After reading this new book by Lucy Sixsmith on Soul Survivor (SS), the notorious and controversial movement formerly led by Mike Pilavachi, I had to ask myself what genre of writing was being employed.  The blurb on the back cover uses the word ‘memoir’ to describe the book.  It is, however, much more than a memoir.  I find it easier to describe it as a written conversation between various parties of which the reader is one.  The central character is, of course, the author Lucy who, in her mid-thirties is trying today to make sense of her past exposure to the enormously influential movement for Christian young people, which flourished in Watford for some thirty years.  As part of our initiation into the strange (for some) world of charismatic beliefs and practice, we are introduced to a younger Lucy.  The teenage Lucy is also a party to the conversation. As a young impressionable teenager confronting ideas and experiences that she cannot fully process, she initiates us into the religious worldview of a religiously inclined teenager from the noughties.  By the end of the book, the reader will have been introduced to a variety of ideas and notions that may be novel to many older Christians, but the effort will have been worth it for two main reasons.  In the first place, charismatic Christianity is becoming the dominant expression of the faith in Britain today and Lucy’s description of the ideas and assumptions in the movement, whether as a teenager or as someone speaking from early adulthood, is not a bad place to start.  The second set of insights being offered, especially to non-charismatic Church people in leadership, is an understanding of some of the dynamics that are around when churches allow obedience and surrender to a maverick leader.  Such practices can easily tip over into manipulation and exploitation of impressionable and vulnerable young lives.  SS was allowed to function for thirty plus years without anyone asking the penetrating questions that might have better protected the young people it purported to serve.   

I write this short review as a charismatic ‘sympathiser’, having been an observer of the scene for a number of decades.  My own ability to identify with the leaders of the movement ceased with the passing of an earlier generation such as John Richards and John Gunstone.  For a variety of reasons, the movement turned in a new direction in the 80s.  The baton of leadership was passed on to a group with a more sectarian outlook.  To use political terminology, the soft left charismatic style of the 70s became the hard left controlling leadership of the later 80s and 90s.  Having myself found a small niche in the charismatic world in the early 80s, so that I was even invited to speak at healing conferences about my interest in this ministry, I ceased to be regarded as ‘sound’ by the end of the decade.

The SS generation of the nineties and noughties to which Lucy belonged, alongside many of her Christian contemporaries, brought forth a manifestation of charismatic practice which was strongly identified with the conservative evangelical camp.  What Lucy describes of her home church and her experiences of SS camps breathes a Christian culture that I would have found unbelievably stifling and restrictive.  For those of us who had been warmed by the early pioneer days of the charismatic movement, it had been a cause of sadness that our ‘liberal’ opinions made us a cause of suspicion and threat to the generation that came after.  Lucy’s memories and descriptions of her Christian pilgrimage as a young person growing up in this later culture contains much material for reflection.  We have laid out for us the kind of teaching that was shared by Mike Pilavachi with the tens of thousands of young people who imbibed the Christian faith from this somewhat uncompromising conservative narrative.  The importance of the book is found in the way we are invited by the author to share in her struggles, her questions and doubts.  It is as though we are invited to participate, through the reflections of the book, in a journey of faith from the perspective of a very young, but highly intelligent mind. 

When the Music Fades is not in any way meant to be a hatchet job of the damaging ministry of Mike Pilavachi.  Lucy clearly understands the implications of all that has been revealed of the harm and trauma that has befallen a group of young men –  the massages and the dangers of inappropriate closeness to Mike.  This typically involved being at first favoured before being discarded.  There was much more going on and, as the title of the book suggests, Lucy recognises fully the part played by music in creating a distinctive style within the culture of SS, one which was highly attractive to young people.  The sections of the book discussing music, as far as this commentator is concerned, are the ones that are most difficult to engage with.  Perhaps music taste will always be an area of partial incomprehension between the generations.  But I still find myself asking the question whether the style and emotion revealed through the music of SS takes us into the presence of God or whether the same music is a tool of manipulation and control.  One of Lucy’s chapters is entitled Surrender.  Is this word a description of an emotion deliberately cultivated by leaders and musicians to create a power dynamic which was of benefit to the leaders, in terms of gaining kudos from the wider institution?  However much ‘surrender’ seemed to describe the spiritual place where the young participants thought they wanted to be, it is a word that has strong undertones of vulnerability and control.  Telling a large crowd of potentially vulnerable young people the importance of surrendering to an emotion-laden atmosphere is a situation of great potential danger.  Do teenagers have the necessary discernment and capacity for self-protection not to be sucked into something that may harm them at a deep level? 

As a university academic Lucy is alert to the need to respond to many of the searching questions that she recognises will be asked by her potential readership.  She includes helpful material from a variety of disciplines which help to give the context for the phenomenon we know as SS.   Her understanding and presentation of material connected with the history of evangelicalism leading up to SS is instructive and helpful.  She tells us about Charles Simeon, Henry Martyn and Moody and Sankey.  Little by little we find ourselves absorbing the message and significance of SS from these other perspectives, those of theology, history, psychology and direct experience. 

The value of the book is perhaps that it throws down a challenge to church leaders, asking them to state where the boundaries should be drawn between something that is orthodox, wholesome and life-giving and other cultures which may be exploitative and harmful.  The perennial issue about the place of music needs fresh scrutiny and attention, since we cannot simply assume that because something is popular it is necessarily spiritual and healthy.  Lucy makes a serious attempt as a newly minted adult to communicate the feelings and strong emotions aroused in these young people by the evangelistic youth culture of today.  My own level of incomprehension at the genre of musical style within this culture suggests to me that there may still be a considerable problem for the Church to overcome.  Mike Pilavachi was allowed to practise a risky, even dangerous style of Christian ministry for so long, partly because church leaders did not understand and therefore could not monitor intelligently and perceptively what he was doing.  The author, the grown-up well educated Lucy, offers a bridge enabling other Christians outside charismatic circles to understand what was being attempted in these camps. Many of the themes of an earlier charismatic culture: prophecy, tongues and healing were still present.  My own impression from the book’s descriptions is that these gifts were being practiced with a level of wackiness.  There is also a sense that gifts are being practised, sometimes without any proper idea of what was going on.  There is a vivid description of the author emerging from her tent one morning at camp to discover her friend prophesying to a group of younger boys.  These boys were in Lucy’s words ‘sceptical, but magnanimous’.  There was some level of acceptance in that they stayed to listen even though they seemed unconvinced.  Lucy’s own home independent charismatic church had been deeply impacted by the Toronto Blessing so she was wide open to wacky episodes in church, along with vivid displays of emotion.  The adult Lucy is offering us keys to understanding something of this culture.  That understanding will allow the rest of us to feed on its energy and vitality, even when we feel a necessary system of checks and balance is absent.

The adult Lucy Sixsmith provides us with something extremely precious: a direct personal penetration and insight into areas of church life that is strange to many of us.  We feel privileged to enter such an unfamiliar place, the Soul Survivor camps, but with Lucy as our guide, we are better able to understand and certainly not be harmed by the experience.

***********************************************************

Some readers may have seen the news about the legal case involving Jonathan Fletcher. Surviving Church wrote on the earlier stages of this case aboutwhich readers might like to remind themselves. https://survivingchurch.org/2020/12/22/bishops-safeguarding-and-jonathan-fletcher/