As a boy, I was a member of the 2nd Headstone Scout Group. I was a cub, a scout and a Venture Scout. I made friends and I misbehaved. I learned to camp, make a fire, climb a hill, clean my shoes, paddle a canoe, chop wood, make plaster-casts of animal tracks, sharpen a knife, read a map, ride a horse and cook a meal. I learned to lead, be led, and play British Bulldog. It was brilliant.
And we were brilliant. We were better than the 1st Headstone; for Pete’s sake, they wore maroon scarves. And we were way better than the 8th Pinner, who were Sea Scouts. In North London. Seriously?
But the thing that really made us special was Douglas. Douglas was an old Routemaster double-decker bus from the Isle of Man that took us, with Pete Reynolds or John Hodges driving and John Willock keeping order, to Great Torrington and Wadenhoe, to Youlbury, Chalfont Heights and Tolmers, all the places of my childhood.
The great thing about a bus is that you’re all in it together. A bus can carry a whole community. Everyone has a spot and there can be twenty different conversations going on at once, but you’re all headed in the same direction, and everyone outside can see where you’re going.
Knowing where their community was going, and travelling together was really important to the first Christians. They wanted to be distinctive, to show how God had worked in them and what made them different, so they shared everything they had and took care of one another. According to the book of Acts, ‘There was no needy person among them’.
There are, on the other hand, still plenty of needy people among us: so this week it’s fantastic to see people all over Britain doing something of what the early Christians did: sharing what they have and taking care of each other, through Children in Need.
So, whether you phone in a donation on Friday night, organize a local event, or even bid for a vintage bus trip with a, er, mystery driver… think about the community you’d like to be part of. I reckon it’s a great opportunity to show what direction we want to be travelling in.
I sometimes think that everything I ever learned that has been any earthly use to me, I learned through scouting.