Artist impression of the old Bethany Hall, Stevenston. This is how it looked in my boyhood days.
Gospel Halls featured prominently in my early childhood and in the history of the Neilly family since the early 20th Century. I owe my Christian faith to my 'Brethren' background and I attended meetings in Bethany Hall, Stevenston from a very early age. I came to faith as a young child before I knew the theological stance of this movement.
Without giving a deep theological treatise, the movement started in the 19th Century and was
Evangelical in character. The emphasis was placed on the Bible as the inspired Word of God. It was the King James Version which was read in all of the three gospel Halls in Stevenston (Hayocks, Loan Hall and Bethany Hall) which have now merged to form TCF or Townhead Christian Fellowship which Janie and I attended until 2017. The gospel was preached by lay preachers who emphasised that we were all sinners and needed to be 'saved' by faith in the work of Jesus Christ, whose death on the Cross of Calvary alone satisfied God's high standard. There was therefore an emphasis on an one-off event of conversion rather than a process. The notion that we could satisfy a Holy God by good works was anathema. But the Neilly family lived 'good lives' and were extremely generous to those in need. For example, when we lived in Misk Knowes, we were one of the first to have a telephone and our home was open to neighbours who wanted to use the 'phone'. They sometimes left a shilling or a floren to pay for the phone call but my mother and father never questioned how long they had been on the phone nor the cost of the call. Their principle was that the phone was for anyone who needed it. We also had a ready supply of shillings for the electricity meter and, sometimes neighbours would not have the right change in copper coins so again they left with the shilling as a gift. Dad also spent hours doing printing for folks (a type of calligraphy), helping folk to complete tax returns also free of charge and visiting those who were bereaved or in illness. I could do a whole blog on the generosity of the Neilly family but they would have been horrified if anyone suggested that this was so that they would be in heaven. They were saved by grace through faith and not by good works.
In the 1950s the Neilly family were closely associated with gospel Halls. My own family and also my uncle and aunt were active members of Bethany Hall. I attended the Sunday School there from a very early age and liked the lovely teachers who told me Bible stories. One lady by the name of
Elizabeth Paton was probably my first Sunday School teacher. There were others – Jimmy Grant was a particular favourite of mine - he was such a lovely guy who genuinely loved children – in sharp contrast to some of my class teachers at Ardeer Primary School. My Uncle Willie was also one of my Sunday School teachers as was Bert Grant – both of whom had a profound influence on my spiritual growth. I sat beside my mother at the Gospel meeting and tried to make sense of what the preachers were saying and try to understand their 'jargon' phrases. The hymn singing also raised questions in my young mind. Some were pretty gloomy such as:
Life at best is very brief,
Like the falling of a leaf,
Like the binding of a sheaf,
Be in time!
Fleeting days are telling fast
That the die will soon be cast,
And the fatal line be passed,
Be in time!
I hoped that my life would last long enough for me to get back home to play with my toys - my Meccano set or my Lego or my Dinky toys.
To be balanced, there were many hymns I really enjoyed and in my childhood I learned to play an old organ in our home in Misk Knowes. My oldest sister, Agnes had regularly played hymns every evening when she had completed her studies for the evening and by age 10 or so I was playing by ear – not very proficiently but for my own enjoyment. My father loved to sing and my mother also played the organ – using Tonic Sofa. At Bethany Hall, the organ was played by a lovely lady by the name of Margaret Park who was the daughter of a baker in the town. I had many favourites – too many to list here but some of them are worth mentioning:
Come ye that love the Lord etc – with the chorus, “We’re marching to Zion.”
When peace like a river attendeth my way.
He leadeth me O blessed thought.
Behold what love, what boundless love ….
Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling.
Out of my bondage, sorrow and night.
I had limited experience of other churches and other faiths. I had not rationalised it but deep on my
sub-conscious I probably assumed that only members of Gospel Halls would be in heaven. We lived fairly separate lives – we were never close Brethren so we avoided the extremes but our lives were very different from our neighbours. I grew up without a television or hearing pop music or attending 'the pictures' but I developed a love for reading books (fiction and nonfiction). I was really happy at home in a very loving family. My mother was very close to me and she was a great baker and she allowed me to scrape her baking bowl and she baked every day apart from Sunday! Again, I could ramble on for hours about my home life and my close bond with my mum and how my dad spoiled me because I was the only boy in the family.
I associated the Neilly family with gospel halls from my earliest childhood. In Bethany Hall there
were two brothers and a sister who were Neillys. My Uncle Willie and Aunt Lizzie stayed just a few streets away from us and Uncle Willie was one of the elders in Bethany Hall. He played a prominent role in the meetings – often speaking or praying in public and he was well respected and a good living man. His wife was a lovely lady who supported her husband in every way and never complained about his untidy habits. They had my Aunt Cathy staying with them and she was the owner of one of the shoe-shops in the town – C.Y Neilly, Footwear Specialist – her shop was in New Street, Stevenston. She was also a member of Bethany Hall. Their younger brother had moved to the other end of the town and he and his wife and family attended Loan Hall in Townhead Street, Stevenston.
The services at Loan Hall were a bit different as they did not have an organ and used a precentor for every meeting where we only sang acapella at our Breaking of Bread service on Sunday mornings. Like Bethany Hall, they did not have a minister or a pastor but they did not usually have invited lay preachers to preach the sermons. Instead, they would wait for one of their number – a man of course – to go up to the platform to deliver the sermon. There was often a silence while they waited for the individual to feel that he was being led by the Holy Spirit to preach or teach.
There was a third Gospel Hall in Stevenston and it was at the opposite end of the town from where I lived. It was the Hayocks Gospel Hall but I rarely visited it as a boy. Locally, it was known as Tammy Meney's because he had been prominent at one time in this church. In my teens I went to some events at Hayocks and I was even invited to preach there sometimes.
All three Gospel Halls are now represented in the present 'assembly' or church in the centre of the town of Stevenston, known as Townhead Christian Fellowship. It is quite an interesting story about how this merger came about - but that's for another blog, maybe.
Here is a gallery of pictures associated with Bethany Hall, Stevenston
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