Our Story

My wife Dorothy and I met each other back in the early 1970s while nursing. She was born in Kilkenny in the Republic of Ireland and was training in Dublin. I was born in Belfast and commenced my training there, around the time of the outbreak of civil unrest in 1969.

​

Not long before we were married, we both had a radical encounter with the Holy Spirit, as the Charismatic Renewal Movement swept right across Ireland. This drew Protestants and Catholics together in what was up to then, an unthinkable way. We were brought up in evangelical Protestant homes within a divided society, Catholic and Protestant – with different schools, language, music, sports, and culture – each believing that God had nothing to do with the “other side”. The Renewal Movement changed that for many thousands of us, as God poured out His Spirit on both “sides”!

​

In the late 1970s, we sensed that God was asking us to lay our nursing profession pursuits aside and to join the staff of an international evangelism and discipleship organisation, working within the health fields of the world – Healthcare Christian Fellowship. We headed up that work for 7 years in Ireland, followed by 5 years in the Netherlands, where I was the European Prayer Coordinator.  Towards the end of that time, we felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to return to Ireland and become part of a residential community for reconciliation called the Christian Renewal Centre, in Rostrevor - situated close to the border between the ‘north’ and the ‘south’. It began in 1974 under the leadership of the Rev. Cecil and Myrtle Kerr. Dorothy worked alongside other Community Members and short-term helpers to oversee the daily running of the Centre. I became the Prayer Coordinator and shortly afterwards joined the leadership team.

With the Kerr’s retiring in 2002, we took over the leadership role, which we remained in until June 2010, when we left to pursue a new leading of God in the ministry which we have called – “Dignity Restored.”

​

Harry continues: 

​

A few years into our time at the Centre, I had an encounter with God that was to radically affect my life, even to this day. It all began with a God-given dream - something I had never experienced before.  

​

The Dream …

​

It was a very vivid, full-colour movie picture of a beaver’s dam. To the left of it, the ground was dry and barren, with only a few trickles of water filtering through which enabled the growth of some vegetation. On the right of the dam, a large volume of water was being retained. I could see people on the dam itself, trying to dismantle it. I had a strong sense that they knew the water needed to be released so that it could flow across the barren ground. I was equally aware they were, by and large, not being very successful. 

​

I was then taken down under the retained water to its foundations. There I saw a large log lying across the full length of it, with the words “The Ulster Covenant” written on it. I then heard a voice speaking to me, “If you want to see this water flow out across the land, then you must remove the log in the foundations of this dam.” The “you” mentioned here had both a personal and wider corporate dimension to it. 

​

I quote from the Introduction, to what eventually became the book - “Heal Not Lightly.” (Pub. 2002)

​

“… having had such a vivid image, I was unable to quickly brush it off … 

​

The context of that vision is clearly the Ulster Covenant and the Home Rule Bill of 1912, and I now know that the water in that picture is the River of God (mentioned in Ezekiel 47, John 15 and Revelation 22) – the Holy Spirit – and that God longs for the day when the current Church leadership in the Presbyterian, Church of Ireland and Methodist Churches (along with the Congregationalist, Reformed Presbyterian and Baptist Churches, whose endorsements of it I found during my research) identify with the wrong actions of their forefathers in putting the Covenant in place and dismantle it through repentance, thus enabling a mighty torrent of the Holy Spirit to flow…

​

I am totally convinced that my forefathers’ response to the Home Rule Bill was wrong.  It may have been a different time in history, politically and spiritually, but in retrospect, I believe that they were wrong.  Their actions have had devastating consequences in Ireland and for our generation, since the late 1960’s. Rick Joyner reiterates this in his booklet, “Overcoming the Accuser” … “The church has had a long history of trying to bring the kingdom of God on earth by might and power, without the Spirit.  But the Lord stated: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:5).  Even if we are trying to accomplish the right goal if it is not done by the Holy Spirit we will end up wounding instead of healing, bringing further division instead of reconciliation.” (Page 58. Para 1)

​

The plot thickens …

​

Do you ever feel that God is working out something in the circumstances of your life, way beyond anything you could ever imagine or think, that He is in a sense, “setting you up”?

​

When I decided to do a web-based study course in 2004, with the International Reconciliation Coalition, based in Ventura, California I could never have dreamt of its outcome. One of the last questions to be answered before going on a week-long residential in Ventura went something like this – “Is there a people group, outside of your people group and outside of your country, that you need to reach out to in reconciliation?” I initially thought of the Irish Catholic Diaspora in America, which came about because of the 1845 Potato Famine in Ireland. As I started to research my answer, I came across the diaspora of the Ulster-Scots and several issues related to the genocidal actions of Andrew Jackson (the 7th President of the United States), whose family came from Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim and The Trail of Tears. To my surprise I started to weep and along with this was a strong sense that it was somehow or other connected to the research I was doing on the Ulster Covenant. During my visit to Ventura and on subsequent visits to America, I met with both White and Native Americans, God was confirming within me that I was being connected to reconciliation issues among these two groups. Hence this website and a long research journey for my second book – “A Destiny Denied… A Dignity Restored.” published in 2019.

​

The Link ….

​

It became increasingly clear to me that aspects of theology related to covenant, which were developed in Scotland in the 17th century by the Covenanters, and then brought to Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster (to be resurrected by the Presbyterian Church in 1912), were taken by them as the Scotch-Irish to America in the early 18th century. Equally so, was the thinking that could enable Cromwell to justify the persecution of Roman Catholics in Ireland. It was also ‘exported’ to America in the mid-17th century. Both had devastating consequences on the Native American population as they were killed and removed from their lands. This is, I know rather simplistic overview – there are many other overlapping factors, but this was sufficient to connect me into something that I now clearly know to be on God’s heart for both the Native and White Americans as well as the people of the UK and Ireland. The reality is, that all of us have had, to varying degrees, our destinies denied by sin and circumstances. God is in the business of wanting to restore our destinies in Him, as individuals, as the Church and as nations.

​

Back to Belfast…  

​

That second book was researched and written over an approximately nine-year period after leaving the CRC and returning to Belfast in June 2010. During that time much of what I had previously carried in prayer for Ireland was put on hold by God. It was during a trip in April 2017, to a conference on a Native American Reservation in North Dakota, that He began restoring to me what has become a new chapter in my journey regarding Ireland.

​

The root system…

​

In the Autumn of 2019, before the Covid Pandemic lockdown a friend of mine - Margaret Clarke (a member of the Transformations Ireland leadership team) – asked me about the image of the log, in the dream I had had many years before regarding the Beaver’s Dam and the Ulster Covenant. She pointed out that the log had originally come from a tree and then asked if I had any thoughts regarding the nature of the tree and its root system. As I prayed about this, I began to realise that for the years of research for my book “A Destiny Denied… A Dignity Restored”, I had inadvertently been researching into the same tree and its root system! 

​

So, throughout lockdown, I began joining up the dots of my journey recorded in my first two books. How, in the early stages of the development of the Doctrine of Discovery the English Crown and Catholic Church had introduced the Empire spirit into Ireland. As that was eventually to traverse the Reformation, sectarianism was introduced into the dynamics. The Ulster and Sinn Fein Covenants of 1912 & 1916 followed by the Civil War, Partition and what became known as the “Troubles” are but branches in the greater tree. 

​

That journey has culminated in the writing of a much smaller booklet – “A Tree has Roots”. In it, I point out how that Empire spirit has influenced both communities here in Ireland. Understanding that has the potential of bringing about a dynamic change in the narrative. In the words of St. Paul, “Our battle is not against flesh and blood” – us v them – yet that is what we have been doing for centuries! My appeal to the Church in Ireland is for us to “seek first the Kingdom of God” instead of bowing the knee to Irish Catholic or Ulster Protestant Unionist Nationalism. Both are expressions of idolatry.

​

The way ahead…

​

I know what God has put on my heart. That is to see the Church in this land embrace the message of “A Tree has Roots”. That is a huge challenge as currently so much of the Church is held in the grip of the Empire spirit I speak about in the book. Revelation by the Holy Spirit is paramount for the leadership of the Church to rise up with a prophetic insight and apostolic calling to the whole of Ireland. We have not experienced that since the early Celtic Church as it was led by St. Patrick and his successors.

​

​

​

​