Looking Back:

Working With Their Own Hands

From January 1954

“Working With Their Own Hands”

New Testament Practice ‘Works Wonders’ In Glasgow

The exterior of the Hall Memorial Church at the east end of Dalmarnock Road in Glasgow is certainly not prepossessing, especially on a rain-wet November night. The dinginess of its grey stone walls barely reflects the shimmering neon lights of the nearby ‘White Horse’. The neighbouring houses appear gloomy and dark.

On approaching the church the imagination leaps to embody the picture of another difficult situation where a heroic minister with the faithful remnant of a once large congregation are battling grimly against overwhelming odds. And there is a grimness which will meet you, if you open the side door and enter the building on a Friday evening.

The lighting is out of date; and even when you find your way to an upstairs room and meet the minister and a group of men engaged in a serious discussion, the feeling of grim reality remains. But it is lightened somehow, for these are the men, about eighteen of them, who, under the leadership of the minister, are engaged in the performance of a miracle.

You speak for a moment or two, and then the minister says:

“Well, come , and you’ll see what we’ve been doing.”

He leads you through a labyrinth of passages, through a large unfinished hall crowded with young folk, and then upstairs again.

“The church is in here,” he says, and there is a quiet sort of pride in his deep Highland voice.

The lights are switched on, and then you see it – the church within a church; a place for worship gathered around the Holy Table, perfectly proportioned, beautiful.

“Church Within A Church”

It had been there for generations, up under the ceiling and the beams, and no one had seen it, until the need for more accommodation for the 800 of the youth organisations became urgent. After that it was all very simple really, though perhaps not so simple technically. Pillars were build from the foundations below the floor level of the existing building, cross-beams of steel were placed in position, a floor was laid upon them level with the lowest floor in the existing gallery, and there it was, you can see it in the photograph.

For some months past relays of keen voluntary workers have been busy every week-night – led sometimes by their minister, the Rev N.A.M Mackenzie, who has considerable skill as a craftsman. The architect, Mr W. Sanderson, has given his services voluntarily; and Mr Robert Owens, an elder, is ‘master of works’.

A new church and a new hall for £400, the official valuation being £3,000. And it was constructed in four months by not more than a dozen-and-a-half men. A church within a church! That’s what they made; perhaps that is what they are. This much at least is certain: their labouring together has wrought them and their minister into a group very closely resembling what one imagines an early Christian fellowship was like, one in Christ, in brotherhood, in work.

Photographs: Top: Scottish News Features and Photo Services; bottom: Ingram Photo Services

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