Called Out: The Story of a Backslidden Christian.

By Dave Clemo

I started writing this book twenty years ago. It begins in 1950s Cornwall. I was sent to Sunday School every week and loved it. I stopped going when we moved to London in 1962. I was thirteen. Apart from the time that an evangelist told me about Jesus and I prayed the prayer, I spent the next 20 years swearing to god I was an atheist.
I became a Christian in 1990 and for the next fifteen years or so used my God-given musical talent to sing songs, preach and lead worship. By 2005 I was burnt out and damaged by my experiences and no longer went to church.
In recent years my faith has returned but not my desire to return to 'the fold'. My book explores the reasons behind my decision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Clemo
• Release date: Apr 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463894194

Dave Clemo

Dave was born almost exactly halfway through the last century. His first home was a beach chalet in Cornwall, England. The plain wooden shack had none of the things we take for granted like electricity, sewage or running water. Cornwall in the 1950s had no TV and only two BBC radio stations, so he had very limited exposure to popular music. He was seven when Elvis and Cliff Richard hit the charts. His family moved to West London in 1962. He was given a guitar for Christmas and spent the next few years trying to play it.In 1967 the area around Ladbroke Grove was the epicentre of the underground music scene that shook the music business like an earthquake. During that late 60s and early 70s he went to a host of gigs and saw groups like Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Who, Jethro Tull and Genesis in their earliest incarnations before they became global superstars.He also spent the next few years trying to emulate his heroes using clapped out and home made guitars and amplifiers before moving to Northampton in 1974. For the next ten years he played in two of the most successful local bands. He wrote his first songs in the late sixties but his writing took off when he became a Christian in 1990. Since then he has had over 100 songs published, has contributed articles for magazines, written and delivered dozens of sermons and was a regular contributor to a 'one minute thought for today' on local radio. He has recorded and released over ten albums of mostly self penned songs, played pubs, concerts and festivals across the UK on guitar, mandolin and bass.From 2009 a series of health issues has meant that Dave was unable to play at the same frequency as before so he has used the time to turn his writings and research into a series of autobiographical books.The first volume ‘Too Young for Rock and Roll’ was published in June 2018.‘A highly recommended read not only for fans of grass roots music but also for those wishing to experience a flavour of those times.’ Pulse Alternative Magazine.

Book preview

CALLED OUT

The story of a backslidden Christian

Dave Clemo

Text Copyright © Dave Clemo 2019

Dave Clemo has asserted his right in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

Dave's songs are registered with the PRS and CCLI.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible: New International Version (NIV). Copyright 1973, 1974, 1984 by International Bible Society.

All rights reserved.

Published by Dave Clemo on Smashwords.

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

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Contents.

Dedication

In my darkest hour

Introduction from 1999

Reputation none

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

God is still good

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

The Kingdom will come

Chapter Nine

Sinner

Dark Night of the Soul

He used to be a Preacher

Chapter Ten

I walked into Church Today

You are mine

About the author

Review of Too Young for Rock and Roll

Review of Too Old for Punk

Dedication

To all my fellow pilgrims who walk a lonely path.

For Sue

In my darkest hour.

In my darkest hour

Far away from home

I know I will never be alone.

He is close to me

Everywhere I go

I know I will never be alone.

The earth may shake

The waves may break

Upon my rock of faith.

I can be strong

To carry on

With Jesus as my saviour

In my darkest hour

Far away from home

I know I will never be alone.

Dave Clemo 1990

Introduction from 1999.

The tapestry maker takes different strands of coloured silks and with great skill and vision creates a beautiful work. It is designed to be viewed from one side only. Only the tapestry maker knows about the loose ends, snags and tangles that disfigure the reverse. As we look upon the finished article, the tapestry maker may be all too aware of the areas of the picture that may not be quite up to standard.

I started this book in 1999 in an attempt to express my thoughts, my experiences, and my testimony. My research took me far and wide. I have quoted from books and speakers that have influenced me, and throughout I have looked to see what scripture tells us.

Long ago the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote ‘There is nothing new under the sun’ (Ecc 1 v 9 NIV), and perhaps there is nothing new in this book. All I know is that I was called to write these words down.

Like the tapestry maker revealing his work up to public scrutiny, I hope that the picture shines through the snags and tangles.

Dave Clemo December 1999.

Some people say that I think too much. I reply that some people think too little, or not at all.

Dave Clemo April 2019.

Reputation none.

I am a man of reputation none,

And if I boast of anything,

I boast of what my Lord has done.

I thank my Lord for His amazing grace

And shine for Him until the day

I meet Him face to face.

I am no superman I have no wings;

I do the best I that I can do,

Despising not the little things.

My Lord gives me the strength

To face each day.

I thank Him for my every breath

Each time I stop to pray.

Don’t care much ‘bout

Looking good on my CV;

I only care ‘bout shining for

The one who gave His life for me.

I’ll gladly be a fool for Jesus Christ;

Who cared enough for me

To pay the final sacrifice.

Dave Clemo February 2004

Chapter One.

I suppose you could say that I’m from a church damaged family. My mother was born in 1927 but was orphaned when she was 8 or 9. She was raised in an orphanage run by nuns and she experienced the worst of religion, the hardship and abuse and downright hatred perpetrated upon vulnerable children in the name of God.

My father was born in Devonport, Plymouth in 1928, during the depression. I was told that my paternal grandfather was a drunken hell raiser who’d rather fight than eat, which is just as well as he often went hungry because there wasn’t enough to go around.

During the early Thirties he got saved and joined the Plymouth Brethren, a strict Christian sect. I was told that he had a notice board outside their house with ‘Repent and be saved’ type Bible slogans on it.

My Mum and Dad met when she was working as a Land Army girl in a village near Goldsithney, close to Marazion in Cornwall where Dad was living. They courted, fell in love and were married in 1949. After living with my grandparents for a couple of months, they then moved into a bed-sitter in Penzance, and then spent several years in primitive beach chalets on Hayle Towans until their names came to the top of the council housing list.

I was born in December 1949. Not surprisingly both my mum and dad had had enough of religion when they were growing up and vowed that when they had children of their own they wouldn't have them christened (gasp!) and they'd teach their children bible truths but allow them to make their own minds up.

True to their word I was never christened, despite pressure from friends, family and neighbours. My sisters Judy (born in 1951) and Shirley (1954) and my brother Richard (1957) weren’t christened either, but my parents still sent us all to the Sunday school at the Bible Christian Methodist Church along the road. I expect this was to get us out from under their feet more than anything.

My mum said that the house was built on the site of an abattoir and as a result the house was infested with fleas in warm weather. Trevithick Estate sits on a hill above the town of Hayle and it was a considerable walk down to the shops, school or station for a young chap like me.

My earliest memories were of living in a beach chalet on Hayle Towans, so it was something else to move into a house with an inside toilet instead of living in a large shed with outside chemical loo! My parents wanted to live in Marazion or Penzance, closer to Dad’s work and family, but such was the shortage of housing in the immediate post-war years that when this council house was offered to them it was ‘take it or go to the back of the queue’. They took it.

It was seven miles from our beach chalet on the Towans to where Dad was based at Long Rock Engine Shed. He was a fireman on the railway, and his shifts could start at any time of the day or night, so he got hold of a clapped out bicycle to cycle to and from work. In the near blackout conditions following the war, there were no streetlights on the Towans, so Dad counted the telegraph poles by the side of the road by the light of the moon and stars as he hurtled down the hill to the dockside. At the appropriate pole he turned left and bumped his way down the steep steps to the bottom.

One very dark night he mis-counted the poles, turned sharp left and launched out into space! He fell twenty or thirty feet, but he picked himself up, straightened the frames and wheels of the boneshaker and carried on to work, bruises and all. There was no such thing as sick pay for footplate staff. Indeed, it was a constant bone of contention. In the late 70s my sister-in-law walked into a clerical job on British Railways, complete with sick pay, non contributory pension, etc yet my Dad, with over 30 years service on the footplate had only recently become entitled to sick leave.

Hayle was a strange town in the 50s. At a time when trainloads of tourists and holidaymakers flocked to St Ives, there was on the other side of the bay this semi-industrialised seaside town boasting ‘three miles of golden sands’, plus a coal powered electricity generating station and a chemical works served by a regular supply of inshore cargo boats. The A30 snaked its way through the town from Copperhouse (named after the first copper smelting works in Cornwall), past the regatta pool, a great tidal basin that could be dammed to create a huge seawater lake. When the sand bar protecting the mouth of the River Hayle threatened to restrict the entry into Hayle harbour to all but the smallest vessels, the sluice gates holding back the contents of the pools were opened and a tidal wave-like rush of water scoured the sandbank clean.

Although I don't remember it, my mother told me that my sister Judy and I went missing one afternoon while we were still living on the Towans. After a frantic search she saw us down by the water's edge. She raced down to where we were paddling in the water and snatched us both, just as the sluices were opened and the water level rose as countless millions of gallons of water rushed by. I would have been about three and my sister eighteen months old.

The main A30 road passed the harbour, which was still very busy in those days and then looped under the railway viaduct twice before continuing on towards Penzance and Lands End. The railway station was up a steep road just off the Foundry Square, and I spent many hours watching the trains cross the viaduct, pass through the station and then up the line towards Camborne, Plymouth and another world. In the distance the branch line to St Ives could be seen, and if the wind was in the right direction on summer Saturdays I could hear the sound of the tank engines as they struggled with twelve coaches packed full of holidaymakers on their way to the seaside.

My father was a fireman based at Penzance, and it was the rule that promotion to engine driver meant a move to another depot. The nearest to us was Truro, half a county away, so my parents decided that Dad would move to Old Oak Common Shed in West London. This was in 1959 when the first diesel locomotives were being introduced and my parents had a premonition that the railway would soon be cut back to the bone and the branch lines closed. From 1959 to 1962 my dad lodged in the Hostel next to the Engine Shed, coming home as and when his shift pattern allowed. Many times during those long summer holidays the station platform staff taunted me, saying that my Dad wasn't any good as a fireman because he could only make white smoke and not black smoke like all the others. When I saw my Dad get off the train I would be red faced and indignant, telling him what they said, and all the time oblivious to the winks exchanged between the work mates!

When I visited Hayle station a few years ago it was hard to visualize the bustling station of the 1950s. The station buildings had been demolished, including the unique signal box that was perched above the up platform. All the sidings had been removed, including the line to the harbour. I stood on the platform end and looked towards the St Ives branch line and watched the three coach diesel multiple unit train as it made its way along the shore. The small plantation of trees still swayed in the breeze below the wall where we stood. Do small boys still perch in those branches and play at Cowboys and Indians as I did all those years ago?

We walked up the trackbed of the branch line from the wharf to the former junction with the main line. The granite overbridge that seemed so huge to me all those years ago had shrunk, and I tried to explain to Sue where the stables once stood. The sidings on the quayside were too curved for steam engines to traverse; so two large horses pulled the wagons along the tracks. They made a wonderful sight as they were exercised along the roads each day. When the horses were retired and the stables closed the event featured on the local news. We sat and watched it on our brand new TV set. I looked for traces of the stables but all that remained was an old 5 bar gate on to the lane.

I think there were three big Methodist Chapels in Hayle. One was in Copperhouse, up a side street from the Passmore Edwards Library and Institute. I went to Cubs in their church hall. There was another Chapel in Foundry Square. I remember once taking part in a school nativity play in the church hall. (I was about eight and had to read a lesson). I squirmed when the teacher slapped lipstick and rouge on my face, and I remember being glad that it was dark as I walked up the hill towards home. At least no one could see my red lips and rosy cheeks! I also remember sitting in the balcony in the Chapel one Sunday when our Sunday school trooped down the hill to join the other church for Harvest Festival. My overriding memory is of boredom and how hard the seats were.

The third Chapel was the Bible Christian Methodist Chapel in High Lanes, just along from our house. For many years I wondered why such a large (in my eyes) Chapel was built so far from town (or why a town of only 6000 people needed so many chapels). This chapel was built by one of the many branches of Methodism and was established at a time when the mines were still working. Wheal Alfred mine was situated about a mile away at the other end of the lane and several hundred miners and their families lived within the shadow of its chimney stacks. Nowadays there’s no trace that anyone lived there at all. When the mines were closed everything was demolished except the huge cathedral-like granite winding houses and the local chapels.

One recent summer we toured Cornwall and were amazed at how many large church buildings could be found in even the smallest village. There’s a joke about why there are two chapels in every Welsh village- one you go to, the other is the one you don’t go to!

I don’t remember the name of our Sunday school teacher. I expect I forgot it the moment we left Hayle for the bright lights of London. One thing is certain though, I will never forget his example and his teaching, and although I may have ignored or disobeyed everything I was taught, something of what I learnt from Sunday school stayed with me all through my rebel years. When I meet him in heaven I will thank him for the influence he had on my early life.

In 1961 I passed my 11-plus exams, which meant a daily train journey to school in Penzance. I went down to the station to catch the 8.20 train to Penzance, and then walked up the hill to Humphrey Davy Grammar School. The post war baby boom brought a huge increase in school numbers. Our classroom was in one of the many prefabs that were brought in as a temporary measure. When my son Chris started school in the late 1980s he too had many of his lessons in a mobile classroom. Nothing changes.

The routine at Penpol Primary School and Humphrey Davy Grammar School included daily morning assembly. Singing a hymn and reciting the Lord's Prayer each day was just something we all did. I knew the Lord's Prayer by heart, even if I didn’t understand the implications of what I was praying. Even now I still recite the AV version with the ‘thee’s’ and ‘thy’s, which is strange coming from someone who was anti- religious and preferred the NIV version of the Bible.

One afternoon the whole school trooped off to a local Anglican Church for a service. Once again I don't remember too much except that the speaker droned on and on and that the choir stalls were more ornate but just as uncomfortable as those in the Methodist chapel.

It was fun getting the train to and from school, except for the time that the guard caught two of us fighting in a compartment on the way home. He threw us off the train at St Erth and we had to walk from there. Not only did I get it from the Guard, I was in trouble with my mother when I got home and again when my Dad got to hear about it! My parents were of the opinion that if I got caught doing anything wrong they would support the authority in whatever action they saw fit. So when I got caught stealing apples, or pop bottles, or vandalising the new school building I knew that I’d done wrong because my legs hurt after being slapped. It’s a shame that modern parenting methods seem to teach our children that they can get away with anything up to and including murder.

Over the winter of 1961/2 I began to get an intense pain in my left shin. At times the pain was so unbearable I rolled around the floor. Our GP wasn't a lot of help until my mother’s persistence forced him to make an appointment for me at the hospital in Penzance. When my leg was X-rayed the reason for the pain became clear. I had an infection of the bone that needed an operation (these days it's cured with antibiotics). I had to use crutches for three months and it was strange learning how to walk again. While I was recovering we left Hayle and moved to Barlby Gardens, North Kensington, London W.10.

I lost that entire summer term through illness. When I applied for a place at St Clement Danes Grammar School and was interviewed by the headmaster on the first day of the autumn 1962 term, it soon became clear that I would not be able to make up the lost time. So I started again in the first year. There were four classes in each year, streamed according to ability. At the end of the first term, I was moved to the top stream. (I’d already done the coursework the previous year, so the exams were a doddle!) From that moment on I struggled to keep up, but when I took my GCE O Levels at the end of the fourth year instead of the fifth, I’d actually caught up with students of my own age.

All that lay in the future as we settled into our new home. It was a three bedroom, red brick and pebbledash end of terrace house in a leafy cul-de-sac off Ladbroke Grove. The houses were owned by the railway and rented out to railway staff. Our neighbours were engine drivers, firemen and guards. There were railway sidings behind the house, and beyond the large goods shed the main lines that led into Paddington Station.

My son and I recently revisited my old house. The goods shed and sidings