about a totally new set of relationships being consecrated and celebrated on a big scale. It was and is about a church - an existing congregation - changing its identity, putting one identity to death and being reborn as something else. We have had many times of celebration, but also a times of serious covenant-cutting, as members of the church have dedicated themselves to the boiler room journey.
A couple of years into that journey, the community at Wandsworth are facing new challenges: a building scheme, a year with no permanent base, and the question of how to develop the boiler room, according to God's will, in a new building. The clearest message God has been speaking to the team is about the importance of community, of being a church and a boiler room outside of a physical set of walls. They found quite quickly that when you start to pray, God often causes you to become the answer to those prayers, and the dividing line between 'prayer' and 'mission' becomes increasingly blurry.
Wandsworth Boiler Room have built real connections over the past 2 years with the local prison, and the local mental health day centre, as well as other local service providers. As they are forced out into the local area by the building scheme, they plan to increase these connections, and see more people coming to know Christ and experience the journey he has for them.
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