‘It was a season that we are so grateful for’

The Day of Pentecost was disruptive to say the least! And a sweeping move of God in one Scottish church produced similar challenges for leaders Kevin and Margaret Peat Chris Rolfe found out more

Kevin and Margaret, you experienced a move of the Spirit at Glasgow Elim in the 90s. Tell us how that started.

Kevin: It was early 1994, around the time of the so-called Toronto Blessing. Margaret and I were “small p” Pentecostals who liked everything quiet and in order, so what was happening sounded strange to us, but we tried to be open to the Spirit.

At the start of that year, I felt God ask me to invite Dave Campbell to speak at our church. Then I read an article in Direction about his church and an outbreak of the Spirit where people were laughing, shaking and crying. My first thought was to cancel him because I didn’t want any thing flaky in our church, but Margaret said if I believed God had told me to invite him we should go with it.

What happened when Dave came to speak?

Margaret: At the end of the meeting he invited the leaders and their wives out for prayer. I was standing at the back and was very happy to be there because I wasn’t sure about all of this.

When the other wives went forward I was reticent to go, but I thought people would wonder why if I didn’t.

Then Dave prayed for me and the power of God shot through me. I fell to the floor. I felt like I was with God and it was wonderful.

After that I felt God all the time. I was waking up in the night and could feel his presence. I had an amazing thirst for reading the Bible and worship.

Kevin: Margaret was on fire! She had been very much behind the scenes, organising the church, then suddenly she shot forward in terms of ministry and began having words of knowledge and prophecy. It was so obvious she’d really encountered God.

I felt a huge responsibility to God and to the church, so although I was blessed, I was more consumed by that to start with. It was about a year into things where God really began to touch my heart in a powerful way, but that delay seemed to help those who were concerned with what was taking place. God obviously knew what he was doing!

How did you lead your church as the Spirit was moving in this new way?

Kevin: One of the things I learned almost immediately was that any move of God needs to be pastored because people react differently. You have some who are lightning rods and others who are more thoughtful, who want to understand what’s going on. I had people who wanted more meetings with the Holy Spirit and others saying we were going to wreck the church and asking when we were going back to normal.

God gave me a word from Genesis 2:10-14 which talks about different tributaries in the same river and I tried to teach this to the church. For some people this move of the Spirit was like a wave they were surfing; for others it was more like a brook they were dipping their feet in. We tried to emphasise: if you’re in the rapids, don’t judge people who are in the brook, and vice versa.

Margaret: We had four different meetings: a Sunday night service which people brought their friends to; a Sunday morning service with a longer worship time; a Saturday night service which local people outside our church started to come to, and an intercession meeting on a Wednesday night, which was the ‘swimming-in-the- river’ meeting. We pitched these meetings at different levels and invited people to come to the ones they were comfortable with.

Kevin: We also met with people so they could share their concerns. I encouraged them to look for the fruit rather than at the manifestations and see if lives were being changed. Margaret suggested we collect testimonies from people who’d had life-changing experiences and we put together a very simple booklet with about 150 stories to help people understand what was going on.

These were from people who said they’d never loved Jesus as much as they did now, for example, or had been healed from physical and sexual abuse. When we were talking things through with people who were sceptical, we’d ask would the devil make people fall in love with Jesus or get free of the pain of yesterday like this?

Margaret: We tried to value people who were uncomfortable and talk about how people are wired differently. We explained we needed everybody and tried to help people feel valued through this time of transition.

A lot of churches were saying, “Just dive in and don’t worry about people who aren’t into this.” But we loved our church and wanted to take everybody with us. We understood those who were struggling. Even though we’d been radically affected we didn’t want to leave them but to help them to experience God in their own way.

Can you give us an example of how the Holy Spirit was moving in your church?

Kevin: There was one week when I was trying to lead us into communion. People were falling off their chairs as the Spirit moved, but I was convinced I had to lead communion. I asked the worship leader to make the music more worshipful, but he fell backwards and I lost the whole worship team on the floor.

Then, I thought I’d get the deacons to come forward, but they all fell on the floor too. So then I thought, “Let’s go for the back row,” where the newcomers and the unchurched were. I invited some of them to come forward and they fell over too.

I was still thinking I had to have communion, so I decided to do it myself.

But then all the deacons on the floor started to laugh. I finally said, “Folks, I don’t think God will fall off his throne if we don’t have communion today.” Everybody applauded!

We moved the chairs to the side, prayed for everybody and around 230 people were slain in the Spirit. That only happened once, but I think God was challenging me, is it my church or yours?

How did this decade impact the rest of your ministry?

Kevin: It was a phenomenal season that we are so grateful for. I went on to become Regional Leader for Scotland and the North West and I could never have done this unless God had helped me w th some of my deep-seated issues with fatherlessness, orphan- hearted behaviour and anxiety.

For me, it wasn’t so much about the manifestations as God’s deep heart searching. I was ministering on the front stage but God wanted to go backstage in me and help me there. I had to do a lot of forgiving of people who had hurt me, then I was able to move on and take on more responsibility.

When you take on a higher level of leadership you get a lot of attacks and criticism. This healing made such a difference because I could keep returning when I’d been attacked; I was able to go back to the father heart of God when I felt fearful and anxious. To soak in the Father’s love as a way of dealing with this stuff was how I could go back into the battle.

Margaret: I don’t think we could have done what we did without it. We got the opportunity to travel and preach around the world, but for me safety, security and certainty is really important. So when we were speaking and moving, speaking and moving, I could get back at night and step back into God wherever I was and whatever was happening.

I would come back to his workshop, as it were, and get what I needed. When you’re branching out and tapping into things you’ve not done before it’s a real challenge, but I was able to survive and enjoy that because I always had a safe place to return to.

What are your final impressions of that time?

Kevin: I think I speak for both of us when I say if I could live a decade of my life again, it would be that time! Those ten years were the most exciting, fulfilling times and we couldn’t believe the blessings, favour and doors that opened to preach around the world.

I can’t emphasise this enough – we went into this reluctantly and didn’t do anything. We just trusted God to take us on a journey. It was the most amazing, brilliant season of our lives, and now we both echo those famous words: “More Lord!”

This article first appeared in the May 2023 edition of Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

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