The New Rainbow

On the home front, interesting developments were taking place. When I had been on the ship recently, the person that had originally put us in touch with my landlady in London had some concerns about me still living there. My landlady was not the happiest person in the world. Granted, she had a lot of health issues. But the atmosphere in the house tended to be rather gloomy. I usually worked as much as I could and found things to do on my days off. So I didn’t spend too much time there.

Other people would come to stay from time to time and when I got back, there was a family living there. When they weren’t around, my landlady would gossip about them, complaining about this and that. I felt like I needed to let them know what she was doing. Maybe there were things that needed to be addressed and they could work it out. When I told them, they told me that she was also complaining to them about me! That’s when I realized why the person on the ship was concerned about me still living there.

The problem was that I had no idea where I could go. London is so expensive and my rent was so affordable. I didn’t really have any options. Then the family told me about a church that they were going to in another part of London not too far away called Finsbury Park. I decided to go. The church was called The New Rainbow because they met in an old theatre called The Rainbow which used to be a famous seventies music venue. 

The church had a vision to fix the place up into a multi-faceted ministry center. They also had other buildings scattered around nearby. There was a building where they had their offices, in another they ran a school and in yet another, in a five-story building just down from the theatre, they rented out rooms to people from the church! 

I made inquiries and they rented me a spot on the top floor. It was a large converted attic room with a couple of beds, closets, dressers and sinks. From time to time they would put another person in there with me but most of the time I was by myself, which was just fine by me.

There was a big common area on the bottom floor which included a kitchen/dining room and a place to relax. There were a variety of other people living there, including a family with a girl about ten who was a bit off. She was very affectionate, always trying to hug me and hold on whenever she saw me. I very quickly learned the art of avoiding her. Again, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time at home and when I did, I spent very little time outside my room, usually just to get something to eat.

I very much enjoyed the church. It had a lot of similarities to my YWAM upbringing so I was very comfortable. They also had what are called home groups where people met in smaller groups at people’s houses during the week. It’s hard to get to know people in a Sunday morning setting so the home groups provide that kind of context and a way to grow together and care for one another better. I joined one of the home groups run by a young couple.

The church also had a fledgling video production branch housed in one part of the theatre. My home group leader ran it. So I began to consider joining the team. The problem was that it wasn’t a paid position. What they were doing was living on the dole until they made enough to pay themselves. I thought that was a bit dodgy so I backed away from getting involved.

The church met in the main auditorium of the theatre, which was rather run down and cavernous. As it got colder, they brought in those huge, heavy-duty propane heaters that made a tremendous racket like jet engines. But the music drowned out the heater noise and the sound system gave the speaker enough volume to hear over them. After a while, you didn’t even notice.