309 My Story Talk 22 Facing New Challenges

My Story  Talk 22 Facing New Challenges

We said goodbye to Basingstoke after a moving farewell weekend at the end of July 1978 and moved to Mattersey with a great sense of excitement and anticipation. We knew without a shadow of a doubt that the Lord was sending us there, but we were also aware that great challenges lay ahead, not just for the College, but for us as a family too.

 

Challenges for the family

The immediate challenge for the family was that there was nowhere suitable for us to live. The College did not have space to accommodate us for more than a few weeks before the students returned in September and although living in the attic rooms of the old building was fun for a while, it was hardly ideal for a normal family life. But fortunately we knew that the situation would not last for long.

 

Because I was an only child and, therefore, our children were my parents’ only grandchildren, our moving to Mattersey meant that we were now 250 miles away. Naturally, my parents wanted to be nearer to us than that and decided that they would move to be near us. Some new houses and bungalows were being built in the village, right opposite the College and Mum and Dad decided to buy one of them. However, they had still not sold their bungalow in Dorset.

 

So to resolve the problem of our accommodation as a family the Board of Governors, with the help of the AoG Property Trust, loaned my parents the purchase price of the new bungalow in Mattersey on the understanding that Eileen, the children and I could live in it until a new house could be built for us in the College grounds. My parents were to repay the interest free loan once they had sold their bungalow.

 

This arrangement worked very well and for our first year at Mattersey we lived in the bungalow, and in the summer of 1979 had the joy of moving into Koinonia, a new four-bedroomed house which we had had the privilege of helping to design, along with the challenges of overseeing the erection of a new-build property! It was also wonderful to have my parents living closer to us than ever before since we were married.

 

But housing was not the only challenge facing us as a family during our first year at Mattersey. The children had to adjust to new schools. Deborah was 14 and Sarah 13 and having been used to a Comprehensive School in Basingstoke had now been accepted by the Elizabethan High School in Retford where the curriculum was different and meant that they had quite a bit of catching up to do in some subjects.

 

Jonathan was just 7 and fortunately there was a primary school in the village, where I think he settled in quite well, although he had to get used to the fact that the other children spoke with a different accent and thought that he was ‘posh’. He once came home and said to Eileen,

Mummy, my friends don’t say ‘something’. They say ‘summat’.

 

But by and large the children adjusted very well, as also did Eileen who had now become the College Matron. This was not a position she had sought. She had thought that when I became the principal she would just be my wife and lend a hand in the College when she could. However, when, shortly after my appointment, Aaron Linford, the Chairman of the Board of Governors, had asked me,

 

Will Mrs. Petts be the Matron?

and I had replied that she was not expecting to be employed by the College, he said,

            Well, if she becomes the Matron we can pay her.

 

And that, of course, settled it! It did take time for Eileen to adjust to her new role which entailed heading up the entire domestic side of life at the College, but over the 21 years that she did it she grew in confidence, exercising her authority with kindness and firmness, signing off her memos to students with the letter M, which, I think some of the students understood to stand for Mum rather than Matron. I attribute much of our success at Mattersey to her, though, if she were still with us, I know she would be quick to deny it.

 

So the move to Mattersey presented challenges to all of us as a family, but there were challenges for me personally too. These included the challenges of new responsibilities, new relationships with the staff and governors, and the expectations that my fellow AoG ministers had of me.

 

The challenge of new responsibilities

The Principal of the Bible College was appointed by the General Council, meeting at its Annual General Conference. (The General Council, which under God, was the final authority for decision-making in the fellowship, comprised all accredited AoG ministers together with delegates or representatives from churches which had no minister).

 

The appointment was for two years, and although this was later changed to four, it meant that I was subject to re-election on a regular basis. Like all other Heads of Department in AoG (e.g. Home Missions, Overseas Missions, etc.), as Principal I had to submit an annual report to the Conference and to answer any questions before the vote for re-election took place.

 

Although this did, I confess, lead to a certain sense of insecurity, it did mean that I knew that I was accountable, and I knew to whom I was accountable. This is vitally important for anyone privileged to hold a position of authority. And the position with which I had been entrusted carried with it a considerable amount of authority and indeed of responsibility.

 

But that brings me to the more specific details of my responsibilities as principal. These included overseeing the welfare of the students, staff, and faculty, appointing the faculty and planning the curriculum, hiring the staff, interviewing prospective students, maintaining discipline, and promoting the College by advertising in magazines and visiting local churches, and maintaining the College property, buildings and land.

 

But of course, I was not expected to do all this single-handed. I soon discovered that what the Lord had shown me at Basingstoke about the principles of team leadership in a local church was to be just as relevant to the leadership of the College. Despite all the authority vested in me as principal and the responsibilities that accompanied it, I was very conscious right from the start that I needed the help and advice of those who worked with me.

 

The challenge of new relationships

When we arrived at Mattersey the key workers at the College were John Carter and Ernest and Joan Anderson. Some of the previous principals on taking up office had seen fit to appoint an entirely new faculty and staff, but this was not something which I was prepared to consider. I felt that I needed the help of those who already had the experience of working at Mattersey and, anyway, asking them to leave would have hardly been fair to them, bearing in mind their faithful service to the College.

 

John Carter was now in his eighties and living in the College as a resident tutor. He had had a long association with the College, first when his brother Howard was principal when the College was at Hampstead, and later when he himself was the principal at Kenley. For us as a family it was a great pleasure to share meals with this lovely old man in the College dining hall and gain from his wisdom and long experience of serving the Lord. He was always ready to give advice but never offered it unless I asked him for it. He remained as a lecturer at the College until the Lord took him home in 1982 when I had the privilege of officiating at his burial in the cemetery at Mattersey.

 

Ernest and Joan Anderson and their three children were also living in the College when we arrived. It was clear to me that they had held the College together during David Powell’s principalship by their dedicated hard work. I had got to know them during my monthly visits to lecture at Mattersey and I knew that their continued service at the College would be vital for at least the first few years of my principalship.

 

Ernest served not only as a lecturer but was also responsible for book-keeping, student ministry and evangelism, and for the upkeep of the seven acres of the grounds and garden. Joan had an incredible capacity for hard work and supervised the catering and cooking and much more. I will always be grateful to the Andersons for the help they gave me while I was finding my feet in my first few years as principal. They had faithfully carried a heavy burden, and I understood why in 1980 they decided to move back into pastoral work.

 

We had worked happily together but there is always the potential for friction when a new leader takes over, and I’m sure that there must have been areas where they were not entirely happy with my decisions, especially as Ernest had hoped that he might have become the principal and had accepted nomination for it. But the humility and gracious spirit displayed by all concerned meant that any friction there might have been was reduced to a minimum.

 

And what was true of the staff was also true of the Board of Governors who were also appointed by the General Council and to whom I was required to report every term. I think the support I received from the Board was probably due to three main things. Firstly, it was the Board who had nominated me for the job in the first place. Secondly, in my first year I had shared the principalship with Alfred Missen and Keith Munday, older men who contributed much to the reorganising of the College and from whom I gained a clearer sense of what might be expected of a principal.

 

And thirdly, in line with the earlier history of the College, there was still a widespread feeling in AoG that the man of God’s choice should be given his head to lead the College as he felt led by the Holy Spirit. The members of the Board did not see it as their role to tell the principal how to run the College, but rather to support, advise, and where necessary warn. And for this I was always grateful, especially when dealing with the occasional disciplinary situation with regard to a student or even a member of staff or faculty.

 

So the challenge of new responsibilities and new relationships was made easier because of the dedicated help of the governors, faculty, and staff. Without it we could never have achieved what, by the grace of God, we were able to accomplish during the 27 years of my principalship. But perhaps the greatest challenge I faced throughout those years was meeting the expectations of Assemblies of God.

 

The challenge of the expectations of Assemblies of God

To appreciate fully the reality of that challenge it is essential to understand the variety of expectations held at the time by my fellow ministers. These ranged from those who did not see any need at all for a college to those who saw the urgency of a thorough training, both theological and practical, for those who were called to the important task of Christian ministry.

 

This tension arises from the fact that as Pentecostals we believe in the power of the Spirit to equip us for service, but we also believe in the authority of Scripture and the importance of understanding the Bible correctly. I remember that when I was first appointed to the Board of Governors, Tom Woods, an elderly pastor, well respected for his proven prophetic gift, approached me and said,

 

David, I give you this charge, keep the College Pentecostal.

 

And this, I assured him, was something I fully intended to do. But his comment almost certainly reflected a suspicion of academic learning held by many of the older Pentecostals of that generation.

 

This was well summarised by Donald Gee, a renowned Pentecostal pioneer and former principal of the College, when, speaking of the beginnings of the college, he wrote:

 

A movement that embodies such a special testimony to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit has always tended to look askance at even the simplest form of scholastic training.

 

But he then goes on to acknowledge that

In more mature years the genuine place and value of Bible schools has been generally conceded, and even enthusiastically welcomed, in the Pentecostal Movement [1].

 

Nevertheless, at least for the opening years of my principalship, I was sometimes challenged by well-meaning ministers who suspected that the direction I was taking was too academic and I’m sure that there are still those who hold that view. But these good people clearly did not know me very well. The Lord who had baptised me in his Spirit had also given me academic ability, and I knew which was the more important! And improving the academic standard by no means prevented us from keeping the College Pentecostal.

 

In fact, it had always been a Pentecostal college, as indeed it still is. It was started by the Pentecostal Missionary Union in July 1909. It was led by Pentecostal ministers, most notable of whom were Howard Carter (1921-1948) and Donald Gee (1951-1963), both prominent figures in Assemblies of God.

 

However, although it always had a close relationship with AoG, it was only in 1951that it was given to AoG. Before then, during Howard Carter’s leadership, William Kay informs us that Carter had run his school without a Board of Governors and that:

 

…though he allowed Assemblies of God representatives to inspect the premises and comment on the doctrinal position of the curriculum, it was always perfectly clear that he had the last word on what was done…

 

and that it was his wish that

 

at no stage should the work lose its independence [2].

 

My purpose in saying this is to point out that for many years the College had run as a separate independent enterprise and although it was now, in the words of the AoG constitution, owned and controlled by Assemblies of God, it was still expected to run its own affairs and to finance itself. For example, the finances of all other AoG departments came under the control of the General Treasurer, but the Bible College employed its own bursar.

 

So the challenges facing me were not only those of new relationships and new responsibilities, but also the ongoing tension between some Pentecostals and the academic and the dichotomy between what the AoG constitution required of me and the expectations of fellow ministers which were not always in line with that constitution or indeed with what I believed to be the will of God. However, the advice and support of the faculty and the Board of Governors were of great help, and with them behind me I learned to press ahead with what I felt the Lord was saying and leave the consequences with him.

 

 

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[1] Donald Gee, Wind and Flame, p. 60

[2] William K Kay, Inside Story, p. 208.