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INTERVIEW
Stuart’ s book is aptly titled. His life has been full of adventure and challenge from his earliest days, culminating in his ongoing fight to speak for persecuted people around the world with the charity Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
Stuart’ s mother ran away with the rag-and-bone man when he was ten. He told me how he’ d returned from school one day to find his sister trying to cook dinner and that she’ d explained their mother had left them. The shock and pain caused by her abandonment was life-altering. Stuart writes in God’ s Adventurer,‘ I can testify to the trauma of having your mother ripped from your life at the age of ten. Nothing is ever the same again. You spend your nights in tears and your days crippled by anxiety. You feel different to other children. The sense of loss and betrayal is overwhelming’( page 32).
Stuart’ s father was left to cope alone with five young children. He and his siblings were sent soon after to a children’ s home, Barnardo’ s, where he spent what in his recollection was a pretty happy childhood. He told me, without any trace of bitterness, that his father had been unable to care for them on his own. Stuart never saw his mother again although he’ s met some of the children she had in subsequent relationships.
Children in Barnardo’ s were encouraged to find work that offered accommodation, so at sixteen, Stuart joined the RAF, staying for twenty years before leaving to take a job in staff training and development with North West Water. He had become a Christian through a friend when he was eighteen, and while in his training role he sensed a call to ordained ministry. He told me,‘ I’ m an Assemblies of God minster and when I was getting ordained in 1985, we had to go forward to be prayed for. A little man, balding with glasses, prayed the most incredible prophetic prayer over my wife Ethel and I that we would go to peoples, that we would be speaking to presidents and prime ministers and that God would use us in the nations and in healing. We didn’ t have any idea what it all meant at the time of course, but later it turned out to be exactly what happened.’ Our conversation is full of these snippets – surprising details and unexpected twists. As you might imagine, our morning together passes quickly. I tell him I could sit listening to him for days at a time without growing bored.
He was working as a Pentecostal minister and running a small film unit specialising in recording Christian conferences when in 1992 he was invited to come along to film as his friend took aid to Armenians in a war zone in Azerbaijan. It was through the footage taken on this trip that he first met Baroness Caroline Cox, Speaker of the House of Lords( 1985-2005) and a Trustee of Christian Solidarity Worldwide. As it turned out, they had been stranded 100 metres from each other in the same blizzard in the mountains of Armenia.
Stuart was UK national director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide( CSW) for 19 years and now officially retired, he works as its Special Ambassador.‘ You don’ t seem to have slowed down since retirement,’ I say, as he tells me about the fifteen things he did before our 10 am meeting today.‘ I’ m passionate about my work, all of us at CSW are. It’ s a calling, not a job. You can’ t ever walk away from it,’ he replies.‘ I’ m doing the same amount of work. I’ m just not getting paid to do it any more!’
Over the years, he’ s travelled extensively to countries where Christians and others face the worst imaginable persecution for their religious beliefs. He has advocated on their behalf everywhere from the UN to the US Congress and true to that prophecy spoken over him at his ordination, he’ s appeared before presidents and prime ministers.
Knowing Stuart had an incredible wealth of stories up his sleeve, I asked him to tell me about one of the most extreme situations he’ s been called upon to preach in.‘ Lady Cox and I were travelling to Sudan in the mid- 1990s,’ he began,‘ when no one was going there, during the war in the south and it was dangerous. We’ d fly into Kenya then fly in a single engine craft with medicine and supplies illegally into southern Sudan. We had government military representatives with us, and we’ d land on a remote air strip and the plane would leave us there, very near the war front, for a week. We’ d meet with the southern Sudanese Christians, and Muslims. We saw some terrible atrocities.’
‘ What were you there to do?’ I asked.‘ We’ d meet local tribal elders and Christian leaders and spend our time taking evidence – stories, photographs, interviews-about what they’ d suffered.’ He pauses, the memories are seared in his mind and even today, so many years later, it’ s not easy for him to talk about.‘ We redeemed slaves,’ he goes on.‘ On our last trip in 2001, we redeemed 343 Southern Sudanese Christian ladies, and one blind man and children, who’ d been carried off from their villages by northern Muslim Arabs. We’ d take evidence, write up reports and bring them to parliament, the UN, the congress in the US. That’ s our work – being a voice for the voiceless.’
I cut in, wanting to make sure we hear the preaching part of the story.‘ Did you meet with groups of Christians?’ I ask.‘ Did you preach on these trips?’‘ Oh yes,’ he says.‘ On one particular trip we went to Southern Blue Nile, and we were invited to meet the local army commander who happened to be a Muslim, a wonderful man. We had this drive, to a place called