Author: David Petts

My Story Talk 15 Ministry at Colchester 1962-68 Part 3

Welcome to Talk 15 in our series where I am reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Today is the final talk about our ministry in Colchester between 1962 and 1968. These were the first few years of our married life and so far I have shared with you about the birth of our first two children, our housing, employment, holidays and transport.

We have talked about the growth of the church and the reasons for it, testified to an outstanding miracle, explained how I got to know more about Assemblies of God, and how God called me to give up my teaching job and go into full-time ministry.

Today I’ll be sharing first how this led me into a wider ministry, and concluding with two important lessons I felt God was beginning to teach me.

A wider ministry – the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship

If I had thought initially that God’s purpose in leading me into full-time ministry was just so that I could give more time to the local church, I was soon to learn otherwise. It certainly did that, but I soon began to receive invitations to preach in churches at weekend conventions, and, more significantly, to speak in Coleford at a National Day School Teachers’ Conference on the relevance of the baptism in the Holy Spirit in day school teaching today.

It was there I met members of the AoG Home Missions Council and the National Youth Council who, if I remember correctly, had jointly organised the conference. The invitation came, no doubt, not only because I was a pastor who had until recently been a schoolteacher, but also because of my ministry in praying for people to receive the baptism and my role in the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship.

I have already mentioned how, while I was at Oxford, I was asked to share my testimony at the AoG National Youth Rally held in the Birmingham Town Hall and to contribute an article in Redemption Tidings entitled Pentecost in Oxford University. So I was by no means unknown in the wider fellowship, and it was probably not surprising that, when Richard Bolt resigned as Travelling Secretary of the SPF, I should be asked to take over his role of visiting colleges and universities, preaching and praying for students to be filled with the Spirit, which of course would not have been possible if I had remained in school teaching.

Universities where I conducted meetings on those early SPF travels included Oxford, Cambridge, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, Durham, and Newcastle. Later, after I had left Colchester, I also preached in the University of Louvain (Leuven) in Belgium, and in 1972 in the majority of universities in the state of Illinois.

The purpose of all these meetings was to tell people about the baptism in the Spirit, explain why it was biblical, and to pray for them to receive as I laid hands on them at the close of the gathering. Among the many who received were the chaplain of Queen’s College, Cambridge, and William Kay a student at Trinity College, Oxford, who had come to Christ at a Billy Graham meeting in London.

Valentine Cunningham, a student at Keble College, and the son of an AoG pastor, invited William to a meeting he had organised where I was to preach on the baptism in the Spirit. After he graduated he became a member of my church in Basingstoke, a close friend, a lecturer at Mattersey Hall Bible College, and a university professor who has contributed much to Pentecostal education around the world.

Val Cunningham went on to become Professor of English at Oxford and was a great help to me when I wrote Be Filled with the Spirit, a booklet published by the SPF, which proved to be the springboard for my ministry as an author.

Other former SPF members who became professors were John Miles and Michael Collins. John, after spending some years as a missionary in Congo became Professor of French at Wheaton, and Michael, after serving as SPF General Secretary, became Professor of Engineering at City University, London.

He was succeeded as SPF General Secretary by Andrew Parfitt, who after spending years in school teaching, became an AoG minister, as did Jeff Clarke who received the baptism under my ministry while he was a student at Oxford, and David Littlewood who received while was a student at Essex.

It is clear from all this that during the course of my lifetime Pentecostals have moved on from being suspicious of higher education to embracing it and playing an active role within it. This will become even clearer when we consider in a later talk the educational developments in our Bible Colleges.

Lessons I learnt at Colchester

Of course, I myself had never been to Bible College. And although I had received excellent teaching from my father and from Leslie Moxham, my pastor at Elm Park Baptist, I had received no formal training for ministry, and back then there was no provision in Assemblies of God for supervision from a more experienced minister. So I was very much learning on the job and was conscious of my need for the guidance, help, and the enabling of the Holy Spirit.

But my experience at Colchester taught me many lessons. The most significant of these was learning to trust God for our needs after I had relinquished my secular employment, which I have already mentioned. But there were two other areas the importance of which I began to understand more clearly. These were:

o   the nature of the ministry God had given me

o   the importance of a balanced theology of healing. 

The nature of the ministry God had given me

In my teens I had been greatly impressed by the ministry of Billy Graham. I had seen thousands of people walk forward in response to his appeals for salvation. Surely this kind of evangelism must be the answer and, when I felt the call to the ministry at the age of 16, I soon began to have dreams of becoming an evangelist.

Later, after I was baptised in the Spirit, I came to see the importance of healing in evangelism and, as I have mentioned previously, was greatly influenced by Richard Bolt who was seeing remarkable healings in his evangelistic crusades.  And at that time the American Pentecostal evangelist T. L. Osborn had made his books on healing available to students free of charge and I had read them avidly.

So I now wanted to be a healing evangelist, a desire which was evident in the two evangelistic and healing missions I conducted at Colchester. And that was why, although I shared with others the responsibility of preaching and teaching on Sunday mornings and midweek Bible Studies, I always did the preaching at the Sunday evening Gospel Service.

But when Harold Womersley, veteran missionary of the Congo Evangelisitc Mission visited us on itinerary, he asked me – purely out of interest, I think – about what I was teaching at our Bible Study meetings. And when I told him that, when it was my turn, I just gave whatever word the Lord had put on my heart, he graciously suggested that as the pastor it was my responsibility the feed the flock by regular and systematic teaching of the truths of God’s word.

This, I think, would have been at about the time that I had given up my school teaching job, and so, taking his words to heart, I set about planning various series of weekly Bible studies, and I discovered that I really enjoyed it and, to my surprise, so did those who came to hear me. It was gradually dawning on me that my primary ministry was not to be evangelism – though I have not been totally unsuccessful in that area – but teaching.

Of course, I had no idea then how that teaching gift would eventually be expressed not only in churches, but also as a Bible College principal and as a writer. But that brings me to another closely related lesson I began to learn at Colchester, the importance of a biblically balanced doctrine of healing.

The importance of a balanced theology of healing

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, ever since my father told me of the healing of my aunt who had been deaf and dumb from birth, I have always believed that God still works miracles of healing today. I grew up with the belief that everyone could be healed if only they had enough faith and that the lack of miracles today was entirely due to lack of faith.

This understanding was confirmed by the teaching of Richard Bolt and the books of T.L.Osborn and was directly related to the doctrine that Jesus died not only for our sins, but for our sicknesses too. We can claim our healing in just the same way as we can claim forgiveness of sins, and all because Jesus died for us. I embraced this teaching wholeheartedly, and that is what I preached.

But my experience as a pastor in Colchester didn’t always seem to confirm this doctrine. It was great when we saw people healed, but what could I say to those who were not? Did I really have to tell them that the reason they were not healed was lack of faith, or that there must be some unconfessed sin in their life? And whereas this might apply in some cases, it surely was not true of all?

I simply could not believe, for example, that when Jack Joliffe was diagnosed with a cancer that first disfigured him and eventually destroyed him, it happened because of lack of faith or some secret sin. I knew him too well. He was a godly man, full of faith, and an elder of our church. It’s all too easy for evangelists to preach these doctrines and then move on, while pastors are left with the care of Christians who have not been healed and have been wounded by the teaching that if they are sick it is somehow their fault.

But it is not my intention in this talk to repeat what I have already said at length elsewhere. My rejection of this view is comprehensively explained in my Ph.D. thesis, Healing and the Atonement, where I argue that, although there is a sense in which healing may rightly be understood to be in the atonement, it is not true to say that Jesus died for our sicknesses in exactly they same way that he died for our sins. I have also explained this in my book Just a Taste of Heaven – a biblical and balanced approach to God’s healing power, which is available from my website www.davidpetts.org.

I simply mention it here because it was at Colchester that I began to question what I had previously believed about healing. Of course, we mustn’t build our doctrine on our experience, but if our experience doesn’t tally with our doctrine it’s always good to consider whether we’ve understood the scriptures correctly.

So I was learning important lessons at Colchester which were to stand me in good stead for the next ten years when we would be pastoring the assembly in Basingstoke. Life is a continuing process of learning and sometimes unlearning, and Basingstoke was no exception. Next time I’ll begin by telling you how we came to move there.

My Story  Talk 14 Ministry in Colchester 1962-68 Part 2

Welcome to Talk 14 in our series where I am reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time we began to talk about the years we spent in Colchester and I shared with you how the church grew during our time there and some of the reasons why.

I finished by saying that I felt the Lord was showing us that the key to growth was to follow the supernatural leading of the Holy Spirit. Miracles happen as he determines and I was certainly not expecting what happened one Saturday evening.

I had gone down to the church at about nine in the evening to attend to a window that would not open. As it was still fairly light, I did not at first turn the lights on. After a few minutes, however, I realised that I needed more light, so I switched them on. I mention this apparently trivial fact because, as it happens, the timing was perfect. Within half a minute someone was knocking at the church door. He later told me that he would not have stopped if he had not seen the light come on just as he approached the church .

The man was in his thirties, well over six feet tall. He stood in the doorway, with tears in his eyes. I recognised him because, although he did not come to church , his grandmother had attended regularly until she died about six months earlier. I had met Billy  at the funeral and had remembered his name.

Come in Billy, I said. What’s the matter?

Then he told me his story. He had gone to work as usual on Friday morning and had worked later than usual doing some overtime. When he arrived home late that evening, he called out to his wife, but Ingrid did not reply. As he could not imagine where she might be, he searched the house looking for her. He found her in the bedroom, on the bed, unconscious, an empty bottle of sleeping tablets  beside her.

Ingrid was rushed into hospital, but they were by no means confident that they would be able to resuscitate her. On Saturday there was no improvement. She was in a coma . By this time Billy  was frantic. He was pacing up and down at home, when suddenly he noticed a photo of his grandmother on the piano. If only she had been still alive! She would have prayed ! So Billy tried to pray , but he just didn’t know what to say. So he jumped on his motorbike and headed for our church . As he approached it, he thought that no one was there and was about to drive past when suddenly the lights came on!

I said to him:

Billy, I’ll tell you why you can’t pray . The Bible says that God’s ear is not deaf so that he cannot hear, but it’s the things we’ve done wrong that have created a barrier between us and God.

I asked him if he had ever asked Jesus  to be his Saviour and to forgive him for the wrong things he’d done, and he said, No. When I asked him if he would like to, he said, Yes, and together we prayed  and asked Jesus to come into his life.

Then I prayed for Ingrid and, as I did so, my prayer turned into a command:

In the name of Jesus, I rebuke this coma and command her to come out of it!

This seemed a strange thing to say, as Ingrid was two miles away in the Essex County Hospital, and even if she had not been in a coma, she would not have been able to hear me at that distance! By then it was half past nine. I told Billy  that Ingrid would be all right, and that he could go home – but as soon as he had gone I found myself doubting.

What will I say to him if his wife dies?

When Billy got home, he thought he would not be able to sleep so he sat down in an armchair. He told us later that at that moment he saw a bright light  and felt a sensation of warmth flow through his body from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. The next thing he knew, it was 9 o’clock on Sunday morning. He rushed into hospital to see how his wife was and was told that she had come out of her coma .

Please, he said, can you tell me exactly when it was?

The nurse consulted the notes and replied:

Yes, it was at exactly half past nine last night.

Billy was able to take her home that afternoon. She too became a Christian and they both became members of our church .

This was by far the greatest miracle we saw while we were at Colchester, but the growth of our church during the time we were there was not primarily due to miracles or our evangelistic and healing missions. It was due, as I have said, to the Lord’s strategy in placing me in a school where I could freely teach the children about Jesus, to his giving me at the same time key people to help start a youth meeting, and to the commitment of people who were prepared to exchange their car for a minibus.

And as the congregation grew due to the influx of young people, adults were attracted to join us – some from other churches, others who had just moved into the area, and others who were baptised in the Spirit through my ministry in the early days of what came to be known as the Charismatic Renewal.

Getting to know Assemblies of God

For the first twenty years of my life I attended a Baptist church and had never even heard of Assemblies of God. Church attendance during the three years I was at Oxford involved going to the Elim church in term time and the AoG in Dagenham during vacations. So, when I accepted the pastorate of the AoG church in Colchester, I had had relatively little experience of AoG, and I am grateful that during our years at Colchester I was able to get to know more of its ministers and how the fellowship functioned at a national level.

I have already mentioned some of the ministers who came to preach at our annual conventions, but we were also blessed by visits from those who came to us on itinerary to tell us of the work they were doing for the Lord, to inspire our faith, and to encourage our support for their particular area of ministry.

These included missionaries like Roy Leeming pioneering a church in Belgium, Colin Blackman representing the Lilian Trasher orphanages in Egypt, Harold Womersley from the Congo Evangelistic Mission, and David Newington from Lifeline to Africa.

We also had visits from Michael Jarvis and Keith Monument. Michael was the AoG National Youth Secretary and Keith the Home Missions Secretary. I was impressed by the passion of these men to win people for Jesus and both were eventually to become good friends for many years. I recently had the privilege of paying a tribute at Keith’s funeral service. Keith was a few weeks short of his 99^th birthday when he died and had travelled over a million miles in Britain during his ministry for Home Missions.

But apart from the visits of such wonderful people, I also got to know AoG better by attending its Annual General Conference and the quarterly meetings of the Essex District Council. It was through the DC meetings that I learned that, if I wanted to become recognised as an AoG minister, I must first apply for Probationary Status. This would last for two years and then I could apply for Full Status. So in 1964, having already been the pastor at Colchester for two years, I applied for Probationary Status.

I’m so glad that the system has since been radically improved and that those who apply for status must now undergo a period as Ministers-in-Training, but back then my eligibility was assessed simply by two ministers coming to hear me preach, after which the only supervision I received was one of them saying, Go on giving them the good Word of God, brother.

After that, I was left to my own devices for two years until in 1966 I was granted Full Status on the basis that my ministry was bearing fruit and was ordained at General Conference held in Clacton in May of that year. And it was during that conference that God clearly spoke to me and told me to give up my teaching job and trust him to provide for our needs.

The call to full-time ministry

When I felt the Lord calling me to the ministry at the age of 16, I naturally assumed that it would be my full-time occupation. And that was certainly the desire of my heart. But when we had started at Colchester the church was so small that they could not possibly pay me an adequate salary and that was why I was school teaching. And even though, by 1966, the church had grown considerably, the weekly offerings amounted to only £11 a week and I needed at least £18 a week to cover all our expenses.

So when, at a Home Missions rally on the opening night of the Assemblies of God conference, pastor Eddie Durham began his sermon by throwing down a motorcycle gauntlet and challenging young men to give their lives full-time to the work of the ministry, I initially reacted by saying to God,

That’s all very well, Lord. But you know that I would love to be full-time, but that simply is not possible at the moment.

But I knew that with God all things are possible, and so I added,

But I’m willing to step out in faith if you will only make it clear that now is the time for me to do so. And if I am to hand in my notice to the school, I will need to know by the end of this conference.

I said this because my contract required that I hand in my notice by the end of May if I were not going to return to school in September. I went back to the conference meetings night after night – I could not be present during the daytime because I was teaching – and all I can say is that in one way or another the Lord spoke to me in every meeting confirming that I should give up my teaching job and trust him to meet our needs.

Of course, I shared all this with Eileen who had not been able to attend the meetings because she was at home looking after the girls, and she readily agreed that I should do whatever I felt the Lord was telling me. We told no one else about this, and when what I felt the Lord was saying was confirmed through spiritual gifts in church the following Sunday morning, I made up my mind that I would ask to see the head master the very next day.

But how do you tell a man who professes to be an atheist that God has spoken to you? Well, you just tell him! And actually he was quite understanding. He just asked if I could consider delaying it for another term so that he could find a replacement. I think I told him, out of courtesy, that I would think about it, but in my heart I felt sure that it would not be necessary. And, sure enough, a few days later he came to me and said that quite unexpectedly he had already found a replacement for September.

When they heard the news that I was leaving, colleagues at work made comments like, David, you must have great faith. To which I replied, Well, it’s not so much a matter of faith as of obedience. I just know it’s what I have to do. And that’s what I told the church the following Sunday morning. I made it clear that I was not looking to the church to meet our needs, but I was trusting the Lord. Some said that they thought I should have consulted them before making the decision, but I replied by explaining that I had not wanted to be influenced by man, but only by what God himself was saying.

Shortly after that, the church held a meeting and discussed what they should do in the circumstances. The outcome was that they decided that they wanted to trust the Lord with me and that from then on they would pay me 75% of whatever came in the offering and they would meet the ongoing needs of the church from the remaining 25%. Of course, Eileen and I were very encouraged by this even though, judging by the level of offerings at the time, what they would give us would fall far short of what we needed.

However, almost immediately, the regular offerings doubled as the people rose to the challenge, and by the time we left Colchester I was receiving a more than adequate salary. Admittedly, for the first year our faith was being tested, but God is faithful and throughout that time we never went without a meal, even though sometimes the best we could do was beans on toast!

Of course, we were careful with our money. We made sure that all the bills were paid and then spent whatever was left on food! Hadn’t Jesus said that we should not be anxious about what we were to eat or drink? Our Father in Heaven would supply our need. And he did, even if for a while we had to cut out luxuries like biscuits and if the girls had to drink water rather than orange squash! 

And thanks largely to Eileen’s positive attitude, they never complained. They grew up to understand that, however hard up we may feel, in this country we enjoy a higher standard of living than 99% of the rest of the world’s population. I am so grateful that financial prosperity has never been high on the agenda of any of our children, and God has blessed them for it. But learning from experience that God was able to meet our needs was by no means the only benefit of giving up my teaching job. It opened the door to a much wider ministry.

My Story  Talk 13 Ministry at Colchester (1962-68) Part 1

Our time at Colchester saw the arrival of our first two children, Deborah in 1964 and Sarah, fifteen months later in 1965. Apart from the birth of the girls, the most significant aspects of our time in Colchester were the growth of the church, my ministry beyond the local church, and the lessons the experience taught me.  In this talk I’ll be dealing mainly with the growth of the church, but first a word about practical things like employment, housing, holidays, and transport.

Employment, housing, holidays, and transport

Before we were married, Eileen had been working in the Dagenham education office, and on moving to Colchester she found an excellent job in the education office there, which was within walking distance of our new home. She was soon promoted to a highly responsible administrative position which she held until shortly before Debbie was born.

As for me, although the church was contributing £5 a week towards the rent of our bungalow, it was essential that, for the time being at least, I find full-time secular employment. For the first year, the nearest RE (Religious Education) teaching post available was in Braintree which necessitated a thirty-mile round trip every day.

However, a year later a post became available in Colchester at the Alderman Blaxill Secondary School, a little over a mile from our church and a similar distance from our home. In those days the RE syllabus was based almost entirely on the Bible, so lesson preparation was not difficult, and I became very much aware that teaching 300 children every week was an important part of my ministry. I will say more later about how the Lord remarkably blessed that work, but how in 1966 the Lord called me to give up the teaching job and give myself full-time to the work of the church.

The rent for the bungalow we were living in was about £28 a month, which sounds ridiculously low by today’s prices, but it didn’t seem so then bearing in mind that my monthly salary as a teacher was only £60!  However, we soon discovered that some new houses were being built nearer to our church and that as a schoolteacher I could get a 100% mortgage to buy one. The monthly repayments would be just £18, £10 less than we were already paying in rent.

The only problem was that the builders required a £20 deposit to secure the plot. Eileen had £20 saved up to buy a hoover, which we desperately needed, and we were wondering what to do, when my mother, not knowing anything about our plans to buy a new property, phoned to say that she was buying a new hoover and asked if we would we like her old one, which was in perfectly good condition. We saw this as a clear sign that the Lord was prompting us to make the move, and we paid the £20 deposit and moved into our new home in August, 1963.

My parents also moved in 1963. They had been living in Hornchurch since before I was born, and now I was married they decided to move to a new bungalow in Eastwood, not far from Southend-on-Sea.

So when the children came along we were grateful for our holidays to be visits to our parents who were equally pleased to have an opportunity to spend time with their grandchildren. Eileen’s parents were still living in Hornchurch, and it was always good to see them, but my parents’ home in Eastwood, with its proximity to the sea and the beautiful view of open countryside to the rear of the property was especially inviting. We usually travelled there on a Monday and returned on the Saturday so as not to leave the church unattended on Sundays.

But that brings me to the subject of transport. During the course of my ministry, I have owned or had the use of some fifty different vehicles, ranging from my first car, a Ford Prefect, which I bought during my final term at Oxford, to my recently acquired nine-year-old Mercedes E-Class saloon. The Ford Prefect broke down in the cold winter of 1963 when the snow lay on the ground throughout January, February and most of March.

I was on my way to school in Braintree when it happened, and I quickly decided that I needed something more reliable. That was when we bought our fourth Lambretta scooter, reliable because it was new, but extremely uncomfortable and at times difficult to control in that freezing weather. So it wasn’t long before I was back in a car again.

In the summer I borrowed an old Bradbury van from the father of some of the children coming to our meetings. He said we could have it for the day to take them to the seaside. Unfortunately, it broke down on the way home and I was left with about a dozen kids on the roadside. As I was wondering and praying what to do, a man came by in a Humber Hawk and asked if he could help. It was a large car and somehow he bundled all the kids on to the back seat and, with me beside him in the front, kindly drove us all back home.

But that gave me an idea. Maybe I should get a Humber and use it for children’s work! I looked in the local paper and saw an ad for a Humber Super Snipe, even larger than the Hawk. It was over ten years old, but I had read somewhere that if you’re buying a second-hand car it might be wise to get a big one. It might cost a bit more in fuel, but the engine was more likely to be reliable! Which has been my excuse for buying big cars ever since!

So I bought it for £80 and discovered that it did 11 to the gallon in town and, if you were lucky, 19 on a run! But it did the job, and I remember on one occasion squeezing eighteen kids into it to get them to Sunday School! It was only a short distance, and I realise now how potentially dangerous that was. But in those days ‘risk assessment’ had not been invented and there was no requirement to wear a seatbelt. In fact, there were no seatbelts. Piling people into the back of a van or lorry was quite common, but of course there was far less traffic on the roads back then. And if it did enter our head that something might be risky, we just trusted the Lord to take care of us!

But it soon became obvious that we needed something more suited to the task, and I traded in my Humber for a 12-seater minibus. And before long we were running four minibuses to bring people to the meetings as one person after another, following my example, exchanged their car for one.

Everything we have belongs to the Lord, and if changing our car for a minibus will lead to more people coming to Christ, we should surely be prepared to do so. The commitment of such people was undoubtedly one of the reasons for the growth of the church while we were there, and that’s where we turn to next.

The growth of the church

The Full Gospel Mission, Straight Road, Lexden, was nothing more than a tin hut with the potential to seat at most eighty people. When Eileen and I arrived, there were only twelve regular attenders, and that included a family of four who emigrated to Australia not long after our arrival, leaving us with a congregation of eight. By the time we left, the church was packed every Sunday with eighty regular attenders, which, in the 1960s was considered rapid growth, and my main purpose in this section is to explore the reasons why. But first, a word about the church programme.

Church programme

When we arrived in Colchester we inherited what was a typical programme for AoG churches in those days. On Sunday mornings there was the Breaking of Bread service, otherwise known as Communion. There was a Sunday School for the children in the afternoon, and on Sunday evenings there was the Gospel Service where all the hymns and the sermon were designed to bring people to Christ, and after which there would be laying on of hands and prayer for the sick.

Midweek on Tuesday evenings there was a Children’s Meeting from six to seven followed by a Prayer Meeting at nine, and on Thursday evenings there was Bible Study. There was no meeting for young people until we started one on a Friday, but more of that later.

The attendance at these meetings was far from encouraging. In fact, during our first year at Colchester, the Sunday School and Children’s Meeting were attended by only a handful of children, and the midweek meetings for adults were hardly better. On Sundays, if we had visitors, numbers might rise to fifteen. I faithfully preached the gospel every Sunday evening, but in that year we saw not one single decision for Christ, largely because most Sundays everyone present was already a Christian.

Apart from the weekly programme, there was the church’s Annual Convention when a guest speaker would be invited for the weekend and friends from surrounding Pentecostal churches would come for the two meetings held on the Saturday. It was good to see the building full and to hear some of the pioneers of the Pentecostal Movement like Howard and John Carter. But while these occasions were a real encouragement, they hardly made up for the weeks throughout the year when so few were attending. So what made the difference in the remaining years where we saw our numbers multiply significantly?

Reasons for growth

It is the Lord who builds his church, and in my view, the major reason for the growth of the church was, without a doubt, the fact that he strategically placed me as an RE teacher in a local school where I was free to teach the young people about Jesus. That, combined with the fact that he sent me key people to help me start a Youth Meeting on a Friday night, resulted in dozens of decisions for Christ, many of whom started to come on Sundays.

It all started when I received an invitation to preach at the Youth Meeting in the Colchester Elim Church. After the meeting a couple of people in their early twenties asked me if we had a Youth Meeting at our church, and I said that I’d like to start one but that I had no musician. To which they responded by offering to help me. David Fletcher was an able guitarist and John Ward an excellent accordion player. Together with their fiancées, Jean and Sandra, who were good singers, they made a great group for leading worship and were, quite literally, a Godsend.

All this, in the providence of God, coincided with my starting teaching in the local school and with a girl called Corinne, one of the children from a family in our church, starting there too. She provided the link between my RE lessons and the local church. I told the children about Jesus, and she told her friends where they could find out more.

So we launched our new Youth Meeting by hiring a couple of coaches to provide transport to the church from just outside the school gates. My new friends from Elim provided the music and I preached. In school I had been able to tell them about Jesus, but I couldn’t make a gospel appeal in RE lessons! Now, in church, I had complete freedom, and on the very first night, when I made the appeal forty-one children made a decision for Christ.

And when a number of them started coming on Sundays, on one occasion eleven of them being baptised in the Holy Spirit, there was a new sense of expectancy among the older members. They were thrilled to see young people in their meetings, and that began to attract people from other churches too, including David and Jean, John and Sandra, who decided to join us because of their work with the youth.

Of course, our attempts to reach people with the gospel were not limited to the young people. I produced a quarterly newsletter which we called The Full Gospel Mission VOICE. We distributed thousands of these to the homes in the area, using my minibus on a Saturday morning to transport ten or so young people to deliver them street by street throughout the area. I can think of only one person who came to Christ through that ministry, but at least we knew that people had had an opportunity to read the gospel even if they never came to church.

After I had given up my teaching job, I also conducted two evangelistic missions in our church. Each mission lasted from a Saturday through to the following Sunday. We leafleted far and wide, each leaflet containing a message about healing as well as salvation, and, of course, details of the meetings. The meetings were well attended, but mainly by Christians who wanted prayer for healing, and although there were a few decisions for Christ and some healings, I have no memory of anyone being added to our church as a result.

And an SPF mission we conducted in Wivenhoe, a village near Colchester next to which the new University of Essex was about to be built, fared little better. It was a great experience for the students who participated, but there were very few local people who attended.

Apart, that is, from Ian and Janet Balfour, a couple from a Strict Baptist background, who came to support us, got to know us, were baptised in the Spirit as a result, and decided to move to a house less than five minutes’ walk from our church. They had four children all under the age of five, one of whom was Glenn, later to come as a student to Mattersey Hall, and, for a time after my principalship, its principal. The Lord clearly had a purpose in our going to Wivenhoe, even if, at the time, we felt rather disappointed with the results.

And Ian and Janet were not the only people added to our church as a result of receiving the baptism in the Spirit. Alan Coe, who was a work colleague of John Ward and had recently become a Christian, came along to our meetings, received the baptism, and joined our church. He proved a very faithful member, and when I was in contact with him recently was still attending regularly. David Littlewood, a former Methodist, later to become an AoG minister and a member of Mattersey’s Board of Governors, was also baptised in the Spirit in our church while he was a student at the University of Essex.

But the ministry the Lord had given me of praying for people to be filled with the Spirit was not limited to those who would become members of our church. I had the privilege of laying hands on Reginald East, the vicar of West Mersea, and on Mike Eavery, the minister of the local Congregational Church and seeing them both baptised in the Spirit in their homes.

So the Lord was blessing us in ways that perhaps we had not expected, and if the results of the evangelistic missions we conducted were rather disappointing, he was showing us that the key to growth was to follow the supernatural leading of the Holy Spirit. Miracles happen as he determines, and I was certainly not expecting what happened one Saturday evening.

But I’ll tell you about that next time.

My Story  Talk 12 Brasenose College Oxford 1959-62 (Part 3)

Welcome to Talk 12 in our series where I am reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. This is now the third talk about the years I spent at Oxford. So far we have talked about life at Oxford, its academic programme, and my spiritual experience while I was there. Today I’m going to share with you my developing relationship with Eileen, our decision to get married shortly after I graduated, and how the Lord led us straight into pastoral ministry rather than going to Bible college first.

Keeping in touch

Throughout the two years after Eileen and I met, we had seen each other almost every day. Clearly, this could not continue while I was at Oxford, but we kept in touch as much as was then humanly possible. Of course, in those days there were no mobile phones. In fact, access to landlines was not easy, and anyway, it was extremely expensive. So Eileen and I kept in touch with each other by writing letters four or five times a week.

We also managed to see each other every two weeks. As I have mentioned already, the terms at Oxford were only 8 weeks long, so by going home for the weekend after four weeks, and by Eileen travelling up to see me for the weekend after weeks two and six, we were able to see each other on a fortnightly basis. This was very clear evidence of Eileen’s commitment to me as the journey on our Lambretta scooter through the busy traffic of central London was by no means easy.

Obviously, we made the most of those precious weekends. On Saturdays we would often explore the surrounding countryside on our scooter or even travel further afield visiting pretty Cotswold villages like Bibury and Bourton on the Water. Or in the summer we loved getting into one of the punts moored by Magaden Bridge and heading up the Cherwell where we picnicked on the home-made sausage rolls and egg and bacon pie that Eileen had brought with her from home. On Sundays, of course, we went to church together before Eileen made the 60-mile journey back home to be ready for work on Monday.

Of course, during the college vacations (which totalled half the year), the situation was completely different. I was able to see Eileen every day again. During the week, this was in the evenings as Eileen was at work during the daytime. And I was too, at least during the weeks that the schools had their holidays. As the Oxford terms were far shorter than the school terms I was able to earn some extra money by teaching in a local secondary school, which was to prove valuable for my future ministry as I was gaining experience in teaching children of a different age group from those I had taught in the years before I went to Oxford.

But apart from working hours, Eileen and I saw each other every evening and every weekend. Sundays were taken up with church twice in the day, and midweek we regularly attended the Tuesday night prayer meeting, the Thursday night Bible study, and the Friday night youth meeting. We were desperate to learn more about our Pentecostal experience and the way the Pentecostal churches did things.

In fact, whatever we were doing, our relationship with each other was from the start intimately connected with our relationship with the Lord and his will for our lives, even when we went on holiday.

As I have already mentioned, our first holiday together was at a Christian Endeavour Holiday Home in Devon in 1959 just before I went up to Oxford. The following year we decided to explore the Lake District together. We travelled the three-hundred-mile journey on our scooter, stopping overnight in Aintree with one of Eileen’s aunts, before finally arriving at a CE Home in Kents Bank near Grange-over-Sands. We had each visited the area before, but never together, and that fortnight was a wonderful opportunity to enjoy fellowship with other Christians as well as marvelling at the beauty of God’s creation as we made daily trips into different parts of the Lakes.

In 1961 we decided to go further afield and to spend four weeks touring France and northern Spain. So we exchanged our 125cc Lambretta for a new 175 which we trusted would cope well with the distances we would be travelling laden with two tents and all the paraphernalia required for camping. However, the moment we set off we both had some misgivings as the weight of luggage at the rear of the scooter made it harder to handle the machine safely, but undaunted we proceeded with caution and arrived safely at Southend airport where we had booked a flight on a cargo plane to northern France.

Our first night in France was spent in a cow field with the kind permission of the farmer. We were both experienced campers, Eileen with the Girl Guides and I with the Boys’ Brigade, but we had never before been woken by the sound of cows champing round our tent pegs and we quickly agreed to depart as soon as possible, particularly as there were no ‘facilities’ available! We determined that after that we would make sure to check into proper camping sites.

We travelled down the western side of France, stopping first at Paris for the weekend, camping in the Bois de Boulogne and visiting the thousand-strong Assemblies of God Church in the Rue du Sentier led by pastor André Nicole. Little did I know it then, but that was to be the first of many visits to French assemblies later in my ministry and sparked my interest in what the Holy Spirit was doing in European countries.

In Angouleme we discovered that our GB plate had fallen off and, knowing that we were legally required to display one, we visited a garage there and asked if they knew where we could get a replacement. It was then that I realised how inadequate my A Level French course had been. Although we had studied numerous French authors, it was of little practical use to us now as no one had told us how to say the alphabet in French! Finally, by writing the letters down I managed to let them know what I wanted and learnt that in French GB is pronounced Jay-Bay. They told us that they could make us one, but it would take a couple of days.

As a result, we had to travel further each day than originally planned which meant that we were both rather saddle-sore at the end of each day. We crossed the Spanish border between Biarritz and San Sebastian and immediately discovered that what we were doing was culturally unacceptable. Eileen was getting hoots and wolf-whistles from passing motorists because she was wearing trousers and not riding side-saddle! Of course, this would have been extremely dangerous bearing in mind the distances we were travelling each day and, at the risk of causing offense, we decided that we had no option but to carry on as we were.

Extremely tired when we reached Burgos we decided to spend the night in a hotel and enjoy the luxury of proper beds. We did the same in Madrid for two or three nights before heading for Barcelona by way of Zaragoza. But before we reached Barcelona our scooter broke down on a mountain road and reluctantly I had to leave Eileen by the roadside with the scooter while I hitched a lift in a Citroen deux-chevaux into a village called Jorba to get help.

It took two days to get the scooter fixed and by the time we eventually reached our campsite at Rosas, on the Mediterranean just north of Barcelona, it was already dark. A day or so later we arrived in Perpignan in southern France, intending to travel on up the eastern side of France on our way back home. But the scooter broke down again, and after two days camping at the back of an Esso station, we were compelled to return to England by train, leaving our scooter to be brought home courtesy of the RAC. Fortunately, it was still under warranty and was repaired by Lambretta after it finally arrived back in England some six weeks later.

That holiday was the last we were to have together before we were married the following year and, in some ways, was a preparation for it. Like the holiday, married life is wonderful, but not without its unexpected events, delays, and difficulties. We were learning to face problems together, to be patient with each other, and to trust in the Lord to bring us through. Perhaps that’s why I tend to advise young couples, wherever possible, to go on holiday together before deciding to get married. But that brings me to how I decided to propose to Eileen.

Engagement and Marriage

It was during my first term at Oxford. We had been ‘going out’ together for two years, seeing each other almost every day. But we had never talked about marriage. I think that must have been because I was very conscious of how serious marriage is. Divorce in those days was far less common than it is today and for me, as a Christian, it would not have entered my head. I knew that marriage would be for life. What’s more, I knew God had called me to serve him, and choosing the right partner was vitally important. So I was reluctant to commit myself.

But just before I went to Oxford my father had a word with me.

You’d better make your mind up about that girl, David. It would not be fair to keep her waiting for three years while you’re at Oxford, if your intentions are not serious.

Of course, I knew he was right. I had to make up my mind. The problem was, I didn’t want to give her up, but I didn’t want to marry her if she wasn’t the right one for me. Finally I did what I should have done much sooner. I decided to pray about it. I got down on my knees in my bedroom at Oxford and told the Lord my dilemma. I told him that I would gladly marry Eileen if she was God’s choice for me, but if not, I would give her up.

And as soon as I said that prayer I received an overwhelming peace and an assurance that Eileen was the girl I was to marry. So, the next time I was home from Oxford, after a long and passionate kiss, I said to her, You will marry me, won’t you, darling? Yes, those were my exact words! To which she replied, Oh yes! Of course I will.

So we decided to get engaged the following summer after my first year at Oxford, knowing that the earliest we could expect to marry would be after I had graduated. After gaining her father’s consent, we organised a wonderful garden party to celebrate our engagement on 2^nd July, 1960, and eventually were married by Pastor Alfred Webb at Bethel Full Gospel Church, Vicarage Road, Dagenham, on 28^th July, 1962. And the specially invited organist for the occasion was none other than Laurie N. Dixon, LRAM, the friend through whom I had first heard about the baptism in the Holy Spirit.   

Our move to Colchester

After our honeymoon in Cornwall, we moved directly into our first home, a bungalow in Colchester, where I had accepted the invitation to take over the pastorate of the small AoG church there. Colchester will be the subject of our next talk, but first I need to explain why we did not consider ministry in a Baptist church and why I did not go to Bible College as originally planned.

With regard to the Baptists, the explanation is simple. Once we had been baptised in the Spirit, neither of us had attended our Baptist churches apart from perhaps an occasional visit. This was largely because the minister of Hornchurch Baptist was not sympathetic to a Pentecostal understanding of scripture, and the new minister of Elm Park Baptist had stated that the Pentecostals’ exegesis of Acts was entirely unwarranted.

Against this, my parents had told me that Leslie Moxham, our former Baptist minister at Elm Park, had noticed such a difference in me since I was baptised in the Spirit that he had said, If the baptism in the Spirit can make that much difference to David, I want it too. Leslie was later baptised in the Spirit and eventually became an AoG minister working with my friend Colin Blackman in the Tunbridge Wells assembly. And although, as we were to discover later some Baptists were beginning to get involved in the Charismatic Renewal, it was evident to us that our future lay with the Pentecostals rather than with the Baptists.

But why didn’t I go the Bible College before taking on a church? The answer is that I tried to. Early in 1962 I applied to London Bible College. There was a section on the application form where you were required to give an account of your experience of Christ. So I mentioned not only how I had become a Christian, but also how Jesus had baptised me in the Holy Spirit. My interview lasted about an hour, most of which was taken up with what I believed about speaking in tongues. Was it for today? And if it was, was it for everyone? As a result, I received a letter a few days later saying that they felt I would do better to apply to a Pentecostal bible college! Interestingly, their rejection of my application is mentioned in Ian Randall’s history of LBC, Educating Evangelicals.

The AoG Bible College was then at Kenley in Surrey. Its principal was Donald Gee. I had had a brief conversation with him after a meeting at the East Ham Easter Convention, and he had promised to send me the application form. But this never arrived. I also heard it rumoured that the lady teaching English at Kenley, on hearing that an Oxford graduate might be coming, had, presumably jokingly, commented that he’ll be probably teaching me!

This, together with the fact that some of my Pentecostal friends were telling me that I didn’t need to go to Bible college, because I had got it – whatever that meant! – caused me to wonder if that was the direction I should be heading. So I said to the Lord,

If you really don’t want me to go to Bible College, let someone offer me the pastorate of a Pentecostal church.

And within a week, I had my answer. I received a letter from the Colchester assembly asking if I would be their pastor. There was a bungalow available for rent for six and a half guineas a week (£6.51) towards which they were prepared to contribute £5.00. Apart from that, they could offer nothing, and it was understood that I would need to seek full time secular employment. But that’s something for next time.

My Story   Talk 11 Brasenose College, Oxford (1959-1962) Part 2

Welcome to Talk 11 in our series where I am reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I finished by sharing with you how God powerfully spoke to me after a Philosophy tutorial through a verse in Psalm 119. Today I’ll be talking in more detail about my spiritual experience at Oxford, which, looking back on it, was to be far more significant for my future life and ministry than the academic programme I was following.

The most important thing a young Christian can do when going up to university is to make sure right from the start that they find, and have regular fellowship with, other Christians. There are two main ways of doing this, either by joining the Christian Union or by attending a local church – or preferably both, which is what I did.

Christian Union and Local Church

The CU at Brasenose was part of the OICCU – Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union. Each college CU would have its own weekly meeting for prayer and Bible study, but there was also a regular Saturday night Bible Study held at the Northgate Hall, situated close to the Oxford Union building. This was well attended by Christians from across the whole university, and I became a regular attender at both these gatherings. I appreciated the opportunity to meet Christians from different denominational backgrounds, and, bearing in mind my experience of the Anglican chaplain at Brentwood School, was particularly pleased to discover that some Anglicans actually did profess the believe the Bible!

However, much as I enjoyed fellowship with these good people, having been only recently baptised in the Spirit, and having begun to appreciate Pentecostal worship, I was very aware that something very important was lacking in their meetings – the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. Of course, things are very different today, but in those days the Charismatic Renewal had not yet begun and most Anglicans, who in my experience tended to view other denominations as somewhat inferior, were highly suspicious of, if not totally unaware of, the rapidly growing worldwide Pentecostal Movement.

And, of course, I was eager to enlighten them! But first a word about the local Pentecostal church. At the time, the only Pentecostal church in Oxford was the Elim Church situated on the Botley Road just beyond Oxford Railway Station. I was keen to attend there because, however valuable membership of a Christian union may be, there really is no substitute for the life and fellowship of a local church.

So throughout my time at Oxford I regularly attended on Sundays both the morning and evening services, which meant incidentally that I missed both lunch and dinner in college because the mealtimes clashed with the times of the services. More importantly, on my very first Sunday in Oxford, it was there that I met three other students who were from Pentecostal churches, which led to our meeting regularly for prayer and to the formation of the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship.

Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship

The students I met after church that first Sunday morning in Oxford were, Michael Collins who came from Dorchester AoG and was in his second year at St. Peter’s Hall reading Engineering, and Gladys Bland and John Miles who, like me, were in their first year. Gladys was from East Ham AoG and was doing postgraduate work in English Literature at Somerville College, and John was from Gloucester AoG and was reading English at Regents Park College.

We were all delighted to meet each other because up to then there had been relatively few Pentecostals attending university. We soon became firm friends and agreed to meet regularly together for fellowship and prayer, particularly for spiritual gifts and for Christian students from a different denominational background to be baptised in the Spirit. Michael had a friend called Philip who was already Spirit filled, and he joined our prayer group too.

I will never forget the day, early in our first year, when there was a prophecy in one of those meetings that people of all denominations, including professors and university lecturers, would be baptised in the Spirit. As I’ve already mentioned, the Charismatic Renewal had not yet begun or, if it had, we had not heard of it, and to be honest, I really wondered if that could possibly happen. But it did, and in our own small way we were to be a part of it.

What we didn’t know then was that similar groups were forming in other universities. There were students from a Pentecostal background at Cambridge and London Universities too, and once we heard about this we naturally wanted to get in touch with them. And a key person to help us do that was Richard Bolt. Richard had been an Anglican ordinand but after he was baptised in the Spirit in an AoG church in Durham his course at Clifton Theological College was terminated because he was laying hands on other students and praying for them to speak in tongues.

Shortly after this he was welcomed by AoG and became an Assemblies of God minister based in a small assembly in Colchester. However, as the Lord was using him in healing and in leading others into the baptism in the Spirit, Richard’s ministry extended well beyond Colchester as he took time to travel to universities and colleges to encourage Pentecostal students and to pray for others who wanted to be filled with the Spirit. He was certainly a great encouragement to me and my family. My mother was baptised in the Spirit under his ministry.

But before I knew anything about how the Lord was using Richard, the thought had already crossed my mind that we ought to form, at least in Oxford, a university society for Pentecostal students. The Baptists had what was known as The John Bunyan Society which met every Sunday afternoon in Regents Park College where John Miles was a student. He and I attended this quite often and I mentioned to him that I thought it might be good to have something similar for Pentecostals. As a result of this, John wrote to Aaron Linford, the editor of Redemption Tidings, the AoG weekly magazine, and asked for advice.

And it was at this point that Richard Bolt told us about the Pentecostal students at Cambridge and London. All this led to a gathering in London early in 1961 when the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship (SPF) was formed. Richard Bolt was recognised as its Travelling Secretary and Donald Underwood, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, as General Secretary.

We organised annual weekend house-parties where students were exposed to the ministry of Pentecostal leaders, and evangelistic missions where students would sing, testify, and preach during the summer vacations. We also published a magazine known as The Pentecostal and developed a postal library service where students could borrow books by Pentecostal authors.

At Oxford our group grew in numbers during our second year, partly due to an influx of students from Culham College led by Andrew Parfitt, the son of the AoG pastor at Maidstone, but also because our prayers were being answered and students from other denominations were getting baptised in the Spirit. But that leads me to how I personally started to be used in leading others into the baptism.

Leading others into the baptism

It all began a few weeks after I had started at Oxford when, after one of those Saturday night Bible Studies in the Northgate Hall, I was looking at a book on the bookstall which was about a revival that had broken out somewhere in Africa. Chris, one of my Anglican friends from Brasenose, saw what I was looking at and asked me if I had any personal experience of revival. So I began to tell him about the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

As a result, Chris started to seek the baptism and came along to the Elim church where the pastor laid hands on him and prayed for him. But nothing happened and after a few weeks Chris came to me and said,

I want you to pray for me. I’m coming to your room tomorrow and I want you to lay hands on me and pray for me.

I was frankly unsure how to respond to this. I was very new to all this myself and I did not know if I had the authority to lay hands on him. I didn’t know if such things were the responsibility of pastors, and I wasn’t a pastor. But Chris was very insistent and so I agreed. The next day was Saturday and there were no lectures or tutorials for me to attend, so I decided to spend the night in prayer. This was something I had never done before, and have not done very often since, but I realised the seriousness of what Chris had asked me to do and I wanted to get it right.

When Chris came the next day, we chatted for a bit, and then he said,

Well, are you going to pray for me or not?

I think he may have sensed that I was putting it off because, despite my night of prayer, I was nervous about it. He knelt down in front of me, and I plucked up courage and, quietly speaking in tongues, gently placed my hands on his shoulders. But nothing seemed to happen, and I didn’t know what to do, when I remembered that in the Authorised Version (which most of us were still using in those days) Acts 19:6 says that it was when Paul had laid his hands upon the Ephesians that the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. In other words, the Spirit came on them after Paul laid his hands on them.  And I found myself prophesying over Chris that he would receive, and that he would receive that very day. At which, Chris got up, said thank you, and left me. And I was left wondering if I had done the right thing.

I had my answer at eight the following morning. I was still asleep, having had no sleep the previous night, when I was woken by something digging me in my ribs. It was Chris with his umbrella. What was he doing here?

            Oh, it’s you Chris. What on earth are you doing here?

And then it occurred to me that he might have come to tell me what had happened, so I added,

            You haven’t received the baptism, have you?

To which he responded as he continued to dig me in the ribs,

            O ye of little faith!

He had, of course, received, and he told me how it had happened. After he had left me he had returned to his room and had been reading a book by, or about, the famous missionary to China, Hudson Taylor. The book emphasised that in addition to faith we need courage in our Christian lives, and Chris realised that that was just what he needed. He looked up from the book intending to say, Yes, Lord. Give me courage. But instead of doing so, he found himself speaking in tongues!

Little did I know it then, but Chris was to be the first among hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have begun to speak in tongues through the ministry the Lord has given me. But that’s closely related to the subject of spiritual gifts and how I began to exercise them.

Beginning to exercise spiritual gifts

Shortly after I was baptised in the Spirit I visited the bookshop at the AoG National Offices at 51 Newington Causeway, London. I bought every book they had on the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts. As a young Baptist I had received little teaching about the Spirit and none whatsoever on spiritual gifts. And I was eager to learn. I devoured books like Harold Horton’s The Gifts of the Spirit and Donald Gee’s Concerning Spiritual Gifts, and I learnt that the baptism in the Spirit is not an end in itself, but a gateway to supernatural gifts like tongues,  interpretation, prophecy, and healing. And I was longing to receive and be used in whatever gifts the Lord might have for me.

As it happened, I didn’t have long to wait. I was still in my first year at Oxford when I was confronted with a situation at the church I was attending. The Elim church in Oxford was a well-attended lively church where the gifts of the Spirit were regularly in operation. On a Sunday morning there were often prophecies, tongues and interpretation. Some of my Christian friends from Brasenose came along to experience Pentecostal worship and so far I had not been embarrassed in any way by what went on in the meetings.

However, one Sunday morning, when fortunately none of my friends was present, somebody spoke in tongues but there was no interpretation. No explanation was given for this and, although I was still new to these things, I knew that the Bible was very clear that speaking in tongues in church should be interpreted. I probably should have asked the pastor about this, but he was a busy man and I did not know him very well. Consequently I kept quiet about the matter, but was still concerned that everything was not quite as it should be.

Shortly after that, when Richard Bolt was visiting, I told him about this and asked him what I should do. He said,

The answer is very simple David. You interpret.

To which I replied,

But I don’t have the gift.

He then said,

Then ask for it.

But, bearing in mind that 1 Corinthians 12:11 tells us that these gifts are given as the Holy Spirit determines, I asked,

But I know God wants me to have it?

His answer to this was along the following lines. The very fact that I was concerned about it might well indicate that God wanted me to have it. And, anyway, we know from God’s word that it is his will that tongues in church should be interpreted. So I would be in God’s will if I went ahead and interpreted it. I should pray about it and next time it happened I should ask God for the interpretation and then speak out in faith. Our heavenly Father gives good gifts to his children when they ask him.

Although I still had questions, I decided to do what he said and over the next few weeks kept asking the Lord about the matter. Then, one Sunday morning it happened. Someone spoke in tongues and I waited, hoping that someone else would interpret it. But when no one did, I asked the Lord to give me the right words to say and immediately a few words came into my mind which I began to speak out in faith. I say in faith, but I have to confess that my faith was mingled with doubt. I was half expecting the pastor to intervene and say that this was not the right interpretation! But to my intense relief he said nothing, and after the meeting people came and thanked me for my interpretation.

So from time to time, I continued to interpret tongues, but still with the occasional doubt if what I said could really be the interpretation. And later in the series I will tell you how God wonderfully confirmed the genuineness of my gift when I interpreted a tongue that was identified as a language spoken in Africa.

God certainly did some wonderful things while I was at Oxford, and I realise now that I was already exercising a ministry while I was there. I was leading our SPF prayer group, teaching others about spiritual gifts, as well as preaching in churches from time to time. It seems that others were recognising this before I did, and I was soon asked to share my testimony at the AoG National Youth Rally held in the Birmingham Town Hall and to contribute an article in Redemption Tidings entitled Pentecost in Oxford University. The Lord was clearly preparing the way for my future ministry.

Next time, I’ll tell you about my developing relationship with Eileen which led to our marriage immediately after I graduated and how I ultimately decided not to go to Bible College as originally planned, but to accept the pastorate of the Assemblies of God Church in Colchester.

My Story   Talk 10   Brasenose College, Oxford, 1959-1962

Welcome to Talk 10 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Today we begin on the years that I spent at Oxford between 1959 and 1962.

For me, life at Brasenose College began on Thursday, 8^th October 1959, exactly one month after I had been baptised in the Holy Spirit. I travelled there by car with Eileen and my parents, who, after helping me unpack and settle into my room at the top of staircase 11, prayed with me before returning home. This was the beginning of an entirely new phase in my life. It was the first time that I was living away from home. I would be making new friends and be challenged by new ideas.

But there are some things which remain constant in our lives no matter what else may change. I knew that my parents loved me. I knew that Eileen loved me, and that I loved her. And I knew that God had a purpose for my life and that I was now at Brasenose as part of that overall plan. So I had confidence that all would be well.

The fact that I would now be reading PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) did not faze me, even though I had never studied any of those subjects before. My original purpose in accepting the place I had been offered had been to widen my sphere of knowledge before eventually concentrating on theology in order to prepare for the ministry.

And PPE would certainly do that. But there was far more to being at Oxford than the course I would be studying. There was the social and recreational life which I greatly enjoyed. And it was a great opportunity to interact with people of all faiths and none and to share my faith with them. Opportunity, too, to tell other Christians about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and to meet other Pentecostal students and spend time in prayer with them for the supernatural gifts of the Spirit. And it was also a time when my relationship with Eileen would be strengthened even though we would be apart for weeks on end.

As I can’t cover that in just one talk, today will be aboutlife at Brasenose, its domestic arrangements, its social life and sporting activities, and the academic programme and its challenge to my faith.

Next time I’ll share in more detail about my spiritual experience including how the Lord led me into leading others into the Baptism in the Spirit, how I began to exercise spiritual gifts, and how we began the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship.

And later I’ll tell you about my developing relationship with Eileen which led to our marriage immediately after I had graduated and how I ultimately decided not to go to Bible College as originally planned, but to accept the pastorate of the Assemblies of God Church in Colchester.

Life at Brasenose

When I arrived at Brasenose in October 1959 it was almost three years since I had been there previously in November 1956 when I had taken the scholarship examination. Back then I had never seen any of the students’ rooms, as we were staying in a boarding house in the Woodstock Road. So I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. But as soon as I entered my new room, I was pleasantly surprised. It was larger than my bedroom at home, was well furnished and overlooked one of the quads with a view of the Radcliffe Camera and the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in the background.

Students were usually allocated a room in college for the first year of their studies, and sometimes for the second year too, when you had opportunity to choose what room you would prefer. During my first year I discovered that the room beneath me was even larger than the room I was in and had the benefit of a bedroom separate from the main room which was used as a sitting room as well as a study.

So when I was offered the chance to live in college for a second year I opted for this room which proved to be extremely useful when we were holding prayer meetings for those interested in seeking spiritual gifts. But more of that next time. For my third year I lived ‘in digs’ in a boarding house on the Botley Road, just 50 yards away from the Elim Pentecostal Church which I attended throughout my time in Oxford.

Meals at Brasenose were, in my opinion at least, of a high quality and I was introduced to dishes which I had never tasted at home. These included jugged hare and braised haunch of venison, the only meals I took a positive dislike to, probably because the meat was hung for several days before it was cooked which resulted in a rather unpleasant smell. Fortunately, we were allowed to sign out in advance for any evening meal, provided we dined in college at least five times a week.

Dinner was a rather formal occasion at which we were required to wear our gowns, and which was preceded by a Latin grace which began with the words:

Oculi omnium spectant in te Deus. Tu das illis escas tempore opportuno…

which means

The eyes of all wait upon you O God. You give them their food in due season,

and is taken from Psalm 145:15.

Sadly, however, I’m not sure that many people took it seriously, even if they should have known what it meant, bearing in mind that at the time Latin at O level was still an entrance requirement for Oxford University.

Breakfast and lunch were far less formal occasions. Grace was not said and there were no requirements about a dress code or attendance. There were, in fact, very few requirements about life in college. Apart from academic regulations, what rules there were related to the time of day you had to be back in college and the time at which any female guests had to be out!

The gate in the porters’ lodge was the only means of access to the College. It was locked at midnight and anyone seeking access after that would be reported to the Dean and a fine would be automatically payable. However, this could be avoided if you were agile enough to scale an eight-foot wall without being caught, something of course I never had to try!

As far as the ladies were concerned, they had to be out by 10pm. This, I imagine, is no longer relevant, as, like most Oxford colleges, Brasenose rightly accepts female students as well as men. But by the time I left Oxford the ‘swinging sixties’ had hardly begun, and there was still at least a nominal acknowledgement of Christian moral values.

For residential students there was also a rule about the minimum number of nights you had to be in college over the course of a term. Any absence without permission from your ‘moral tutor’ would be reported by your ‘scout’. Scouts, who were usually much older than the students, originally were little more than their servants and before my time would clean your shoes if you left them outside the door of your room.

Even in my time they were referred to by their surname only, whereas they had to refer to me as Mr Petts and address me as Sir. This was something I deplored, a tradition which harked back to the old upstairs/downstairs attitude of the aristocracy still very prevalent in the early decades of the last century. If you’ve ever watched Downton Abbey you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Social and sport

Probably the most frequent social activity at Oxford was drinking coffee and staying up until the early hours of the morning discussing religion or politics or whatever else was currently in the news. Of course, whenever I could I took the opportunity to share my faith with anyone who would listen. Most of these discussions took place either in my room or that of fellow students whose accommodation was close to mine.

And at least one of those students came to faith in Christ during his first term at Brasenose, largely through the ministry of Keith de Berry, the rector of St. Aldate’s Church, but I like to think that my testimony also played a part in his decision to give his life to Christ. He went on to gain a first class degree in Chemistry and continued at Oxford to do a D.Phil., (the Oxford version of a PhD). Now, after more than sixty years he is still a committed Christian and once told me that his scientific research had only confirmed his faith in Christ.

Of course, late night discussions were by no means the only occasions when there was opportunity to witness to the truth of the gospel. So whether it was punting on the Cherwell on a lazy summer afternoon, or in the changing room after a football match, or playing tennis or table tennis (for which, in my final year, I was captain of the College team), I was always eager to share my faith.

But that doesn’t mean that I was constantly ‘Bible bashing’. Far from it. I remember how on one occasion, when our team was playing tennis against another college, my doubles match had been delayed for some reason. Consequently, it looked as though I would be late for our Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship prayer meeting.

But it was a three-set match, and we had lost the first set six-love and were losing the second set four-love. We had only to lose two more games, and the match would be over, and I could get off to the prayer meeting which by then had already started. But throwing away the match would hardly be fair to my partner and would not have glorified God.

Then I realised that my friends would wonder where I was and would be praying for me, wherever I was or whatever I was doing. Which inspired me to say to my partner,

            Come on, John. We’re going to win this match.

And we did. The level of our tennis suddenly improved, and, having lost ten games in a row, we went on to win all the next twelve, taking the match by two sets to one (4-6, 6-4, 6-0). I’m not sure that John believed my explanation that this was probably the result of answered prayer, but because of that experience I am personally convinced, not only that God is interested in every tiny detail of our lives, but that such experiences bear testimony to others of the reality of our faith.

Academic programme

The academic year at Oxford began in early October and finished towards the end of June. Each term lasted just 8 weeks which meant that the long summer vacation provided the opportunity for students to get a summer job or travel abroad or, where necessary, to catch up on their reading.

Reading was, in fact, a major part of learning, and the world-renowned Bodleian Library situated virtually on the doorstep of Brasenose, provided access to millions of books and other printed items. Guidance as to which books to read was given in tutorials when your tutor would set you an essay to write in time for the following week, when you would read your essay to him and he would make appropriate comments.

At the beginning of term, he would also recommend what lectures might be helpful. Attendance at lectures was entirely optional, whereas attendance at tutorials was a compulsory part of one’s course. The standard of lecturing varied immensely, some academics having very poor communication skills. As a result, attendance would steadily diminish week by week and in one case I remember the series was terminated early ‘due to an indisposition’ on the part of the lecturer!

In my day, the system of assessment at Oxford, for PPE at least, was by written examination. After ‘prelims’ (preliminary examinations) which were taken in March in your first year, there was no further examination until ‘finals’ which were taken in the June of your third year.

I was required to take at least two papers in each subject, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, plus two further papers of my choice. I opted to take these in Philosophy as this was my favourite, despite the fact that it had been the most challenging to my Christian faith.

For example, during my second year I had been asked by my tutor to write an essay on the ontological argument for the existence of God. This was one of the arguments used by the philosopher René Descartes in an attempt to prove God’s existence. During the course of my essay I said something to the effect that although philosophy cannot prove the existence of God it cannot disprove it either.

It was at this point, as I was reading my essay to my tutor, that he interrupted me by saying:

Oh, I don’t know. I think if you mean by ‘prove’ what we normally mean by ‘prove’, and if you mean by ‘God’ what we normally mean by ‘God’, then we can probably disprove God’s existence. But perhaps we can talk about it another time.

This was the first time in my life that I had been confronted with such an outright denial of God’s existence, and my tutor’s statement shocked me deeply. It challenged everything I had based my life upon. I felt numb. As soon as he had left the room I instinctively wanted to call out to God for help. But what if my tutor was right and there was no God to call out to? But I called out anyway:

            God, if there is a God, HELP!

And He did! I walked into my bedroom and picked up my Bible and opened it. It fell open at Psalm 119, verse 99. My teacher had told me that he could prove that there is no God. Who was I to challenge the statement of an Oxford tutor? But in that verse the Psalmist said:

I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.

I came later to realise that by reading the Bible the most simple believer can gain more understanding of the things that really matter than all the intellectual rationalising of the philosopher. That verse brought immediate reassurance to my heart. It was not just the content of the verse that reassured me – though it certainly did – but the fact that, of all the verses there are in the Bible, I should turn at random to that very one. This was surely no coincidence. God had spoken to me in a remarkable and powerful way.

And as the years have gone by I have learned how to counteract the arguments of the atheists. I’m so glad now that I did not abandon my faith back then. People will always be bringing up challenges to our faith, but just because I don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that there is no answer! And until I know what it is, I just need to keep on trusting the One who said, I AM the truth.

My Story  Talk 9 Between Brentwood and Brasenose (1956-1959) Part 2

In our last talk I mentioned that three significant things happened between my leaving school in 1956 and going up to Brasenose in 1959. I gained experience in teaching. I met Eileen, my future wife. And I received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. And it’s the baptism in the Spirit that’s the subject for today. We’ll be talking about the events that led up to it, how I heard about it and how both Eileen and I received it.

In August 1957 at a Baptist Union Summer School in the Lake District I met a man called Michael, who mentioned that the following year he was planning to go touring Europe with some Christian friends who owned a car. He asked if I would be interested in going with them and I said yes. I paid to have driving lessons so that I could share in the driving. It was a wonderful holiday, not just because of the breathtaking scenery, but because it was there in Switzerland that I first heard about the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

In my book Signs from Heaven I have already recorded the miraculous escape I had from a falling boulder while climbing a mountain and how impressed I was with the simple faith of one of my new friends who prayed for me as he saw it coming straight for me. His name was Laurie and he was clearly moving in a dimension of Christianity that I knew little or nothing about. So I asked him what he had got that I hadn’t got.

So he started to talk about an experience he had received after his conversion – being baptised with the Holy Spirit he called it – when the Holy Spirit had come and filled him to overflowing. He said he had spoken in tongues and told me I could read about it in the book of Acts. But although I wanted to experience more of God in my life, I wasn’t interested in speaking in tongues, and I dismissed the subject from my mind. And I might have ignored it forever had it not been for the remarkable series of events which took place the following summer when both Eileen and I were baptised in the Spirit.

In the summer of 1959 we were both sitting in the youth meeting at Eileen’s church singing from a well-known chorus book, when I happened to notice a list of books advertised on the back cover, one of which was entitled, The Full Blessing of Pentecost, by Dr. Andrew Murray. The title arrested my attention. Could this be what Laurie had been talking about the previous year in Switzerland? So I decided that it might be good to get it.

I mentioned this to Eileen and, without my knowing about it, she wrote to the publishers hoping to buy a copy for me, but a few days later, she received a reply saying the book was no longer available. The following Saturday morning, I went round to see Eileen and she told me that she had tried to get the book for me but that unfortunately it was out of print. A bit disappointed, I thanked her for trying anyway and, after spending the morning with her, returned home from Eileen’s to my parents’ house for lunch.

As the meal was not quite ready, I went into the sitting room to wait. On entering, I happened to notice a book lying on the piano and casually picked it up – The Full Blessing of Pentecost by Dr. Andrew Murray! But how did it get there?

No one, except Eileen, knew anything of my interest in the subject. My parents did not know where the book had come from. It is true that my father had always had a large collection of books, but if it was his, he certainly had never read it, and didn’t even know that he possessed it. Anyway, why wasn’t it in the bookcase and how did it get on the piano?

No one had any idea how that book came to be there on the very day that I had been told it was unobtainable. The answer must surely lie in the realm of the supernatural. This was no coincidence. God was confirming to me that I needed to be baptised in the Spirit, and that afternoon, after I had read the book, I got down on my knees and asked God to fill me with the Holy Spirit. But nothing happened!

That evening, I went round to Eileen’s and told her about the book. And after she had read the book she too started to seek for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. As Baptists, we knew next to nothing about it – only what we had read in Andrew Murray’s book, and that, as I look back on it now, did not give an entirely complete picture.  As I remember it, it made a strong case for believing that there was an experience of the Holy Spirit beyond what we receive at conversion, but there was no mention of speaking in tongues as the evidence.

As a result we weren’t exactly sure what we were asking for, but I had the distinct impression that if I was going to receive the Holy Spirit I needed to prepare myself by becoming more holy. I remember thinking that if I could only live a sinless life for a month, or maybe even a week, or even just today, perhaps God would fill me with the Holy Spirit. I remember driving my father’s car taking care not to exceed the speed limit when, as I was going down a hill in a 30 zone, I noticed that the speedometer had gone up to 32 m.p.h. Oh no, I thought, I’ve missed receiving the baptism for another day!

Of course, I now understand, and frequently teach, that the Holy Spirit is a gift and can’t be earned! But back then I was getting frustrated by trying the achieve an experience of the Spirit by my own efforts and inevitably failing. So I thought I would write to Laurie who had told me about the baptism in the Spirit in the first place. What should I do? To which he replied, David, all I can say is that if you are really thirsty, you will drink. But this was even more frustrating. The problem was, I had no idea how to drink! Laurie lived quite a distance from me and I didn’t feel like writing back and saying,

Thanks Laurie. That’s very helpful, but please, how do I drink?

So Eileen and I decided on a different approach. Perhaps we should find a Pentecostal Church and see if they could help us. It turned out that the nearest one was Bethel Full Gospel Church which was about five miles away in Dagenham, and easily reached on our recently acquired Lambretta scooter. So we drove over to take a look at it and discovered from the noticeboard that there was a prayer meeting every Tuesday evening. I was quite nervous about it as I had never been in a Pentecostal meeting before, but we were pleasantly surprised and were impressed with the number of people praying, even though prayers were interspersed with lots of Amens. We, of course, as good Baptists were only used to saying Amen at the end of a prayer!

But what really impacted us was the use of the gift of tongues and interpretation. In the middle of the prayer time there were three ‘messages’ in tongues each of which was promptly interpreted. And we knew that God was speaking to US. These people did not know who we were. We had arrived just in time for the meeting and had had no time for conversation before the meeting began. So when we heard the opening words of the first interpretation we were completely amazed:

You have come into this church seeking to be filled with the Spirit!

All three interpretations were equally directly relevant to us, and as a result we spoke with the pastor after the meeting and explained who we were and why we had come. His name was Alfred Webb, and he encouraged us to come the following Tuesday and sit on the front row where anyone ‘seeking the baptism’ would be prayed for with the laying on of hands. So that’s what we did, but we were rather disappointed when nothing seemed to happen when he laid hands on us. This happened week after week until we finally received after we had come back from our summer holiday in Torquay, Devon.

That holiday was significant for several reasons. It was the first time that Eileen and I had been on holiday together and we had borrowed my father’s car so that we could take another young couple with us. My father had bought the car before he had passed the driving test so that I could give him lessons. (You may remember that I had learned to drive before we went on that holiday in Switzerland). Dad had not yet passed the test, so was happy to let me borrow it.

But, as far as the baptism in the Spirit was concerned, two things were particularly relevant. First, on the two Sundays we were in Torquay we decided to attend Upton Vale Baptist Church which was not far from the Christian Endeavour Holiday Home where we were staying. I was very impressed with the minister’s sermon on Hebrews 11:6 and his emphasis on the fact that God rewards those who earnestly seek him. So I had a word with him after the service and told him I was seeking the baptism in the Spirit.

Sadly, but not unsurprisingly for a Baptist minister back in 1959, he tried to discourage me from doing so, something which, when I started my course at Oxford a month or so later, influenced my decision to attend a Pentecostal church while I was there rather than a Baptist church. However, that sermon on Hebrews 11:6 on God rewarding those who earnestly seek him did reemphasise a word of prophecy we had received at Bethel a few weeks earlier encouraging us to get up early to pray. Now I am not saying that getting up early to pray is a condition of receiving the baptism, but it could be an indication that we were earnestly seeking, that we were really thirsty (John 7:7-39). So for the rest of that holiday we got up early and prayed.

And when we went to the Tuesday prayer meeting after we got back from our holiday, it happened! This time there was another man sitting alongside the pastor on the platform. I had no idea who he was but as soon as the prayer time began he came down to pray for those who were seeking the baptism.

Eileen and I were kneeling in the front row and he came to me first. I was kneeling with my head in my hands on the seat of the chair I had been sitting on. The man, who I later learned was a pastor called Harold Young, said,

Kneel up, brother.

So I moved into an upright kneeling position and he then said,

Breathe it in, brother.

I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, and I thought it rather strange. But I was thirsty and unquestioningly did what he said. I took a breath. Then he said,

Speak it out brother.

Again, I did what he said and I found myself speaking fluently in tongues. And I did not stop until the pastor closed the meeting 45 minutes later!

Then someone came up to me and said, You had a mighty baptism, didn’t you, brother? To which I replied, Oh, did I? To be honest, it was not at all what I had been expecting. Although I’m not really sure what I was expecting! By this time I had heard or read of so many different testimonies of people receiving the baptism and had realised that in some ways everyone is different, so I was not really sure what I should expect. What I wanted was to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I was not particularly interested in speaking in tongues.

What’s more, I found myself questioning whether the words I was speaking really were a language. I had studied four different foreign languages at school and it certainly sounded like none of them. So was my experience real? These questions were going through my mind as we were travelling home on our scooter. But then I remembered something that Jesus had said in Luke 11. Our heavenly Father does not give stones or scorpions or snakes to his children when they ask for the Holy Spirit. And on that basis I chose to believe that what I had experienced was real. I’m so glad that I did. Its reality has been confirmed again and again in my life and ministry. But more of that in later talks.

But what about Eileen? She had had similar doubts when she heard what Harold Young had said to me and when he laid hands on her she did not receive. However, straight after the meeting he spoke to her and said, You do want to receive don’t you? and Eileen said yes. So he took us both into the church vestry and placed his right hand on my head and told me to start speaking in tongues again. Then he placed his other hand on Eileen’s head and said,

Now you begin to speak too.

And she did! And later she told me that it had been in that very vestry that she had received Jesus as her saviour in Bethel Church Sunday school when she was only seven years old. So we were both baptised in the Spirit on the same day, September 8, 1959, just four weeks before I began my course at Brasenose College, Oxford, where I spent a lot of time telling other Christians about the baptism in the Holy Spirit. But we’ll be talking about that next time.

Talk 8 Between Brentwood and Brasenose (1956-59) Part 1

Welcome to Talk 8 in our series where I’m reflecting on the goodness of God throughout my life.

I left school in December 1956 and started my course at Oxford in October 1959, a period of almost three years. In many ways it seemed a long time to wait, but in the plan and purpose of God they turned out to be highly significant years. I gained experience in teaching. I met Eileen, the girl who was to be lifelong partner. And I received the life-changing experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. But first, I need to explain how I got my place at Oxford and why I had to wait three years before taking it up.

Gaining my place at Oxford

In 1956, at the age of seventeen, I had already passed my A Levels and had decided to stay on at school a further year to take S Levels the following summer. S Levels – the S stands for Scholarship – were the highest level of GCE exams that you could take and were designed to support your application to university, especially if you were hoping to go to Oxbridge.

However, as things turned out, I did not need to complete my S Level course because in the first term of that school year I was awarded a scholarship to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Brasenose College, Oxford. Our form master, Mr. Rennie, had suggested that some of us might like to spend a few days in Oxford and take some examinations at Brasenose College with a view to obtaining a place there.

As there was only one place available I was not expecting to get it. But I decided to go even though my friend, John Bramble, was going too and I thought he was far more likely to be successful. He had always come higher than me in class and had gained better A Level results than I had.

There were about eight of us altogether, each of us taking different exam papers, generally depending on what subjects we had taken at A level. There was just one paper that was the same for all of us, an English essay, the title of which was unknown to us until we sat down in the examination room. And that title was WORDS.

The length of that exam was three hours and, although some boys started writing almost immediately, I spent the first 45 minutes planning my essay. I can’t remember in great detail the contents of that essay but I know that I concluded it by talking about Christ, the word made flesh, the divine logos, the ultimate revelation of God Himself.

I have sometimes wondered if the reason I was awarded the scholarship rather than any of my colleagues was that the Lord was honouring me because I had honoured him. Of course, I can’t be sure about that, but he had helped me through my A levels when I had honoured him before the whole class when my History master had told me that I was likely to fail, and I have always sought to give God the glory for any academic success I may have achieved.

And I discovered later that, of all the papers I sat during that visit to Brasenose, that essay on WORDS was awarded the highest grade – an alpha. But when I received a letter from Brasenose offering me a scholarship a few weeks later, I was totally amazed and, after discussing it with my father, I came to the conclusion that this had to be God.

But there was just one problem. The place they were offering me was for three years later in October 1959, after I had completed my two years National Service. However, the Government had already agreed to abolish National Service and were in the process of phasing it out gradually.

They did this by delaying the ‘call-up’ which meant, in my case, that by the time they would have called me up, there would be less than two years before my course at Oxford was starting. In short, I would not have time to do National Service and, by the time I had finished my course at Oxford, National Service had been abolished completely.

So, having obtained my place at Oxford, I decided to leave school at the end of term in December and start to earn some money. And at the time there was a great shortage of schoolteachers, as a result of which young people who had passed their A levels could do ‘uncertificated teaching’ before going to university, and so I ended up doing almost three years’ teaching before I went to Oxford.

Gaining experience in teaching

And, surprisingly enough, it started at the very school I had just left. Or, to be more precise, it was at the Preparatory School attached to Brentwood and standing just on the other side of the main playing field. One of the teachers was on sickness leave for a few weeks and I was asked if I would take their place as they taught French and Latin which were of course my two main A Level subjects.

As it was a boarding school, I was required to live in and be the housemaster for some of the boys, which mainly involved making sure that they were in bed on time and not talking after a certain time. I was only there for a few weeks (January 15 to February 16), but I enjoyed the experience very much and learnt a great deal, not least of which was that, if you prepared your lessons thoroughly, you had relatively few problems with discipline.

After Brentwood Prep I was told by the Essex Education Committee that another job was available in Brentwood, at the Church of England Primary School in Coptfold Road, only a few hundred yards from my old school. A teacher was on maternity leave and a replacement was needed until July to look after her class of 8 to 9 year-olds. The pay wasn’t great as I was not a qualified teacher. It worked out at about half what I would have been paid if I had been qualified. And, of course, this was not a residential post, so I needed to travel on two buses each day to get there from Hornchurch. But I accepted the job anyway.

As in most primary schools, a teacher was responsible for teaching their class throughout the day all the subjects on the timetable. That was not a problem, but learning to keep discipline was another matter. My expectations were based on the level of discipline I had experienced as a pupil at Brentwood and the few weeks I had spent teaching at Brentwood Prep.

Coptfold Road was quite another matter. Many of the children came from a less fortunate background and some of them were of rather limited intelligence. As a result, and due to my own lack of training and experience, and lack of any supervision, I found the two terms I was in charge of that class extremely difficult, and was quite relieved when I heard towards the end of the summer term that Mrs. Istead, the teacher who had been on maternity leave, was returning the following Monday.

So on the Friday before she was due to return I was clearing my desk after school when the headmaster, Dr. Ward, asked me what I was doing, adding, You’re not leaving, are you? And he offered to give me a different class to teach and keep me on indefinitely until I went up to Oxford. So I decided to stay and, as things turned out, I was there until the end of September 1959, my ability to keep discipline improving greatly with experience and the help of a Day School Teachers’ Conference organised by the Baptist Union and held at St. Augustine’s College, Canterbury in August 1957.

As I look back on those years of teaching before I went to Oxford, I think I can see why God allowed it to happen that way. While I was waiting I was rather frustrated, thinking, Why am I teaching when God has called me to the ministry? But little did I know then that his plan for me was that most of my ministry would be teaching.

And although the major part of my teaching ministry has been to a different age group, even when teaching at degree level in Bible Colleges around the world, I have found that God has given me the ability to teach at a level that everyone can understand, something I repeatedly hear from grateful listeners. And perhaps at least part of that ability is a result of those years I spent teaching less able children while waiting to go to university.

God knows what he is doing, and he always has a purpose in what appear to us to be pointless pauses in our lives. But that brings me to an even more significant purpose in those years of waiting, for it was in those years that I met Eileen, the girl I was to marry and who was to be the ideal person to support me in my ministry.

Meeting Eileen

It was an incredibly hot day that Saturday afternoon. So hot in fact that the railway line buckled in the heat of the sun. It was Saturday 29th June, 1957 and we had arranged a youth rally where the young people from Elm Park Baptist would meet up with Hornchurch Baptist young people for fun and games in the park followed by an open air service.

Although the churches were only two miles apart, before then we had had little contact with them, so I actually knew none of the young people there. People have often asked me how I met Eileen and I have usually replied, In the park!

After a game of rounders, we sat down in groups and had a picnic tea. I noticed a group of four rather attractive girls sitting a few yards away and thought I would like to take a closer look!

So I got up and walked towards them and happened to notice that one of them had taken her shoes off. On impulse, I picked up one of the shoes and ran off with it, with nothing in particular in mind other than just having a bit of fun. Needless to say, the owner of the shoe ran after me but was at something of a disadvantage as she had bare feet. I soon disappeared from view and hid the shoe under the bridge that spanned the park lake.

Of course, when she caught up with me, I felt a bit of an idiot and showed her where the shoe was. We got into conversation and I asked her if she would like to come to our Saturday evening youth club which took place after the open air service. She agreed and, after sharing a song sheet at the open air, I found out that her name was Eileen and that she was just six days older than me. After youth club I walked her home and kissed her goodnight. And that was the beginning of a relationship that lasted, with a short break, for 67 years and which ended only when the Lord called her home at the age of 85.

We agreed to meet again some time the following week, but the next day, after attending church in the morning, I decided to go to Hornchurch Baptist for their evening service in the hope of seeing Eileen again. She and her friend were sitting in the choir and her friend noticed me in the congregation and said to Eileen, He’s here!

After the service we went for a long walk in the park and from then on were to see each other just about every day. I discovered that Eileen had attended Romford County High School and had left after taking her O levels. At the time she was working at Barts (St. Bartholemew’s Hospital) in London, but a year later she accepted a post in the Dagenham Education Office which was closer to home.

But before that, I have to confess that there was a short break in our relationship during the last few months of 1957. I mentioned earlier that I attended a conference in Canterbury during the last week in August of that year. Everyone there was a qualified schoolteacher with the exception of me and one other person, a girl called Irene who was the same age as me and had been accepted to train as a teacher at the Chelsea College for Physical Education in Eastbourne.

Irene was extremely attractive, highly intelligent, and very good at sport – she was nearly good enough to beat me at table tennis! But she was having doubts about her faith, and I spent some time with her trying to encourage her. As a result we were both very attracted to each other and, to cut the story short, because I have never been proud of myself about this, we started to see each other after the conference was over.

When I next saw Eileen I told her, without mentioning Irene, that I felt we had been seeing too much of each other, that our relationship had been getting too intense – which it probably was – and that I thought we should cool it and not see each other for a while.

She later told me that she had not been too concerned because she was convinced that if I was the right one for her, the Lord would bring me back to her. Which he did. The relationship with Irene lasted only a few weeks – until the middle of October, when I went to Eastbourne for a weekend to see her at her college. In short, she jilted me!

But not long before Christmas the young people from Hornchurch Baptist came to Elm Park to take our Friday evening YPF meeting. And who should be singing in the choir but Eileen. I think we spoke briefly after the meeting, just polite conversation, but it was enough to arouse my interest in her again. So I sent her a Christmas card, and she replied by sending me one and enclosing this short poem:

I do believe that God above created you for me to love.

He picked you out from all the rest because he knew I’d love you best.

I had a heart so warm and true, but now it’s gone from me to you.

Take care of it as I have done, for you have two and I have none.

Not the best poetry in the world, but it touched my heart and I wrote to Eileen – I still have a copy of that letter – asking if she would like to resume our relationship. And from January 2^nd 1958 hardly a day passed without our seeing each other.

Talk 7 Elm Park Baptist Church (1951-1958) Part 2

Welcome to Talk 7 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Today I’m going to tell you about my decision to follow Christ, my baptism and church membership, and my call to the ministry.

My decision to follow Christ

As I mentioned in an earlier talk, I cannot remember a time when I did not believe in Jesus, and, when at the age of eight I was asked by my father if I believed that Jesus had died for me, my immediate answer was yes. That was, after all, what I had been brought up to believe. But there is more to salvation than believing. Jesus began his ministry by preaching,

The time has come…Repent and believe the gospel (Mark 1:15).

The fact that Jesus loved us enough to die for our sins demands a response. If we truly believe it, we will repent, because we will hate the fact that our sins made it necessary for Jesus to suffer and die in our place. And true repentance will involve not just being sorry. It will entail a decision to turn from our sin, and to dedicate our whole life to him.

I made that decision in April 1953 at the age of fourteen. Why it took so long I’m not quite sure. I remember that when I was about eleven my Sunday School Teacher asked us if we would like to ‘ask Jesus to come into our hearts’ and for some reason I didn’t respond. I think that part of the reason was embarrassment. I didn’t want my parents and some of my aunts making a fuss and saying how wonderful it was that David had ‘made a decision’. So what eventually prompted me to surrender to the claims of Christ and give my life to him?

Of course the correct theological answer to that question is the convicting power of the Holy Spirit working through the preaching of the Word of God. And that must have been what was happening, although I didn’t realise it at the time. For several weeks in Bible Class my father had been preaching on John 3:16. Week by week I was constantly challenged by the thought that, if God loved me so much that he gave his only Son to die on the cross and save me from my sins, surely the very least I could do would be to give my life to him.

So the major driving force behind my decision to do just that was undoubtedly the love of God. But that was not the only factor. There was also the fear of hell. And I think that may have been what finally clinched it. I was made very aware of the reality of hell through the preaching of Evangelist Tom Rees one Saturday night in the Central Hall, Westminster.

Elm Park was only an hour’s journey from central London and a group of us had travelled in to hear him ^[1]. Towards the close of his sermon, he stressed the dangers of rejecting Christ, and when he made the appeal I knew that I should stand up along with the many others who were responding to his message. But once again I resisted. My pride was holding me back. I didn’t want to make a public declaration that I was a sinner who needed to be saved.

My baptism

But the next day everything changed. There was to be a baptismal service in the evening and during the day my mother asked me if I had ever thought of being baptised, and I found myself saying yes. I understood very well that her question was not merely about being baptised. It carried with it part of the significance of baptism, the confession of Jesus Christ as my Saviour, my Lord, and my God.

And so that evening when the minister made the appeal at the end of his sermon, while the congregation was singing the closing hymn, I walked forward with several other young people to indicate publicly my decision to give my life to Jesus and my desire to obey him by being baptised.

The next baptismal service was arranged for July 19^th, so there were several weeks to wait. But that gave us the opportunity to attend weekly baptismal classes at the ‘manse’, the name given to the house where the minister lived. Each week he taught us the basics about the Christian life, paying special attention to the subject of baptism, and explaining why infant baptism, which is practised in some churches, is not biblical ^[2].

However, there was no teaching on the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which was something I did not hear about until I met some Pentecostal Christians a few years later. Nevertheless, I did find the minister’s teaching very helpful, and I think that’s why, when I became a pastor myself, I decided to provide similar classes for all those wanting to be baptised. In fact, the talks that I gave were later to form the basis of the contents of my little book, How to Live for Jesus. And of course they did include teaching on the baptism in the Spirit.

When the day scheduled for the baptismal service finally arrived, the baptisms took place at the end of the Sunday evening service. The minister, who was dressed in black waterproof clothing, went down into the water first. Then, one at a time, the candidates went down to be baptised and each of us was asked by name,

Do you acknowledge Jesus Christ as your Saviour, your Lord, and your God?

To which we replied, I do.

Then the minister would say,

Then on the confession of your faith and repentance towards God, I baptise you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

He then immediately baptised us, leaning us backwards into the water, dipping us right under (because that’s the meaning of the word baptise) and as we came up out of the water the whole church would sing,

            Follow, follow, I would follow Jesus, Anywhere, everywhere, I would follow on.

            Follow, follow, I would follow Jesus, Anywhere he leads me I will follow on.

And that is something I can honestly say I have tried to do ever since. And now, 72 years later, I have no regrets. The pathway he has led, and is still leading me on, has been wonderful. It has not always been easy, but it’s been far better than going my own way. God’s way is always best.

Church membership

After baptism, the next step was to become a church member. Of course, from the perspective of the New Testament, we all become members of the church the moment we receive Christ as our Saviour. We become members of the universal church which is comprised of all Christians, those already in Heaven, the church triumphant, and those still on earth, the worldwide church, the church militant. Our membership of that church remains permanent as long as we remain Christians.

But which local church we belong to may vary from time to time according to where we are living. And, of course, in any one area there may be several different local churches, which has sadly resulted in some Christians having no real commitment to any one local church and acknowledging no real accountability to any church leadership.

This is why many local churches, while recognising that all Christians who worship with them are members of the body of Christ, the universal church, nevertheless insist that to be a member of their local church a person must identify with the doctrinal beliefs of that church, acknowledge their accountability to the leadership and their fellow church members, and show a genuine commitment to that church.

And that was what was expected of me when, shortly after my baptism, I asked to become a member of Elm Park Baptist Church. The application process was simple. I had to ask someone who was already a member to be my sponsor. After a friendly interview he brought a report to the next Church Members’ Meeting and my name, together with the names of other young people who had been baptised at the same time as me, was put to the vote. As a result we were all accepted into membership.

Church membership carried with it the privilege of being able to join in the discussions at church meetings and included the right to vote, even for those of the minimum age for membership, which was just fourteen. I always enjoyed those meetings, which were held every two months. Being able to participate in decision making meant that I felt a sense of responsibility and I was constantly aware of developments in the church programme.

Now I realise that different churches operate in many different ways and that some leaders are hesitant to involve the members in this kind of way for fear of the kind of unpleasantness that I have heard has gone on in some church meetings. All I can say to that is that, in my experience, the advantages of involving the people in decision making on important matters far outweigh any disadvantages.

What’s more, the dangers of abuse and corruption that so often have taken place when all the power is vested in a few, or even in just one person, must be avoided at all costs. I do believe that leadership should lead, and lead by example. But to be a leader is not the same as being a dictator. If you are really a leader, people will follow you. That’s why, as a church leader, I have never been afraid to ask the people to endorse any major decisions made by the leadership team. But that brings me to my call to ministry.

My call to ministry

As a teenager, of course, my understanding of church and church leadership was very much determined by my limited experience of  Elm Park Baptist Church. Like most people then, and many people still today, I assumed that a local church must be led by a man called the minister or vicar. It was his responsibility to lead and preach at all the services and that, to do this, he needed to have received a special call from God.

So when I refer to my call to the ministry I am using the expression in the way that I understood things back then. I have since come to see things very differently, and that will become evident in later talks. For now, it will be enough to say that I now understand that the word minister simply means servant and that, since all God’s people are called to serve him, all God’s people are in a sense ministers. But that is not to say that some people do not receive a special call to some particular area of service.

In my particular case, I now realise that other people may have seen in me the potential to become a preacher long before I realised it myself. I was only fourteen when I was asked to give a short talk in the Sunday evening service at my church. It was what was called a Youth Sunday when the young people from my father’s Bible class were asked to take responsibility for the service.

Three of us were asked to speak for five minutes each and my father gave us help as to what we might say. That was my first experience of public speaking and, to my surprise, the following year I was invited to take on the preaching single handed. Then, another year later, I was asked to preach at the Sunday morning service. I am so grateful to the church leaders for spotting the potential that was in me and giving me the opportunity to develop it.

Even then, however, although I enjoyed preaching, I did not feel any sense of call. That came when I attended a Baptist Church summer school held at Mamhead, not many miles from where I now live in beautiful Devon. Mamhead House, built in the nineteenth century regardless of cost and set in 164 acres of glorious parkland overlooking Lyme Bay and Exmouth has been described as ‘Devon’s grandest country mansion’.

Summer School was a holiday for young Christians which included sessions of teaching until 11:00 AM and evening meetings for worship and further teaching after the evening meal. The rest of the day was taken up with leisure activities which included trips to the nearby seaside town of Dawlish, coach trips to Dartmoor, and rambles in the countryside surrounding Mamhead.

I attended Summer School there for three years in succession from 1954 to 1956. But it was in 1955 that the Lord clearly spoke to me about my future. I had completed my O Levels in 1954 and was now halfway through my A Level course and beginning to think about my future. But I wasn’t particularly looking for guidance at that point as I was expecting to go to university after my A Levels and felt I had plenty of time to make up my mind.

Then, one evening, after the preacher had finished speaking and we had sung the final song, the Revd. Cyril Rushbridge, who had been leading the meeting, said something like this:

This isn’t part of what we had planned for this evening, but I just feel that the Lord wants me to tell you how I felt my call to the ministry.

He went on to explain that he had had no dramatic experience like Saul on the road to Damascus but described in a simple way how he had ‘received his call’. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the details of what he said. All I can tell you is that when he had finished speaking I just knew that God wanted me to be a minister. And to clinch it, Kathleen O’Connor, a girl from our church came up to me as soon as the meeting had finished and said,

David, do you now know what God wants you to do with your life?

To which I replied,

Yes, Kate, I’m going to be a minister.

I later went and spoke with the Revd. Rex Mason, a graduate of Regent’s Park College, Oxford, who had been the preacher that evening and asked for his advice. He had read English (I think) at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, before going on the read Theology at Regent’s Park. He recommended that I do something similar, widening my outlook on life by taking a degree in something different before concentrating on Theology.

The next thing to do was to let my parents know what had happened and, as I was away at Mamhead for at least another week, I sent them a postcard saying something like,

I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve decided to be a minister!

And when I got home they told me something they had never told me before. They had prayed for this from before I was born.

I also told my minister, the Revd. Leslie H. Moxham, about my call to the ministry and asked if there was anything I could do immediately to start to prepare for what God was calling me to. And he suggested that I start attending the midweek Prayer and Bible Study meeting, something I had not done because of all my other commitments to church activities. So I did what he suggested and was not disappointed. He was a great Bible teacher and I learnt a lot in those meetings, even though, as I have already mentioned, the number of meetings got me into trouble with my History teacher at school.

So looking back, I am very grateful to God for my years at Elm Park Baptist and, although I was to move on when I was baptised in the Spirit in 1959, my remaining years there were to prove some of the most exciting and significant years of my life.

But that’s the subject of the next talk.

Talk 6. Elm Park Baptist Church (1951-1958) Part One

Welcome to Talk 6 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. In the last two episodes I have been talking about my experiences at Brentwood School. Today we’re turning to my time at Elm Park Baptist Church.

One great advantage of being a day boy rather than a boarder at Brentwood School was that I was free on Sundays to attend church. It also meant that I came into regular contact with girls, something which was seriously lacking for boys who were boarders.

This, I think, was quite important for me because, as an only child, I had no sisters, but at least through the activities of the local church I was able to form healthy relationships with the opposite sex. In fact I suspect that as a teenager the girls were one of the attractions of going to church! And at Elm Park Baptist there were plenty of activities to choose from. So let’s begin by talking about the church programme.

Church programme

Unlike many churches today where there is only one meeting on a Sunday and another, perhaps, during the week, at our church something was happening every single day of the week. Of course, Sunday was the busiest day. From 10-11am the Boys’ Brigade held their Bible Class. From 11-12 there was the Morning Service.

In the afternoon there was Sunday School from 2.30-3.30 and again from 3.30-4.30, the numbers attending being so great that two separate sessions were necessary. For teenagers there was Bible Class (taught by my father) followed by a discussion group for young people held between 4 and 5pm.

Very often we stayed at church for tea in order to be there for the 6.30 Evening Service which was then followed by a ‘sing-song’ at about 8pm. In fact, apart from going home at lunch time for the traditional Sunday roast prepared by my mother, as a teenager I was at church from 10am to 9pm every Sunday.

During the week, meetings for young people included the Boys’ Brigade, the Girls’ Life Brigade, the Young People’s Fellowship (YPF), and the Youth Club. For adults there was a midweek meeting for Prayer and Bible Study conducted by the Minister, and there were separate men’s meetings and women’s meetings too. All these activities took place on church premises. There were never any home groups in those days. That was something that became popular in the 1970s.

My personal involvement

I was personally involved in most of the activities I’ve just mentioned. This was not the result of any parental coercion. I just wanted to be there and, as I have already mentioned, on Sundays I was at church for almost the whole day. This was from the age of 14 until I was about 17.  It was largely through my father’s teaching in Bible Class on Sunday afternoons that I decided to give my life to Jesus – but more of that later.

Dad was a gifted preacher and teacher, and the majority of the thirty or more young people attending Bible Class made decisions for Christ as a result of his ministry. Whenever there was a baptismal service on a Sunday evening, Mum and Dad would invite three or four young people to come for tea after Bible Class and then go on to the service after tea.

Over the years, many of those young people responded to the appeal at the end of the service and walked forward to indicate that they were giving their lives to Jesus and would like to be baptised. One of those young people was my friend, Don Campbell, who emigrated to Australia and, when I last heard from him two or three years ago, he was still attending a Baptist church over there.

Apart from the Bible Class I attended on Sunday afternoons, I also went to the Boys’ Brigade Bible Class every Sunday morning. The Boys’ Brigade was found by Sir William Smith in 1886. If I remember it correctly, its purpose was:

The advancement of Christ’s kingdom among boys, and the promotion of habits of obedience, reverence, discipline, self-respect, and all that tends towards a true Christian manliness.

As well as the Sunday morning Bible Class, our company, which was known as the Second Hornchurch Company of the Boys’ Brigade, held two other meetings each week. Tuesday evenings were dedicated to drill practice, where, after we had been inspected to ensure that we were smartly dressed and our uniforms were being worn correctly, we learned how to stand to attention correctly, to salute the Lieutenants and Captain, and to do basic marching manoeuvres both individually and as company.

When I was seventeen and had been promoted to the rank of sergeant I was awarded the N.C.O’s Proficiency Star after demonstrating that I could give the correct commands for the Company to make these manoeuvres on drill parade.

Of course all this was exactly the same kind of thing the other boys at my school were doing in the CCF and I realise that some might see my being in the Boys’ Brigade as quite inconsistent with my refusal to join the CCF on the grounds that I was a conscientious objector. However, unlike the boys in the CCF, in the BB we were not taught to use military weapons.

On Fridays, time was given for more recreational activities, and opportunity was given to learn to play the bugle or a drum. After a couple of attempts at making the right sound come out of a bugle – it’s by no means as simple as just blowing – I decided it wasn’t for me. This was partly because at the time I found it difficult to sing in tune and I reasoned that if I couldn’t sing properly I probably wouldn’t be able to keep in tune on the bugle either! And sadly all the drums were already allocated to other boys.

But perhaps the best thing about the BB was its annual camp. This took place every year during the school summer holidays. Wherever it was held, it was always within walking distance of the sea.

My first camp was a great adventure for me as, at the age of twelve, I had never been away from home without my parents. It was held in Mudeford on the south coast of England, and I loved it. I went to BB camp on six occasions, Mudeford (1951), Highcliffe in Dorset (1952), Walmer in Kent (1953, ’54, and ’55), and Corton in Suffolk (1956).

It was fun sleeping in a field with six other boys in a tent, each with a straw-filled sack called a paillasse (pronounced pally ass!) as a mattress, your kit bag as a pillow, and only a couple of rough, rather itchy, blankets to keep you warm. If sleeping-bags were invented back then, we’d certainly never heard of them! I say it was fun, and it was, just rather uncomfortable fun.

And, of course, the first night we hardly slept. And when we did finally get to sleep it wasn’t long before we awakened by the musical notes of the bugle playing Reveille. Time to get up, get washed and dressed and go to the toilet. The toilets or ‘latrines’ were just holes in the ground dug the day before by the ‘advance party’ who had travelled down earlier to prepare the camp site, and the washing facilities were just metal bowls of cold water on trestle tables.

Every day was punctuated with a variety of bugle calls summoning us to ‘fall in’ (form a line outside our tents), or telling us that the next meal was ready, and so on, until the final call of the day, which was ‘lights out.’ Apart from mealtimes, activities included getting your tent ready for ‘tent inspection’ each morning, doing chores like peeling potatoes (otherwise known as ‘spud-bashing’), going down to the beach for a supervised swim, leisure activities such as football and cricket, and a certain amount of free time.

There were also various devotional activities, like a service in the marquee on Sunday mornings and, if I remember correctly, a Bible reading and short word from the camp padre after breakfast on other days. But for most boys, the majority of whom did not come from Christian homes, the ‘religious’ bits were something you endured rather than enjoyed in order to be allowed to join in the fun that the other aspects of BB had to offer. In fact, as far as I know, sadly, very few of the fifty boys in the company ever made a decision for Christ.

The benefits for me, however, were inestimable. BB instilled in me the need for personal discipline and loyalty. It gave me the opportunity to mix with boys who were from a very different social background from most of my friends at Brentwood School. It gave me experience in leadership, and it taught me a great deal about how to organise a camp – something that was to prove very valuable when later, in pastoral ministry, I was able year after year to run a Youth Camp for up to 150 teenagers where we saw dozens of young people saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. But that’s a story for a later talk.

Apart from the uniformed organisations like the BB and the GLB (Girls’ Life Brigade, a title later to be abbreviated to Girls’ Brigade), there were three other weekly opportunities for young people to meet together.

I have already mentioned the teenage Bible Class led by my father on Sunday afternoons, but I also attended the YPF (Young People’s Fellowship) on Friday evenings and Youth Club on Saturday evenings.

YPF was an opportunity for young Christians to meet together to worship the Lord, pray, share testimonies, and learn from the Word. There was also plenty of time for discussion, which was something I particularly enjoyed. It took place in what was called the parlour, which even then was a rather old-fashioned term for a lounge. This was at the back of the church building, right next to the kitchen, so conveniently situated for making hot drinks at the end of the meeting.

The Youth Club was primarily intended to be an opportunity for evangelism. Held in the Youth Hall, part of the church’s property but separate from the main building, it provided facilities for table-tennis, snooker, darts etc. and was followed by a fifteen-minute epilogue which included a hymn, a prayer and a short message.

Looking back on it, I think that, although it was valuable as a means of keeping young people off the streets, Youth Club was not an effective tool of evangelism. Most of the forty or so young people who came to it never came to any of the other church activities and I cannot remember any who became Christians as a result of it.

But that is not to say that such activities can never be effective. Perhaps if it had been led by someone with a clear evangelistic gift the results might have been very different. I was later to learn that for effective evangelism there is no substitute for the power of the Holy Spirit. That is what will attract people to Jesus, and that is what will keep them going on with God. But that’s a subject for later.

Next time I’ll be sharing how at Elm Park Baptist I first dedicated my life to Christ, was baptised, became a church member, started to preach, and felt God calling me to become a minister of the Gospel.