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3. Church Army Send Off in Pittsburgh Ohio 
Left, right, left, right, our boots rattled the paving flags as we marched along. The Stars and Stripes fluttered bravely, our arms swung as one. Held proudly aloft, a bright red banner proclaimed, "GOD IS LOVE." Our splendid column wended away from Pittsburgh's Trinity Cathedral. A great crowd, led by the Bishop, had waved us off on our "Send-Off" journey. We hoped to cross Ohio, walking twenty miles every day, taking an evening meeting and staying overnight in a Parish Hall. "We must have marched at least eight miles by now!" I told myself. "We must be almost half way there!"
Then, turning a corner, like a bombshell it hit us that we were only three blocks from the Cathedral gates! Red faced, and in a shambles we shuffled around and set off again, hopefully in the right direction this time. Puzzled motorists on the main highway gave us disbelieving stares as they drove by. Bothered by this, one cadet waved his peaked cap and shouted, "Yes, folks, we are crazy!" An English Captain bellowed in explanation, "Fools for Christ, Brother!" Onward we tramped, week by week through the towns and cities of Ohio.
Challenge and Encouragement
Later, I returned to one of these places we had visited, Cincinnati, to work in Grace Church Parish. It had once been a well attended and flourishing community congregation in a prosperous suburban area. Now, as I stood before it, its shell lay empty and cold, a derelict husk of its former self. The reason? Hunger.
The famine and poverty in Kentucky had spilled wave upon wave of tattered refugees into the neighbourhood. They were looking for work and food. As the mountain folk moved into the area the Episcopalian congregation pulled out. Our whole community had now become a dilapidated slum. Grace Church sat empty and silent at its center.
Gangs of noisy kids kicked cans along the sidewalk during the day, and drunks made their newspaper beds on our doorstep at night. Bloody street fights erupted outside our window! Tragedy abounded Baymiller and Findlay Streets, but the church was asleep. Dust gathered on the high backed pews standing in its wide nave. Only the whispered prayers of a few faithful ladies on Sundays drifted in from a side chapel.
Bring Them In
The City's Welfare Department had wanted to use our deserted building to store food and clothing but the Bishop had protested. "There are all these people crowding into this area. If we are the church at all, we must find some way to bring them in!" His words, had been my challenge. To mark this new era in the life of the church, our Bishop gave us the new name of St. Barnabas, after the son of encouragement.
The building, like the Saint, had a special message of hope and optimism all of its own. From a tall spire, a large golden cross glimmered across the city in the evening sunshine. Our own efforts to inspire our neighbours were arduous and sometimes funny. First, we went out to invite them to our church services, but few came. Next, we experimented with the unconventional. Opening the lid of our powerful pipe organ, one of my cadets started to play.
He began quietly at first, gradually sliding out the stops, until its booming chords echoed thunderously around the auditorium. Another cadet peered through the corner of a window. He was carefully observing the reaction of two women who happened to be chatting on the opposite side of the street. As our organ bellowed out its great crescendo of sound, they stopped, looked up to our window for the briefest moment, then resumed their gossip across the house fronts.
Deciding that even more drastic steps were necessary, I pushed open the big dusty windows on the roadside as wide as they would go. Still our neighbours didn't come across to see what was happening! Finally, we marched the church's brass processional cross and our Church Army flag backwards and forwards past the open windows to the marching triumphal strains of the organ. We hoped our neighbours would believe that there was an elaborate procession going on inside, but still they remained indifferent!
"You've gotta have a glory in the things you do, an alleluia chorus in the heart of you"
