Book review by Ian Murphy. Stuart Patterson and Stephen both serve as football chaplains:
Scotland’s drug abuse epidemic has been back in the headlines recently. Stuart Patterson is someone who escaped it - but only because of God’s intervention. Completing the Tenner tells of his story, from growing up in Easterhouse in the East End of Glasgow, through heroin addiction, and recovery thanks to the Christian charity Teen Challenge.
The story rests on a phone call his mother receives when Stuart is visiting her, trying to complete the tenner (borrow enough money to pay for his next fix). The man on the other end of the line asks to put Stuart on. He’s a Christian minister, and he is able to persuade Stuart to enrol in a rehab programme. Soon he is on an overnight coach to a retreat in Wales where he is able to kick his drug habit, and begin the journey of conversion that eventually leads him into the ministry himself.
There are some great reminiscences about his childhood in Glasgow, the gang wars and drug culture. My only criticism is the book’s length: some of the early chapters - interesting as they are - could be abridged somewhat. There are really two books here: a childhood memoir and a conversion testimony. But the narrative really takes off with that phone call.
The book does owe a debt to the seminal work, The Cross and the Switchblade, about David Wilkerson’s ministry in New York a generation earlier. In fact, the Teen Challenge mission, which rescued Stuart, sprang from it!
This is a story of the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ reaching into the darkest and most desperate of circumstances. It proves that there is no one who is too far gone to receive God’s saving grace! I would recommend this book to anyone who is struggling with addiction.
