Great Bible Truths with Dr David Petts
Dr David Petts is an international speaker and author who is best known for his 27 years as Principal at Mattersey Hall Bible College and his in-depth but easily understood teaching on the Holy Spirit. Now retired, he enjoys preaching locally and sometimes further afield. These podcasts are your opportunity to experience Dr Petts' teaching first hand!
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328 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 5 Key Principles in 1 Corinthians 14 :26
07/01/2026
328 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 5 Key Principles in 1 Corinthians 14 :26
Talk 5 Key Principles in 1 Corinthians 14:26 Hello again, and welcome to Talk 5 in our series on NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings. Today we’re going to be seeking to identify the key principles underlying our key verse for this series, 1 Corinthians 14:26: What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. I see three key principles in this verse, Participation, Variety, and Edification. Paul wants everyone to participate in the meeting. This will happen in a variety of ways. And the purpose of it all is to strengthen or edify the church. Participation Paul hardly needed to recommend that the Corinthians participate in their meetings. That was something they were doing already. The problem was not lack of participation, but too much participation in things that did not edify the church, like speaking in tongues without interpretation, and everyone speaking in tongues at the same time. But despite these problems, Paul still wants them to participate. He just wants them to participate in the right way – for the strengthening of the church. As we saw from chapter 12, every part of the body is needed. There should always be opportunity, whenever we gather, for the expression of the many gifts and graces that the Spirit has imparted to the members. This should be easy enough in home groups, even if it’s not always possible in church. But even there, I believe there should always be opportunity for them to do so And they should be encouraged to do so. People are more likely to participate when time is specifically allocated for this, and it’s made clear that participation is welcome. If we really want people to participate, we must make room for it. Variety Paul refers to: a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. These are, of course, just a representative sample of what might happen in a meeting, but they suggest three main areas: · The musical dimension (a hymn) · The doctrinal dimension (a word of instruction) · The supernatural dimension (a revelation, a tongue, etc). We have already dealt with the supernatural dimension at some length. So we will confine our attention to the musical and doctrinal dimensions. The musical dimension – everyone of you has a hymn The first thing Paul refers to in 14:26 is a hymn. Actually, the word in Greek is literally a psalm, and everywhere else in New Testament it refers to one of the Psalms in the Old Testament. However, a psalm has been defined as a song or poem used in worship, so the translation hymn is quite appropriate. But what exactly did Paul mean by having a psalm? At the very least, Paul is saying is that everyone should have the opportunity to contribute to the worship by having a song. But how do you have a song? This must mean more than joining in the songs chosen in advance by the worship leader! So does he mean that everyone should have the opportunity to sing a solo?! Clearly not! So how can we put Paul’s recommendation into practice? Well, one way would be to do what we used to do years ago. We could give opportunity for people to choose a hymn for everyone to sing, or, in a time of open worship, to spontaneously start singing a well-known hymn or chorus for everyone to join in – but please don’t do that if you’ve got a voice like mine! It’s not your ministry! I realise that this may not easily fit in with modern styles of worship where the pursuit of excellence in performance is important, but I do know from experience what a blessing it can be when someone in the congregation spontaneously has a song in one of the ways I have just suggested – and this should be easy enough to make room for in home groups . But now I want to look at the only other reference to singing in 1 Corinthians 14, where in verse 15, talking about singing in tongues, Paul says: I will sing with my spirit (in tongues), but I will also sing with my mind (in a language I understand). We’ve already seen that this is part of what Paul is recommending for the use of tongues in private, but this raises the question as to whether singing in tongues is appropriate in public. There may be a reference to this in Ephesians 5:19, where Paul mentions spiritual songs along with psalms and hymns. KJV is more literal than NIV when it translates this as speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord… We know from 1 Corinthians 14 that speaking in tongues is one way of speaking to ourselves and to God (28) and that in doing so we are praying or singing with our spirit (14-15). However, in Ephesians 5:19 it’s unclear whether Paul is envisaging a public or private situation. The reference to heart rather than hearts might suggest that he is speaking to them as individuals, whereas speaking to yourselves (plural) could be taken to refer to when they are gathered in worship. Perhaps he intends both. At Pentecost the disciples were filled with the Spirit both collectively and individually. And we need, both as a church and as individuals within it, to keep on being filled with the Spirit. If I can sing in tongues privately to maintain the fulness of the Spirit, cannot the church do so collectively? I confess that I was once rather concerned about this, especially when unbelievers were present, on the basis of what Paul says about them thinking we are mad (14:23). But then something happened that made me think again. During part of the time when I was Principal of Mattersey Hall Bible College, the college chapel was across the road from the main part of our campus, and the students’ worship could easily be heard by anyone passing by. There would often be times when everyone was spontaneously singing in tongues to worship the Lord, and I wondered what the local residents might think of it. But I was greatly reassured when I heard that one of them had asked: What is that beautiful singing I sometimes hear when I walk past your chapel? It’s so unusual, and it gives me a great sense of peace. The Corinthians were undoubtedly out of order in the way they were exercising the gift of tongues and clearly needed the strong warning that Paul gave them. But perhaps today he might be encouraging some churches at least to move in the opposite direction! As at Pentecost, there will always be those who criticise the moving of the Spirit, but if we are able to give an explanation of what’s happening, as Peter did, there may well be more who are persuaded by our message than those who oppose it. The doctrinal dimension – a word of instruction The Greek word translated in NIV as a word of instruction is didache, which literally means teaching. It can also mean doctrine. Paul says relatively little about this in 1 Corinthians 14, but in verse 19 he stresses the importance of teaching when he says: But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. And of course, most of the contents of Paul’s letters were written to instruct the churches in the truth and to expose false doctrine. What we believe is of vital importance and every genuine experience of the Spirit finds its foundation in the truth of God’s word. There are many scriptures that emphasise the importance of doctrine. In WYCT Chapter 8, for example, I refer to Matthew 15:9 and 16:12, John 8:32, Colossians 2:22, 1 Timothy 4:13, 16, 2 Timothy 3:16, Titus 1:9 and 2:10, and 2 John 7-10. The sound exposition of the Scriptures is essential whenever we come together. The teaching of the Word of God shouldn’t be neglected in favour of other things. As we’ll see later, there needs to be balance in our meetings. Edification This is the major theme of the whole chapter. If love is the dominant theme of chapter 13, in chapter 14 edification is the way that love is expressed in the context of the gathered church. That’s why Paul says everything must be done for the strengthening of the church. We have already looked at Paul’s specific teaching on tongues, interpretation, and prophecy in some detail, but now we need to consider the key principles that underly that teaching and see if they can be applied more widely than the specific issues Paul was addressing in Corinth. As we do so, we will discover five principles that need to be applied if our meetings are to be edifying. Putting other people first This is the principle underlying Paul’s teaching in verses 1-5. There he is saying that in church prophecy is more valuable than tongues because when you speak in tongues you edify only yourself, but if you prophesy you will edify others. He picks up the same theme in verse 17: You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not edified. The principle underlying this teaching is putting others first. And that principle can be applied far more widely than the issue of speaking in tongues. For example, it’s good that I have the freedom to stand and worship the Lord while others are sitting down, but if by standing I prevent the person behind me from singing because they cannot see the words on the screen in front, I may be ‘giving thanks well’, but the other person is not edified. We need to be considerate to others in the way we worship the Lord. And perhaps those of us who frequently lead in prayer, and sometimes several times in a meeting, might consider holding back to make space for others so do so. As my old pastor, Alfred Webb, used to say, Please don’t take more than your fair share of the cake! Intelligibility Another of the ways we can build up our fellow Christians is by making sure they can understand. In verse 9 Paul says: Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? Of course, he’s talking about the futility of speaking in tongues in church unless it’s interpreted. It’s pointless unless people can understand it. But that’s true of everything we do in church. Not everything we say in English is easy to understand – but it should be! This applies to our preaching, our prayers, the songs we sing, our praise and worship – everything. In verse 16 it’s clear that Paul expects that everyone present should be able to say Amen to whatever we say, but to do that they must first understand it, …how can one who… does not understand say "Amen" to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? For example, how can I say Amen to someone’s prayer or praise if I can’t make out what they’re saying because the people around me are making too much noise, or if the background music is too loud? Saying Amen means expressing your agreement with what’s been said, and you can’t do that if you haven’t heard it properly. Responsibility As we saw in the last talk when discussing prophets and prophecy, Paul says that The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets (32). This implies that both prophets and those who have the gift of prophecy are responsible for what they say and how they use their gifts. But the need to take responsibility for our actions goes far wider than the gift of prophecy. If God has entrusted us with any spiritual gift, we are responsible for how we use it. For example, the Holy Spirit does not force us to speak in tongues. He enables us to do so. We are responsible for when, how often, and how loudly. This principle applies to everything we do in church. We are to follow the teaching of Scripture and of our leaders (37-38) and we cannot make the excuse: I couldn’t help it. The Holy Spirit made me do it. And, as we have already said, the very fact that Paul gave us instructions on how these gifts should be used shows that we are responsible for how we use them. Order Paul says that God is not a God of disorder but of peace (33), and it’s our responsibility to see that everything is done in a fitting and orderly way (40). In the context this meant ensuring that speaking in tongues should be done one at a time and that only one person should interpret each utterance (27). And the same principle applied to the use of prophecy (30). Paul’s specific teaching on this still applies today, but the wider principle holds good for everything we do. Everything should done in a fitting and orderly way. Balance Finally, it’s clear from Paul’s teaching that there needs to be a measure of balance in our meetings. In Corinth there was too much speaking in tongues. In another church it might be too much music, or even too much teaching! If there is to be the variety of which Paul speaks in verse 26, and if each member is to have the opportunity to contribute, leaders need to ensure that there is a healthy balance in each meeting. But that is not to say that there cannot be special occasions when an entire meeting is given over to teaching, or to prayer, or to worship, for example. Such occasions are not to be confused with our regular meetings, where preserving a measure of balance will be essential to the edification of all God’s people. Summary 1. There are three principles underlying Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 14:26 – participation, variety, and edification. 2. Our meetings should include the supernatural, the musical and the doctrinal. 3. Most important of all, everything should be done for the edification of the church. 4. That will be achieved by: a) putting others first b) making sure that what is said is intelligible c) taking responsibility for our actions d) preserving order and balance in our meetings. That’s it from me for today. Now over to group leaders for questions for discussion. Questions for discussion 1. How could we implement Paul’s recommendation to have a song in our meetings? 2. How much time should be allocated for teaching in our home groups? 3. How can we show more consideration for others by what we do in our meetings? Consider different ways of putting other people first. 4. How can we ensure that everything is done in a fitting and orderly way? 5. How can we encourage those who rarely, if ever, say anything in our meetings to participate more, and those who participate regularly (and maybe a bit too much?) to participate less? Which category do you come into?
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327 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 4 The Right Use of the Gift of Prophecy
06/24/2026
327 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 4 The Right Use of the Gift of Prophecy
Talk 4 The Right Use of Prophecy Hello again and welcome to Talk 4 in our series on NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings. In our last two talks we were looking at Paul’s teaching on tongues and interpretation. Today our subject is the gift of prophecy. We will consider what it is, its value and purpose, its limitations, and how it should be used in our meetings. What is prophecy? People sometimes confuse prophecy with foretelling the future, but its basic meaning is speaking on behalf of someone else. In the Bible it’s usually used to refer to speaking on behalf of God. And obviously, if you’re going to speak on behalf of God you need to hear from him first. This happens by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. In Old Testament times and right up to Acts 2 in the New Testament, the Spirit was given to relatively few people, but from Pentecost onwards the gift of the Spirit was made available to all God’s people. So prophecy in the New Testament worked rather differently from how it worked before Pentecost. There are now three different ways in which we may be said to prophesying: 1. When we tell others about Jesus we are speaking on God’s behalf and so there’s a sense in which we’re ‘prophesying’. This is something all Christians can, and should, do. 2. If we have received the spiritual gift of prophecy, when we use it we are prophesying. But this gift is not given to everyone. See 1 Corinthians 12:8-11, Romans 12:6). 3. If we have the ministry of a prophet, our prophecies may well contain supernatural revelation about the future. See, for example Agabus (Acts 11:27-28, 21:10). Not all Christians, and not even all who have the gift of prophecy, have this ministry. There isn’t time to go into all these three ways in these talks, but if you want more on this you’ll find it in WYCT Ch. 7, and Body Builders Chapters 9 and 12. In this series we’ll be limiting our attention to the spiritual gift of prophecy, because that’s mainly what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 14, where he describes it like this: … everyone who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort (v3). It’s listed among the supernatural gifts Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10. So, perhaps we could best define it as: The supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit which enables us to speak to others on behalf of God by the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort . So, it’s not the same as when we bring a brief encouraging word during an open time of prayer or worship. It’s only when there’s a distinctly supernatural element that such ‘words’ are really the gift of prophecy. The value and purpose of prophecy Paul valued prophecy very highly indeed. He begins 1 Corinthians 14:1 by saying: Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. This is the main theme of the chapter. And he ends the chapter as he has started it: Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy… (39). And we’ve seen in previous talks why he values it so highly. It’s because it edifies the church (1 Corinthians 14:4-5). That’s why he wants to us be passionate about it! Because …everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort (v.3). This, in the context of church worship, is the practical outworking of Paul’s teaching about love in chapter 13. We are to love our fellow Christians, and if we love them we will want to be a blessing to them, to strengthen, encourage, and comfort them. And that’s what prophecy does. But that’s not all. Prophecy can also have a powerful effect on unbelievers who may come into the church. 24 …if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, 25 and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!" So, prophecy is to be valued very highly, not only because it strengthens, encourages, and comforts believers, but also because of the powerful effect it can have on people who do not yet believe. But having said that, prophecy is not without its limitations. In 13:9-10 Paul says: For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. This is because at present our knowledge is incomplete. We see but a poor reflection as in a mirror (12). Our prophecies are imperfect because they are our prophecies, and we are not perfect yet. That’s why in 14:12 Paul tells us to try to excel in it. If our use of God’s precious gifts were perfect, we would not need to try to excel in them – in fact all Paul’s instructions about their use would have been unnecessary! And that’s why we’re told in 14:29 that we should weigh carefully what is said. But that brings us to how prophecy should be used in our meetings. The use of prophecy in our meetings Perhaps the first thing to say about the use of prophecy in our meetings is that we should always bear in mind its purpose, which is to strengthen, encourage, comfort, and edify God’s people (3-4). There is no suggestion that it should be used to rebuke them, or even to give them guidance. Paul tells us in Romans 8:14 that it’s our privilege as God’s children to be personally led by the Spirit . Guidance received through prophecy should simply serve as confirmation of something that God has already spoken to us about in our hearts. A good example of this is found in Acts 13:1-3 where the prophets and teachers in the church at Antioch were told by the Holy Spirit to set Barnabas and Paul apart for the work to which he had already called them. Similarly, in Acts 21:1-15, Agabus predicts what will happen to Paul, but he does not tell him what to do. Paul’s specific teaching (29-32) 29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30 And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31 For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32 The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. Two or three prophets should speak (29) Paul may be using the word prophet here to refer to people like Agabus, or he could be meaning those who exercise the simple gift of prophecy. Either way, the principles he is teaching apply to both. The first of these is that, although prophecy is to be encouraged, its use is to be limited, and it needs to be judged or weighed carefully. The others should weigh carefully what is said (29) The verb translated weigh carefully is the same as is used for distinguishing between spirits in 12:10. The clear implication is that every prophecy needs to be evaluated. It’s not infallible. However, despite its limitations, Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-20 that it’s not to be despised. But even that may indicate the possibility of human weakness in the operation of the gift. This could be why the Thessalonians had been despising it! So prophecy needs to be judged or weighed carefully. But this raises two questions. The first is: Who is responsible for judging it? Looking at the immediate context, Paul seems to mean the other prophets. The things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned (2:14), and those with a prophetic gift are more likely to weigh a prophetic revelation accurately. But surely the others may be applied more widely than that? Certainly, pastors or teachers have a special responsibility here, and in the context of a small group perhaps the group leader has too. We need to be alert for anything that might mislead God’s people. But it’s not just leaders who have this responsibility. We all have! We all have the capacity, and the responsibility, to weigh prophetic words. But that leads us to the second question: How is prophecy to be judged? There are two areas of importance here, its authenticity and its application. By authenticity I mean, first of all, its conformity to Scripture. Paul is very clear in verse 37 that what he is writing… is the Lord's command. All prophecy must be judged in the light of what the Spirit has already said in the Bible. But judging is more than an intellectual exercise based on our Bible knowledge. There is a spiritual dimension to it too. A ‘word’ may be in line with Scripture, but it may not be what the Spirit is emphasising to us right now. By application I mean that we need to consider to whom the prophecy may apply. Is it for me? Is it for the whole church? How do we apply it in practice? These are decisions that we all must make after hearing a prophecy. Clearly, we cannot judge it until we have heard it! However, in some churches people who feel they have a prophetic word to bring are expected to share it with the church leadership before bringing it publicly. The church leaders evaluate it before it is given. The advantages of this are twofold: · It prevents any unauthentic or inappropriate prophecy being given in public. · Those who are inexperienced, but eager to prophesy, feel more secure in having their prophecy confirmed by the leaders before bringing it. We sometimes encourage this in our church, but at the same time we don’t want those who have a proven track record in prophecy to feel they have to consult the church leaders before they prophesy. Their prophecies should be judged after they have delivered them, which is clearly what Paul had in mind in the verse we’re looking at. What’s more, to insist that leaders must be consulted before prophecies are given seems out of keeping with the encouragement Paul gives in verse 26 for all to participate, and with the spontaneity implicit in his teaching on the matter in verse 30. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop (30) This shows: · the spontaneity that Paul envisages in Christian meetings – there was no set liturgy · prophecy may also contain an element of revelation · the importance of making room for others. For you can all prophesy in turn (31) This doesn’t mean that everyone in the meeting can prophesy, because not everyone has the gift. And I think it’s unlikely that he means that everyone with the gift can prophesy in every meeting! Like tongues and interpretation, he limits prophetic words to two or three (v29). There’s good sense in this, because if we get too many people bringing too many ‘words’ we can’t possibly take it all in! The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets (32) All the gifts God gives us are under our control. This is clear from the fact that specific instructions are given for their use. If the use of the gifts were only dependent upon the Holy Spirit himself, such instructions would be both inappropriate and unnecessary. That’s why Paul teaches that we are able to: · regulate the number of prophetic utterances in any one meeting (14:29). · cease prophesying if something is revealed to someone else (14:30). · prophesy rather than speak in tongues if unbelievers are present (14:23-25). Our ability to control the gift of prophecy also implies that we are responsible for the way we express the message God has given us. I may believe that God has given me something to say, but I am not God, and I should not talk as if I were! And neither should you! So please, prophesy, but don’t say ‘I’. For example, it would be better to say The Lord loves you... than to say, I love you. Avoid giving the impression that you are God! But that now brings us to the final verses of 1 Corinthians 14. Note that verses 34-35 relate to women asking their husbands at home. It does not relate to women praying or prophesying in meetings, which Paul clearly allowed subject to the social conditions prevailing at the time (11:5). In verse 37 he insists that what he is writing is the Lord's command. Paul was a church leader and he was writing Scripture. Anyone who is truly spiritual will submit to the authority of Scripture and respect their church leaders. Finally, prophecy is to be encouraged, and tongues should not be forbidden (39). And whatever happens, everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way (40). That’s it. That’s all from me for now. Thanks for listening. Now, over to group leaders for questions for discussion. The Lord bless you. Questions for discussion 1. From what you’ve heard, how do you think we can distinguish between a brief encouraging ‘word’ and the gift of prophecy? 2. Why do you think Paul wants us to be eager to prophecy? 3. How can we encourage the use of this important gift in church and in our home groups? 4. Might a group discussion be a good way to evaluate a prophetic word? 5. You feel that a prophecy might be specifically for you, but you’re not quite sure. What should you do?
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326 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 3 The Right Use of Interpretation of Tongues
06/17/2026
326 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 3 The Right Use of Interpretation of Tongues
Talk 3 The Right Use of Interpretation of Tongues Hello again. Welcome to Talk 3 in our series on NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings. Last time, our subject was speaking in tongues and its right use in our meetings. We saw that we should not speak in tongues loudly unless it’s for interpretation and that it must only be spoken loudly if someone is there to interpret it. So today we’ll be looking in more detail at the important gift of interpretation of tongues. Apart from two references in chapter 12 (v10 and v30), our main source of material for understanding this gift is found in 1 Corinthians 14, so it would be good to have your Bible open there. In this talk I will: · Examine the references to interpretation of tongues · Discuss certain practical issues that arise from this · Finish with a brief summary. A. References to interpretation of tongues 1 Corinthians 12:10-11, 30 10 …and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? These verses make clear that not everybody has this gift. Each gift is given as the Holy Spirit determines. (By the way, speaking in tongues in verse 30 refers to its use in church, not to its private use as prayer with one’s spirit). 1 Corinthians 14:5 The person who prophesies is greater than the person who speaks in tongues, unless they interpret so that the church may be edified. This verse reveals the purpose of the gift – the edification of the church. As we saw in our last talk, prophesying is preferable to speaking in tongues because prophecy edifies the church whereas speaking in tongues does not, because no one can understand it (2). However, if speaking in tongues is interpreted, it can edify the church, in which case it is as valuable as prophecy. But this need not mean that it’s necessarily the same as prophecy. We will discuss this in more detail in a moment. 1 Corinthians 14:13 In verse 12 Paul tells the Corinthians to try to excel in gifts that build up the church. This gives the reason for what he says in verse 13. Anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that they may interpret… Why? Because the only way that speaking in tongues will edify others is if it is interpreted. Notice too that the verse does not mean that all interpretations should be given by the person who has spoken in tongues. The interpretation may very well be given by someone else. To allow someone other than the speaker in tongues to interpret means that more people are participating in the meeting, something Paul is keen to encourage, as the next passage makes clear. Verses 26-28 26 What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, two – or at the most three – should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28 If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. Verse 26 is the key verse upon which this series is based. It gives clear guidance on the sort of things we should expect in our meetings. Notice that tongues and interpretation are included in what Paul is recommending. But note the use of the word if in verse 27: If anyone speaks in a tongue… This shows us that Paul does not automatically assume that there will be speaking in tongues in the meeting. The things mentioned in verse 26 are not obligatory ingredients for every meeting. They are the kind of things to expect, but not necessarily in every meeting. The manifestation of spiritual gifts will vary from meeting to meeting as the Spirit leads. The main point is that whatever is taking place, everything must be done for the strengthening of the church. So, if anyone speaks in tongues, what should happen next? Paul is quite clear on this: If anyone speaks in a tongue, let it be by two or at the most three people. And let one person interpret (my translation). This doesn’t refer to private use of tongues in church, which is allowed, provided it’s done quietly, speaking to yourself and to God (28). It refers to the use of tongues for the purpose of interpretation, because Paul says, Let one person interpret. So, during the course of a meeting, no more than three people should speak in tongues with a view to interpretation. Another practical issue that we will need to consider in due course is how to understand and apply the final part of verse 27, which NIV translates as, Someone must interpret, but which KJV translates this as, Let one interpret (my emphasis), which is the literal translation of the Greek word that Paul uses here. That’s why, in the translation I offered earlier, I translated it as Let one person interpret. But this doesn’t mean that Paul is saying that if there are two or three utterances in tongues, the same person should give the interpretation for all of them. But more on this in a moment. Finally, Paul’s use of the word interpreter in verse 28 is interesting. He says: If there is no interpreter, the speaker (in tongues) should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. The term interpreter clearly indicates that those who exercised the gift of interpretation were seen as permanently possessing the gift. If that were not so, how could the speaker in tongues know whether there was an interpreter present or not? A person who has interpreted once can be expected to do so again. So, if we want to speak in tongues publicly, we need to check that there’s an interpreter present. And if there is, we are free to go ahead. Obviously that places a serious responsibility on the interpreter to be ready to interpret at any time, because we do not know when someone is going to speak in tongues. To know more about receiving spiritual gifts, you might like to visit my website () and listen to two short podcasts I gave in February 2019 (podcasts 018 and 019). B. Practical issues arising from Paul’s teaching i. The form the gift should take – prophecy or praise? There’s no time to go into much detail about this now, but I have said a bit more in WYCT pp77-79 and more still in Body Builders pp141-144. However, the short answer is this. As we saw last time, tongues can take the form of prayer or praise or giving thanks. So, if the gift of interpretation enables us to understand what is being said when someone speaks in tongues, it follows that the interpretation should take the same form as the tongue, whether prayer, or praise, or thanksgiving etc. But what about ‘messages’ in tongues where the interpretation sounds like a prophecy? Those who take the view that interpretation should take the form of a prophecy base their argument on 14:5 where Paul says: The person who prophesies is greater than the person who speaks in tongues, unless they interpret so that the church may be edified. The argument goes like this. Prophecy edifies the church. Interpretation edifies the church. Therefore, the interpretation of tongues equals prophecy. But there is a logical flaw in this argument. It’s like saying, Tea is a drink. Coffee is a drink. Therefore, tea equals coffee! Paul says that both prophecy and interpretation edify the church, but that does not necessarily mean that they do so in the same way. If, for example, interpretation were to take the form of praise, rather than prophecy, wouldn’t it edify the church? And who is not edified by the psalms of praise? I have personally been greatly edified by both forms of interpretation. However, other people insist on praise interpretations and base their argument on the NIV translation of 14:2, which reads: For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him… So, it is argued, if the tongue is to God, the interpretation must be to God, in the form of either praise or prayer. However, a more literal translation would be: For the person speaking in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him… (my translation). This makes clear that the reason for saying that speaking in tongues is to God is that no one can understand it. When the disciples spoke in tongues at Pentecost, did it not speak to men? And why was this? Because they understood what was being said. It follows, therefore, that if tongues in church can be understood through the use of the gift of interpretation, it can most certainly speak to us. So in my view both praise and prophecy style interpretations are legitimate manifestations of the gift, and we should accept and encourage both. ii. Two or at the most three… The meaning is clear, but what should we do if someone brings a fourth utterance in tongues? Should it be interpreted? Of course, this is unlikely to happen if the church has been taught how spiritual gifts should be operated in our meetings. However, if it does happen, what should we do? My view is that it should be interpreted because this would be more edifying for the church which is the basic principle behind Paul’s teaching in this passage. For more detail on this, please see WYCT pp79-80. iii. ‘Let one person interpret’ (v27) I said earlier that the Greek in verse 27 is best translated as, Let one person interpret. This in fact reflects how the Authorised Version translates it and, as a result, some churches have taught that, if there are two or three utterances in tongues, the same person should give the interpretation for all of them. This is a valid application of what Paul is saying, but I think it more likely that his intention is to say that each utterance in tongues needs only one person to interpret it. The unruly members of the Corinthian church needed to hear this. C. Summary 1. Everything we do in church should be edifying to others. 2. Tongues edifies you, but it doesn’t edify others, unless it’s interpreted. 3. So, the purpose of the gift of interpretation is to edify the church. 4. Tongues may take the form of prayer or praise or prophecy, so interpretations may take any of these forms. 5. We should not speak loudly in tongues unless there is an interpreter there. So we need to be sure there’s an interpreter there before we speak out loudly in tongues. 6. If we speak in tongues aloud in church, we should pray for the gift of interpretation, bearing in mind that it’s not given to everyone. 7. If you have the gift of interpretation, you have a responsibility to interpret. 8. Tongues and interpretation should occur no more than two or three times in each meeting. 9. Only one person should interpret each message, but it doesn’t have to be the same person each time. 10. Since it’s so important for tongues in church to be interpreted, we should all wait for the interpretation to be given before doing anything else (like leading in prayer etc.). D. Questions for discussion 1. Why do you think we should all wait for the interpretation to be given before doing anything else? 2. Someone speaks out loud in tongues, but no one else interprets it. You have interpreted tongues in the past, but you don’t feel you have the interpretation of this time. What should you do? Hint: See my personal testimony about this, in WYCT pp.81-83 or Body Builders, Ch. 8. 3. Do we need to alter our group’s way of doing things to make way for the operation of gifts like tongues and interpretation (and indeed other gifts of the Spirit)?
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325 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 2 Speaking in Tongues
06/10/2026
325 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 2 Speaking in Tongues
Talk 2 The Right Use of Speaking in Tongues Welcome to Talk2 in our series on NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings. We started last time by suggesting that 1 Corinthians 14:26 should be taken as a serious indication of the sort of thing God wants to happen when we meet. Let me remind you what it says: What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. We then did a quick survey of chapters 12 and 13 to see how they might influence our understanding of this verse. Today we’re going to talk about speaking in tongues which was very important in the life of the early church and is still a very valuable gift today. So we’ll be talking about why it’s so important both in our personal prayers at home and in our gatherings. And we’ll finish by looking at 1 Corinthians 14 and seeing what Paul has to say about exactly how it should be used when we meet together. A. The importance of tongues 1. Its importance in the early church a. As we all know, speaking in tongues was the first spiritual gift that the disciples were given when they were filled the Spirit on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). empowering them for service (Acts 1:8). [For more on this, please see A New Dimension – how to be filled with the Holy Spirit (details on my website – www.davidpetts.org]. b. After Pentecost, when others received the Spirit, it was the first manifestation recorded after the Spirit came upon them (Acts 10:44-46, Acts 19:1-6). c. This was almost certainly because speaking in tongues was to become an important part of a Christian’s prayer life, enabling them to pray with their spirit (1 Corinthians 14:14), but more of that in a moment. 2. The value of the gift today Speaking in tongues was a valuable gift in New Testament times and it’s just as valuable today: a. It can be used as a powerful sign to unbelievers as happened in Acts 2 and led to some 3000 people becoming Christians. b. It is an important aspect in our private prayer times c. It can be a blessing in church when it is accompanied by the gift of interpretation, which will be the subject of out next talk. So let’s now turn to 1 Corinthians 14 and see what Paul has to say about the use of tongues in our private prayer times, before we turn to its use in our meetings. B. The use of tongues in private Consider the following: 2 For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. 4 He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. 14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15 So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. 16 If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say "Amen" to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? 17 You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified. So when we speak in tongues: · we don’t know what we’re saying (14), · but we’re speaking to God (2) · which may be prayer (14-15), or praise (16), or giving thanks (16-17) to God, · and in doing so we’re edifying ourselves (building ourselves up spiritually) (4). This is probably why in 2 Timothy 1:6-7 Paul says: 6 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline Every time we speak in tongues in our prayer time we are fanning into flame the gift of God that we received when God gave us the Holy Spirit. So speaking in tongues is a great thing to do in private, but what about in our meetings? C. The right use of tongues in our meetings 1. Edification – the underlying principle It’s clear that Paul valued very highly his ability to speak in tongues. In verse 18 he says: I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. This was because it enabled him to pray with his spirit rather than just praying with his mind. But please note what he says in verse 19: But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. So, although he spoke in tongues a great deal when he was not in church – that is, when he was in private – he did not do so in public. He is much more guarded about the use of tongues in church. Look at verses 3-5 again: 3 But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. 4 He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. 5 I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified. He wants everyone to be able to speak in tongues, but it has no value in church if it’s not interpreted (v5). Tongues are unintelligible unless they are interpreted and without interpretation the speaker is just speaking into the air (9). But when interpreted they can fulfil a similar function to prophecy, which also edifies the church (4) bringing strengthening, encouragement and comfort (3). We’ll come back to that in our next talk when we consider Paul’s teaching on the gift of interpretation of tongues, but for now it’s enough to note that what’s important is: whatever we do in our meetings should be for the edification, strengthening, encouragement and comfort of those present. For example, Paul is concerned about what happens if unbelievers come into our meetings.. He deals with this in verses 21-25 where it’s clear that, despite the miracle that happened at Pentecost where speaking in tongues led to the conversion of some 3000 people, far from expecting unbelievers to come to faith when hearing speaking in tongues, Paul thinks it more likely that they will conclude that the Corinthians are out of their mind! Why did he think this? Perhaps because situations like the day of Pentecost are very rare. On the vast majority of occasions, it’s not likely that any foreigner will recognise their language when we are speaking in tongues. So Paul advises caution. On the basis of all this, it’s better, in my view, to consider the use of tongues as a sign to unbelievers as something exceptional. Having said that, verses 21-25 are extremely difficult because they contain an apparent contradiction and have long been a source of debate among scholars. We don’t have time to go into them in now, but if you want to see a possible solution, please read WYCT pp. 66-68. The main point is this: Whatever we do in our meetings we should always be sensitive to the needs of others, especially if there are newcomers present. You may be worshipping well, but if others are not helped by it, you are not acting in love! (My paraphrase of verse 17). In the context Paul is talking about tongues, but the principle surely applies to everything we do in our meetings! 2. Paul’s teaching on how to apply this principle Despite Paul’s clear teaching that prophecy is preferable to tongues (1-5), he by no means discourages the use of tongues in church. He expects speaking in tongues to be a regular part of the worship of the church (26) and it is certainly not to be forbidden (39). However, the key to its use in church is that it needs to be interpreted so that everyone may be edified. In fact, in verse 28 he tells us that If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. This suggests that the personal use of tongues in church is not prohibited, but it must be done quietly as it will edify no one except the speaker (cf. 4). Speaking out loud in tongues, therefore, is to be strongly discouraged unless it is intended that it be interpreted, and that of course will require someone with the gift of interpretation to be present. This may, of course, be the person who has spoken in tongues, as in verses 12-13 Paul encourages those who speak in tongues to pray for the gift of interpretation: So it is with you. Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church. 13 For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. So, if you want to speak out loud in tongues and don’t have the gift of interpretation, you must first make sure that someone is present who does, and, if you’re not sure, you must speak quietly to yourself and to God (28). There’s just as much blessing in speaking in tongues quietly as in speaking loudly! However, if an interpreter is present, you may speak out loud in tongues with a view to its being interpreted for the edification of the church. But this is subject to the following conditions: If anyone speaks in a tongue, two, or at the most three, should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret (27). So please, if someone speaks out loud in tongues in a meeting, wait until it’s interpreted before you say anything. D. Summary Speaking in tongues is the ability to speak a language we have never learned. It may be expressed in a variety of ways, including, prayer, praise, thanksgiving etc. When we speak in tongues it’s our spirit that is praying, not our mind. God gives us this gift to help us edify ourselves – to build ourselves up spiritually. It is also given so that when it’s interpreted it will edify the church. It can also be used as a sign to unbelievers when, as at Pentecost, they understand the language that is being spoken. We should expect this gift to be in operation in our meetings, but it should be used quietly if it is not for interpretation. It must only be spoken aloud if an interpreter is present, and it must be used only two, or at the most three, times in a meeting. We will consider this further in the next talk when we examine Paul’s teaching on the gift of interpretation. For more on this, please see WYCT Ch. 5. But there’s much more that could be said, and, if you have a copy, you might like to read Chapter Eight of my book Body Builders – Gifts to make God’s people grow. E. Questions for discussion 1. If you do not yet speak in tongues, bearing in mind its value in prayer, do you feel you would like to? Have you ever prayed for this gift? 2. If you do speak in tongues, how much use do you make of it in your personal prayer life? 3. In church or in your small group, do you always consider the edification of others before you take part? 4. How best could we make use of this wonderful gift (tongues) in our small group meetings?
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324 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 1 An Overview of 1 Corinthians 12-13
06/02/2026
324 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 1 An Overview of 1 Corinthians 12-13
NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings Talk 1 An Overview of 1 Corinthians 12-13 Welcome to our new series. I’m calling it New Testament Guidelines for Small Group Meetings. We’ll be looking at what the New Testament has to say about what we should expect and how we should behave in our meetings. This includes what we do on Sunday mornings and in our home groups. Our thoughts will centre on what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:26 where he makes the following recommendation: What then shall we say brothers and sisters? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. The churches in the New Testament would often have gathered in homes and that was almost certainly the case in Corinth. So, Paul’s instructions are particularly relevant to smaller churches or home groups. Small group meetings can take many different forms. Some meetings can be a real blessing and a source of edification to all, but sadly this is not always the case. The apostle Paul had to tell the Corinthians that their meetings were not for the better, but for the worse (1 Corinthians 11:17) because of their inconsiderate behaviour towards one another. And that was when they were celebrating the Lord’s Supper! Some were getting drunk while others were going hungry! And this selfish behaviour was not limited to food and drink. Some of them were ‘hogging it’ when it came to how they expressed themselves in worship – and that, as we will see, was perhaps their major problem. Paul’s teaching in the rest of chapter 11 and in those that follow was an attempt to put things right and to show what Christian gatherings should be like. And that will be the basis for our consideration of how we may make our small group meetings as beneficial as possible. We’ll begin in this talk by giving a brief overview of Paul’s teaching in chapters 12 and 13. This will help us to understand our key verse in the wider context. As many of you will know, I have already written a short book on this subject entitled, When you come together – God’s plans for when his people meet (WYCT). This contains much more than I have time to include in these notes, so please see me if you’d like a copy. Before the meeting it would be really helpful if you read 1 Corinthians, chapters 12-14. And if you have a copy you might like to read WYCT chapters 1-3 if you have time. So, as I was saying, our key verse is 1 Corinthians 14:26 and we need to begin by looking at the context in which it’s set. Setting the context – an overview of 1 Corinthians 12 to 14 There were plenty of problems with the church in Corinth. Chapters 1-10 make it clear that there were divisions, they were immature, they tolerated immorality, they were taking each other to court, and some of them lacked a basic understanding of the basic truths of the Christian faith. And on top of all that, their behaviour when they met together was at times appalling! They were thoughtless and inconsiderate. No wonder Paul said that their meetings did more harm than good. We need to remember this as we look at what he says in chapters 12-14. The main problem he is addressing throughout is their thoughtless behaviour and attitude towards each other. It’s clear from chapter 12 that some of them thought that they were superior to the others because of the spiritual gifts they possessed. And this was particularly true of speaking in tongues which was being used excessively in their meetings. So in chapter 12 he begins by giving some basic teaching on spiritual gifts. Teaching on spiritual gifts (12:1-11) I’m hoping you’ve read these verses before coming to the meeting. What’s clear is that the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit were a regular part of their meetings, but the Corinthians were exercising them in ignorance. Paul had to teach them that: 1. The supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit must be distinguished from demonic manifestations by the acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord (vv1-3) 2. Though the gifts are different they are all given by the same Spirit (vv4-10) 3. They are given as the Holy Spirit determines (v11) What can we learn from this? 1. If you acknowledge Jesus as you Lord and Saviour, you need not fear that you will receive a demonic gift. Our heavenly Father doesn’t give ‘snakes’ to his children (Luke 11:11-13). 2. In Spiritualism, where counterfeit gifts are given by demons, different gifts are given by different spirits. 3. Though they’re different, all the gifts are important because it’s the Holy Spirit who gives all of them. 4. As the Holy Spirit is the giver, He decides who gets what. NOTE: Paul will say much more about spiritual gifts in the next two chapters. Every member of the body is needed (12:12-30) In this passage we learn that: 1. The church is one body which has many different members (v14) 2. Every member of the body is important and needed because God has put it there (vv14-27) 3. There should be no division in the body, but all the members should have equal concern for each part of it (v25) These are all important principles to bear in mind in our group meetings. There isn’t time to go into them now, but we’ll pick up on some of them when we come to chapter 14. 1 Corinthians 13 We’re Nothing without Love Paul’s teaching on love in this chapter is valuable in every situation, but in its context Paul is still talking about what should go on in our meetings. Chapter 14 is a practical application of what he’s teaching about love here in 13. Let’s divide the chapter into three sections: 1. It’s all meaningless without love (1-3) 2. The nature of love (4-7) 3. Recognising our limitations (8-12) It’s all meaningless without love (1-3) If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. What can we learn from these verses? 1. Nothing is more important than love. Whatever gifts we may have and whatever we may do, if our motive is not love, it counts for nothing. Without love I am nothing (2) and I gain nothing (3). 2. This principle applies to every function of the body of Christ, not just to the things mentioned in these verses, which are just illustrations of it. 3. What he’s taught about the body in chapter 12 will only be possible when we love one another. So the things he refers to in verses 1-3 are just illustrations of the great principle of the paramount importance of love. But why does he choose these particular illustrations to make his point? Because these were the particular problems facing the church in Corinth at the time. It’s evident from chapter 14 that there were problems in Corinth with their use of gifts like speaking in tongues and prophecy which are the two gifts he mentions first here. So as we later consider Paul’s encouragement in 14:26 for all to participate by bringing a contribution to our meetings, we need to remember that whatever we may bring must be brought in love. The nature of love (4-8) 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. These verses have a far wider application than our understanding of chapter 14. But in the context, chapter 13 is set right in the middle of Paul’s teaching in chapters 12 and 14. Notice the development of thought in these chapters: 12: The importance of the role of every Christian within the church as the body of Christ 13: The importance of LOVE 14: Specific direction on how this should work in our meetings. Maybe we could summarise verses 4-7 as putting other people first. As we will see when we come to look at chapter 14 in more detail, this is the underlying principle of all he says which is surely the main way in which we express our love for them. Prophecy, for example, is to be desired more than tongues because it edifies others, not just ourselves (14:1-5). Think about how we can apply putting other people first to what we say and do in our meetings. Recognising our limitations (8-12) 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. What can we learn from this? 1. Although there will ultimately be no need for supernatural gifts, love will remain for ever. It never fails (8). It remains (13). 2. Wonderful though gifts like tongues and prophecy are, their operation is not infallible. We know in part and we prophesy in part. What Paul is encouraging in 14:26 must be understood in this light. God’s gifts are perfect, but we are not. We do not yet see face to face. The gifts come from God, but they come through us, and we are fallible. This must affect our understanding of all that Paul says in chapter 14, not just verse 26. As we eagerly desire spiritual gifts we are to try to excel in our use of them (12). This clearly implies that it’s possible to exercise them without excelling in them. That’s why words of prophecy need to be weighed carefully (29) and why Paul found it necessary to give instruction as to how the gifts should be used. Had the operation of the gifts been infallible, such instruction would have been unnecessary. But that’s something we will consider in more detail later in the series. Next time we’ll start on Chapter 14 and will be looking at The Right Use of Speaking in Tongues. So, that’s it from me for today. Thanks for listening. Now, some questions for discussion. Group leaders, over to you. Questions for discussion 1. How important are the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit in the context of our small group? Do we make room for them? Have we all received the baptism in the Spirit? 2. What practical application does Paul’s teaching that every part of the body is needed and to be valued equally make to what happens in our group and in church? 3. How might Paul’s teaching on love (especially 13:4-7) affect our attitude as individuals in our group meetings and in church? Hint: Key phrases could be: Love is patient…Love is kind… it is not rude…Love does not boast…It is not proud… It does not envy …Love is not self-seeking… Love rejoices with the truth… It always protects.
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323 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings - INTRODUCTION
06/02/2026
323 NT Guidelines for Small Group Meetings - INTRODUCTION
NT GUIDELINES FOR SMALL GROUP MEETINGS – INTRODUCTION Welcome back to Great Bible Truths with Dr David Petts. If you’ve been a regular listener to my podcasts, you may have been wondering what’s been happening since January, when I finished my series where I was reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Well, for first few months of the year I was working on turning the contents of those podcasts into a new book and preparing it for publication. The good news is that it’s now available from my website and I’ve given it the title: All the Days of My Life – a Story of God’s Unfailing Love. I’m already receiving many encouraging reports from those who have read it, and if you’d like a copy, full details are on my website. Since then, I’ve been working on six podcasts for use in our church home-groups and have now decided to make them more widely available as a new series. You may remember a series I did in 2023 under the heading When You Come Together. I later turned that into a book with the same title. The podcasts I have now produced are based on some of the teaching in that book, which is itself based on Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 14 – especially verse 26. This new series of talks is specially designed for use in small groups such as home groups. It contains six talks of less than 20 minutes each. We look particularly at 1 Corinthians 14 to see what God had to say about how Christians back then should ‘do church’, and seeing how this might affect what we do today, particularly in small groups. As usual, the full text of each talk will appear on my website along with the recording. This should be helpful particularly to group leaders, who would also benefit from my book When you Come Together – God’s Plans for when His People Meet (WYCT), which could be useful background reading, as also could Body Builders – gifts to make God’s people grow (on the subject of spiritual gifts). The first talk in the series will be posted at the same time as this, and the rest will follow shortly. To help you prepare for that, I’m making a few suggestions. But first let me say that it’s not my intention that the notes and podcasts should be slavishly followed. They’re just there to help you and your group to discuss and pray about what God’s word might be saying about what should be happening in your meetings. Things to do ahead of the group meeting – seven suggestions 1. Make space in your diary to prepare for the meeting. 2. Read the relevant scripture passages. See the list below. 3. Listen to the podcast and study the notes. 4. Encourage group members to listen ahead of time too. 5. Plan the format of your meeting and ensure that the podcast is played towards the beginning of the meeting to leave time for discussion and prayer afterwards. 6. Think about the discussion questions I have included at the end of the talk. (N.B. You’ll find these in the notes. They’re NOT in the recording). Consider if you will have time to discuss all of them. If not, which are the most relevant to your group? 7. Pray for the leading of the Spirit when the group gathers. Finally, here’s a list of relevant background reading for each talk. You might like to keep a copy of this for future reference. Obviously, the Bible passages are the most important. For your guidance, WYCT contains a bit more than the notes, and Body Builders even more. But how much background reading you do is up to you. RELEVANT EXTRA READING 1 CORINTHIANS WYCT BODY BUILDERS Talk 1 12-13 Chs. 1, 3, 4 Talk 2 14 Ch. 5 Pages 131-140 Talk 3 14 Ch. 6 Pages 141-151 Talk 4 14 Ch. 7 Chapters 3 and 9 Talk 5 12-14 Ch. 8 Talk 6 14 Ch. 9 God bless you and grant you much blessing in your group meetings.
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322 My Story Talk 35 Hope for the Future
01/07/2026
322 My Story Talk 35 Hope for the Future
My Story Talk 35 Hope for the Future Throughout this series I have tried to show how, in the words of another David, God’s goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life (Psalm 23:6). Of course, to give an account of every single day would be completely impossible, not least because my life is not over yet! So this, the fiinal talk in this series, will not be the end of my story. That’s in the hands of the One who has loved and pardoned me, protected and provided for me, and who will guide my steps until his purpose for my life is finally accomplished. So I’ll conclude my story with: a reminder of God’s past blessings a record of my most recent activities, and my reason for hope for the future. A reminder of God’s past blessings First, I’m so grateful for Christian parents who prayed for me before I was born, brought me up to believe in Jesus, taught me the way of salvation, encouraged me to believe that God answers prayer and that nothing is impossible with him. They showed me how much they loved me and taught me that God loves me too. So even through the terrible years of World War 2, I always felt loved and protected. I’m thankful, too, for the good teaching I received at Sunday School and Church and that I was educated at a time when the truths of the Christian faith were still widely accepted in our society, so that there was little conflict between what I learnt at school and what I was taught at home and at church. And that, when there was a difference of emphasis, my father was always able to give me an intelligent answer and show me why the Christian message made sense. As I have already mentioned, it was clear from my earliest years that I was academically gifted, and I’m grateful for the good education I received at Brentwood School which led by God’s grace to my gaining admission to Oxford University. A hymn we often used to sing at Elm Pak Baptist was Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee… and I remember feeling strongly about the verse where it says, Take my intellect and use every power as though shalt choose. For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to use whatever abilities God has given me to spread the good news about Jesus. But I was soon to learn that intellectual ability is not enough. Our battle is not primarily intellectual but spiritual, and when I first heard about the baptism in the Holy Spirit I was eager to receive. I’m so grateful for Laurie Dixon who shared his testimony with me, for Harold Young who laid hands on me when I first spoke in tongues, and for Pentecostal pastors like Alfred Webb and Richard Bolt who taught me so much about the things of the Spirit. In those early years I was also greatly influenced by the writings of some of the pioneers of the Pentecostal Movement, notably Harold Horton, Donald Gee, and Willie Burton. Much of my thinking on the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit has been founded on their teaching and I thank God for such men of God who were willing to break free from the cessationist traditions of their forebears to pursue the all the fulness of life in the Spirit. My experience at Oxford is a source of many happy memories. Coming only four weeks after I was baptised in the Spirit, my studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics were, I confess, of relatively little importance to me. I was more interested in telling others about my Christian experience, witnessing about Christ to unbelievers and about the Holy Spirit to those who were already Christians. Of particular importance were the prayer meetings we held which led to the formation of the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship and which were, by the grace of God, part of the beginnings of the Charismatic Renewal. The years we spent in pastoral work, both at Colchester and Basingstoke led not only to the considerable growth of both those churches with souls being saved, bodies healed, and believers filled with the Holy Spirit, but also to a deeper understanding of the Word, a wider ministry beyond the local church, and a growing recognition within the Pentecostal Movement of the teaching gift the Lord had given me. For this I am truly thankful. Despite the rocky road to Mattersey which I described in an earlier talk, the 27 years we spent there were possibly the most productive period of my life. Life was not without its problems, but I thank God for every minute of it. The privilege of training hundreds of future church leaders and the joy of seeing the fruits of their ministry more than made up for the difficulties we faced. And the founding of EPTA led to an international ministry of Bible College teaching was an unexpected privilege which I could never have dreamed of when I felt God’s call to ministry at the age of sixteen. The opportunity to share with so many students the importance of the baptism in the Spirit and spiritual gifts, illustrated by personal experience that was firmly rooted in biblical truth, and to present a balanced understanding of God’s promises of healing were and still are sources of great joy and personal satisfaction. I’m even grateful today for the difficulties we faced only some of which I have outlined in this book. Of course, at the time we would have preferred not to have them, but as I look back I have no doubt that the Lord had a purpose in it all. That does not mean that I know precisely what that purpose was, but because I believe in an all-powerful God who loves me and gave himself for me, I have learnt that problems produce patience and ultimately deepen our faith. And it is by faith and patience that we inherit his promises. Which brings me to Eileen, my faithful wife, who devoted her life, first to serving Jesus, and then to serving his purpose for me as we journeyed through life together. The concluding words of the tribute to her that I wrote for her farewell service express well how I still feel: Although I am missing her already, I am full of joy, knowing that she is now where she wanted to be. Until we meet again in Heaven, I will remember her for her love, her faithfulness, her devotion, her patience, her sense of humour, her impact on our children’s lives, her smile, her perseverance in suffering, her courage in face of adversity, and above all, her childlike trust in Jesus and her total commitment to him. I thank God for the precious gift of Eileen and the privilege of being her husband for sixty-two years. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Eileen went to be with the Lord on 28th February 2024 and, although I still miss her every day, her departure to Heaven has meant that I am now free to resume some of the activities that were curtailed by the severe stroke she had in 2016. Which brings me to a brief statement of my most recent activities taken from my Christmas newsletter 2025. A record of my most recent activities A year ago, I was brought back onto the Leadership Team of our church and have been preaching and leading regularly every month. I have also been able to accept invitations to minister and attend at churches and conferences further afield. Here’s a quick summary: o January – 2 days’ teaching at Light and Life conference o March – was privileged to pay a tribute at Keith Monument’s funeral in Nottingham o June – a weekend preaching at Walthamstow (when I also took the opportunity to visit Eileen’s sister, Joan, and her husband, David) o July – participated in the EPTA conference held in Malvern at Regent’s Theological College o September – attended the wedding of Jotham (grandson) and Chesca in Brighton o October – a weekend’s preaching in Leyland followed by the Ocean Wings Conference in Llandudno where I was one of the speakers o November – attended Sarah’s Graduation (MA in Applied Theology with Distinction) at Moorlands College and Christchurch Priory. So proud of all my wonderful children! o December – participated in the Charismatic and Pentecostal Leaders’ Gathering in Northamptonshire As most of these activities involved long journeys, I was grateful for the comfort of my E-Class Mercedes, acquired earlier this year. I’m also grateful for the health and strength God gives me to do all this, although I confess I do get more tired than I used to! However, I do manage to swim 500 metres about twice a week. This has helped me lose a couple of stones in weight. Finally, I’m still writing and doing regular podcasts. All this year I’ve been writing my memoirs and am almost finished. Let me know if you’d like a copy. So, have a wonderful Christmas and may the Lord bless you and use you in the coming year. So thankful for Jesus – for all he has done and continues to do for us. With much love David My reason for hope for the future At the time of recording this I will be 87 years old in a few days’ time. When she was in her eighties, referring to some of her aches and pains my mother used to say, Oh David, don’t get old, to which I would reply, Why? You don’t want me to die young, do you?! She knew of course that I was joking, and I, of course, fully understand what she was saying. Humanly speaking there isn’t much to look forward to when you’re old. So, what reasons do we have for hope for the future? As I conclude the story of my life so far, let me give you three reasons: My past experience of God’s goodness My present observation of what he is doing My understanding of what the Bible says about our future. I shall say little about the first of these as all that have written so far has been a record of how God’s goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life. Now it’s enough to summarise all this by saying that God’s goodness to me in the past informs my belief for the future. The God who has loved me, saved me, protected me, and provided for me throughout my life will not fail me now. My second reason for hope is my observation of what God is doing right now. I see this particularly in the lives of my children and grandchildren. Debbie, Sarah, and Jonathan are all faithfully serving the Lord and using the many gifts and talents God has given them. And the same is true of most of my grandchildren, four of whom are either recently, or soon about to be, married to wonderful Christian partners. I see in them the same passion to serve the Lord Jesus as Eileen and I have carried down through the years and know that this will continue when I am gone. But of course, what God is doing is far wider than just our family. There is a fresh expectation in the hearts of God’s people as we see an increasing openness to the gospel among those we meet. The tide is beginning to turn. The apathy and antagonism that have for so long been prevalent in our society are being replaced, particularly among young people, by a genuine interest and desire to know more. Yes, we have every reason to hope. And finally, and most important of all, I have hope because of what the Bible says. One of my favourite verses is Romans 15:13, where Paul says: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul’s prayer is that we should overflow with hope. Not just have hope, or even be filled with hope, but overflow. God wants us to have so much hope that it overflows to others! But how can we overflow with hope? The surrounding verses show us four main things. Two of these are found in verse 4: For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. The first secret to having hope is endurance. However difficult our situation we must press on. One thing’s for sure – if we give up, there is no hope. As Pastor Stan Hyde used to encourage us, we must keep on keeping on. But God has not left us to ourselves on this. He enables us to keep on hoping through the encouragement of the Scriptures. This happens in two ways. First, the Bible is full of examples of men and women who, like the heroes mentioned in Hebrews 11, endured despite great difficulty. And secondly, it gives us great promises and assurance of God’s love – see the last few verses of Romans 8 for example. But it’s not just the examples and promises in the Bible that give us hope. As we have already seen, we can overflow with the hope through the power of the Holy Spirit (v 13). A few verses later Paul goes on to connect the power of the Spirit with the power of signs and wonders (v19). Miracles give us hope. Nothing is impossible with God. Whatever our situation, God has the answer, and it may well be miraculous. But the power of the Spirit is not limited to miracles. It’s manifested in fruit as well as gifts (Galatians 5:22-23). Sometimes God does not deliver us from our troubles, he delivers us in them. He fills us with joy and peace as we trust in him (v13 again). And in doing so he gives us hope. So the final key to overflowing with hope is trusting in the God of hope. We simply have to trust him. That his promises will be fulfilled. That he will bring us through. That he will perfect that which concerns us. And we can do that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures and having confidence in the power of the Holy Spirit. But what are we hoping for? Our ultimate hope is found in verse 12 where Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah: The Root of Jesse will spring up, One who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him We are waiting for the One who is to rule over the nations! We are waiting for that blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13). Why do I have hope? Because Jesus is coming again! Every eye shall see him. Every knee shall bow before him. Every tongue will confess that he is Lord. He is coming to reign. He is coming to judge. He is coming to make all things new. He is coming to take us to be with him forever. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. We will be like him because we shall see him! Glorious hope! All other hopes pale into insignificance. I’m so grateful that God’s goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Will you?
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321 My Story Talk 34 Overcoming New Challenges
12/21/2025
321 My Story Talk 34 Overcoming New Challenges
My Story Talk 34 Overcoming New Challenges Welcome to Talk 34 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I was mentioning some of the health challenges I faced in India and today I will be describing how these continued for some time once we were back in England. I will also be talking about the serious health challenges Eileen faced during the last ten years of her life. I take no pleasure in recording all this, but an honest account of my life must include the hard times as well as the good, and, of course, the Lord has brought me through. Challenges following India Fortunately, there was little in my diary for the first few weeks after our return from India and I soon began to feel better. I thought I was back to normal and in April we set off for two weekends of ministry in Essex. We would stay with Eileen’s sister Joan in Billericay and the first weekend I would preach in Witham and a week later in our old church in Colchester. On the first Saturday we drove from our home in Paignton straight to Witham, a journey of about 250 miles, and I preached in the afternoon and evening meetings. We then made our way to Billericay, returning to Witham for the Sunday morning service. I had felt fine on the Saturday, but on Sunday I suddenly started to feel unwell again shortly before I was due to preach. The symptoms were like those I had had in India, and I went outside to get some fresh air. However, I managed to get through the preaching but was grateful to get back to Billericay. The next day Joan arranged an appointment for me with her GP who, hearing that I had been bitten by a mosquito in India and suspecting that I might have malaria, sent me for tests at the hospital in Basildon. Although these tested negative, I was still worried that there was something seriously wrong with me and just wanted to get back home to Paignton. Apologising profusely, I asked our friends at Colchester to release me from my commitment to preach the following weekend and we drove home later that week, unsure of what the future might hold. The next two years proved to be extremely difficult. I continued to experience similar problems every time I preached. In May 2010 I drove up to Huddersfield for the AoG conference but was so stressed that I returned home without attending a meeting. I immediately arranged an appointment with my GP, Mark Thompson, a good Christian man, and told him my whole story. He reminded me that as Christians we are not immune to such things and recommended some books that might help explain my condition. It appears that my experience in India, caused by extreme heat, dehydration, and overwork, triggered a rush of adrenalin which produced the symptoms I was struggling with. I learnt that worrying about the symptoms only made matters worse because that causes a further rush of adrenalin. I was caught in a vicious circle, and the only way out was to embrace the symptoms, tell myself that they would not harm me, and gradually I would get better. And that’s what happened, although it did take a long time. Following my visit to the doctor I cancelled my two-week trip to teach at the Bible College in Finland in May. We did go to Madeira for a three week holiday in June, but this turned out to be disappointing because of my recurring symptoms. However, in September I did manage to teach for two weeks at Mattersey, preach for a weekend in Pocklington, and assisted by Bob Hyde, teach a course at CTS in Brussels for a week. I was still experiencing the symptoms but managing to cope with them – at least most of the time. But there were still occasions when I felt unable to preach. In October I cancelled a weekend in Poynton and in November I was unable to complete a weekend’s ministry in Aston. I began to wonder if the time had come for me to give up. But less than two weeks later the Lord suddenly intervened. Eileen and I were in Exeter at a meeting for Assemblies of God ministers and their wives. The guest preacher was John Glass, the General Superintendent of the Elim Churches. He was preaching on Jeremiah 1 when he came to verses 11-12: The word of the LORD came to me: "What do you see, Jeremiah?" "I see the branch of an almond tree," I replied. The LORD said to me, "You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled." He explained the play on words that we find in these verses – the Hebrew word for almond is very similar to the word for watch. The almond tree is among the first to blossom in spring. It’s something you watch for as a sign that spring has come. Winter will be followed by spring because God watches over his word to see that it is fulfilled. Now in England most of us don’t see an almond tree too often, so John likened it to crocuses. In his garden they’re the first flowers to bloom in spring. They’re the sign or guarantee that winter won’t be forever. Then John broke away from his notes and said something like this: There are some of you here who are feeling that your ministry has come to an end. You have been experiencing a bleak winter, but the Lord wants you to know that it will not be forever. You will experience a new springtime. Eileen and I looked at each other. Was this for us? Surely it must be. But there were a lot of other people in that meeting. Could it be that John’s prophetic word was for them and not for us? We drove home after the meeting hoping, rather than believing, that this really was a word from the Lord for us. And then, that evening, Jill Cooper, one of our friends from church, arrived on our doorstep and said, I’ve brought you a little present. To be honest, I had bought it for someone else, but then I felt the Lord tell me to give it to you instead. What was the present? A bowl of crocuses! How good God is! He gave us the assurance that I would emerge from this dark period of winter into a new springtime of ministry. We sometimes have to go through a valley of shadow, but he is with us in it all the way. So in 2011, whenever the symptoms reoccurred, I pressed through them, knowing that this condition wouldn’t last forever. In March I flew to Scotland to speak to the AoG ministers, in May we went back to Finland to teach at Iso Kirja for two weeks, in September I taught for two weeks at Mattersey, and in October I was back at CTS again. None of these occasions was easy. In fact, I often felt really unwell, but everyone always said that, if I hadn’t told them, they would not have known anything was wrong with me! I’m not quite sure how much longer it took to get back to normal. In fact, I’m not really sure what ‘normal’ is! We all deteriorate physically as we get older and our energy levels are not what they were. When I look back at what I was doing in the years before Mattersey and throughout my time there, I wonder now how I possibly managed it all. What was normal for me then is far beyond my capabilities now, but I have moved into a new springtime in my ministry and people tell me that at 87 I’m not doing badly for my age, for which I am grateful. Challenges to Eileen’s health But my health challenges were nothing compared with those faced by Eileen in the last ten years of her life. On Sunday 21st December 2014 quite unexpectedly at about 9am Eileen started to experience severe pain in her stomach as she was getting ready for church. As the pain was unrelenting, causing Eileen to pass out a couple of times, by 3pm I decided I needed to call 999. I accompanied Eileen in the ambulance while Jonathan followed by car. After waiting with her a few hours, Jon and I were advised to go home and await the results of an MRI scan. At about 10.30 that evening the surgeon phoned to ask us to go in to discuss options for Eileen. It was clear that the situation was very serious. On arrival at the hospital, we were told that the scan had revealed that the blood supply had been cut off from Eileen's bowel and that her smaller bowel had died. Without an immediate operation she would die. There was even the possibility that the condition was already too far advanced for them to be able to save her. Furthermore, even if they were able to save her, there was a strong possibility that she would need to have a permanent colostomy. Eileen agreed with us that we should agree to the operation and trust God for the best possible outcome. We prayed with her, of course, but as you can imagine, for the next few hours we were on an emotional roller-coaster, experiencing all the ups and downs from fear to faith, but with a determination to trust God, come what may. We simply could not believe that it was God's time for Eileen to go to Heaven and kept praying that he would spare her. Imagine our relief when at one o’clock on Monday morning the surgeon phoned to say that she had the best possible news for us. Eileen's bowel was alive! What had been causing the pain was an internal hernia which they had been able to fix. None of her bowel had needed to be removed and the blood supply had been restored. Now bearing in mind the certainty with which the surgeon told us that Eileen's bowel had died we were convinced that this was not just a case of faulty diagnosis, but that God had worked an amazing miracle in restoring Eileen's bowel to life. God had allowed man to do what he could but intervened to do what man could not do – restore a dead bowel to life! We were so grateful for the prayers of the many people who interceded for Eileen throughout this difficult time and to God for his miraculous intervention. I never cease to be amazed at his wonderful grace and goodness to us. But the operation had been very invasive and left Eileen severely weakened for months. And she never fully regained the strength and energy she had lost, but that, of course, may have been partly caused by the fact that she was not getting any younger. And neither was I! In April 2015 we had a few days’ break in the Lake District and neither of us felt like walking very far. It was much the same in September when we went to the Isle of Wight, but on both these holidays we contented ourselves with driving around in the car, visiting old haunts, marvelling at the beauty of God’s creation, and, of course, enjoying the food. We planned two short holidays for 2016, the first in Longtown, a village in Herefordshire close to the Welsh border in May. After preaching in Rugby on the Sunday morning, we drove there in the afternoon and spent a few delightful days in a charming cottage on the banks of the River Monnow, returning to Brixham the following weekend. The second holiday, planned for a week in September at the southern end of Coniston Water, never happened. In June I flew to Ireland to preach for a weekend in Sligo where Daniel Caldwell, one of our former students, was leading a church. On Sunday morning I preached on Jesus calming the storm in Matthew 8 and I remember saying that sometimes unexpected problems suddenly arise in our lives, but Jesus is well able to see us through them and get us to the other side. Who knows what might happen this week? But whatever happens Jesus is with us. And I flew home that afternoon. I have preached that message many times, but little did I know what was to happen just two days later. On Tuesday evening, sitting in her armchair Eileen had a severe stroke and was rushed into Torbay Hospital. From head to toe she had no feeling down the right side of her body. The next Sunday, still in hospital, she suffered another stroke and we were told that the outlook was extremely bleak. She was rushed to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth and underwent surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain. Her life had been saved. After eleven days she was transferred back to Torbay where she remained for eight days until a bed was available at Newton Abbot where she began a course of rehab. Throughout this time we were all looking to the Lord for a complete healing, whether instantaneous or gradual, but her progress was extremely slow, and it was becoming increasingly clear that she needed a miracle if she would ever walk again. And although the healing miracle we were praying for never happened, we could see the hand of the Lord at work in other ways. Firstly, on July 28th when we were sitting in the hospital day room and eating cake to celebrate our wedding anniversary, the Torbay doctor who had told us that the outlook was extremely bleak approached us and said, I’m looking for Eileen Petts. And when he saw her he said, I can’t believe it. Which was something he repeated more than once during the fifteen minutes he was with us. He clearly had not expected Eileen to survive, and this encouraged our faith that God was at work in the situation. On 10th August, after eight weeks in three different hospitals, Eileen finally came home. And that, in itself, was a miracle. We had been told just a few days earlier that Eileen would have to be discharged as her bed was needed for someone else. To continue her rehab she could either go into a care home if we could find one that would take her, or the NHS would provide rehab workers to come to our home, but we would need to find a home care company to take care of Eileen’s other needs. The problem was that at the time there were over 70 people in Torbay on a waiting list! I needed an answer – quick! And just in time the answer came. Just a day before Eileen had to be discharged, Trude Hyde came to me and said that she and her twin sister Sylvia would take care of Eileen if we would like them to. How wonderful! I didn’t need to ask Eileen because I knew she would love it, but for the sake of all concerned, I felt I needed to ask the Lord for his guidance. And I did foresee one possible problem. I didn’t know if I would be allowed to choose Eileen’s carers or if they would require certain recognised medical qualifications. I needed an immediate answer to that question, and I didn’t know where to find it. I was just going off to visit Eileen, and I didn’t want to mention the twins’ kind offer until I knew the answer in case it led to her being disappointed. And then I remembered that Katie, the daughter of our next-door neighbour, Sue, was the lead carer for the whole of Torbay. She would certainly know the answer. I was just about to go and knock on Sue’s door when I changed my mind and said, Lord, if this is of you, before I get into the car, please let Sue come out without me knocking on her door. And that’s what happened. No sooner had I prayed that prayer than Sue came out of her house. In less than five minutes Katie was on the phone and told me that I could choose whom I liked. Eileen was overjoyed, and Trude and Sylvia took care of her visiting our home four times a day for the next four years until we moved to a bungalow on the other side of town, when workers from Abide Care, Brixham, took over. Eileen finally went to be with the Lord in February 2024 almost eight years after that awful stroke. She was always grateful that her condition was not physically painful, but frustrated at her inability to walk and do all those things we normally take for granted. And we both naturally wondered why the Lord had allowed this to happen. One Bible passage that Eileen found particularly helpful was 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 where Paul says: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. And the comfort and strength our Father gave to Eileen certainly did overflow to others, not least as a testimony to the dozens of carers from Abide who came into our home over the final four years of her life. Throughout this whole very difficult period both Eileen and I had been sustained by our Christian faith and by a particular word received from the Lord through Barrie Taylor, our daughter Sarah’s father-in-law. Barrie and Sandra live some distance away and we normally only saw them once or twice a year. On one such occasion when Eileen seemed to be making little progress after her stroke we were all having a meal together at Berry Head Hotel, when Barrie said the Lord had given him a word for us: My Father is at work in your lives and situation which He is using as a platform to display his sustaining grace. God sometimes uses amazing miracles of healing to display his power and love, but it is often the sustaining grace that he gives his people in times of suffering that brings others to faith. Through Eileen’s suffering the lives of many were touched, people who might never have otherwise heard the good news about Jesus. And since she died there have been many opportunities to share the gospel. The funeral staff at the crematorium were visibly moved and said they had never experienced a service like it and neighbours said the same thing about the church service that followed it. As Christians we know where we are going, and the knowledge that our loved ones are with the Lord is a source of great comfort and even joy. Although I still miss her every day, I sometimes weep for joy at the thought of how happy Eileen must now be in Heaven! And one day we shall meet again! But until then there is still work for me to do down here. But that’s the subject of our final talk.
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320 My Story Talk 33 Life after Mattersey (3) India
12/08/2025
320 My Story Talk 33 Life after Mattersey (3) India
My Story Talk 33 Life after Mattersey (3) India Our last trip beyond Europe during the years following our departure from Mattersey was to India in 2010. Like my first trip to Ethiopia in 2005, this came about through Arto Hamalainen, the Overseas Missions Director for the Pentecostal churches in Finland. One of their missionaries had asked him to recommend someone who would come and teach about the Holy Spirit and Arto suggested me. The Finns said that they would cover my airfare and, as Eileen had never visited India, I was happy to pay for her. Our destination was Machilipatnam on the eastern coast of India, stopping briefly to minister at Mumbai before flying home. However, as several of our former Mattersey students were from India, we decided that we’d like to visit them as well, if at all possible. So I contacted Lawrence Arumanayagam in Coimbatore and Victor Palla in Palakonda and they were keen to have us come. So an itinerary was arranged for us to arrive at each place on a Monday and then stay for six days before moving on the following Sunday evening or Monday. I made it clear that it was important for me to abide by the Sabbath principle of resting one day in seven. Apart from that, they could arrange as much ministry as they liked during our stay with them. However, it turned out that they were all so keen to make the most of our visit that they organised ministry for all six days and counted on us travelling on to the next place on the day we were supposed to be resting! So the itinerary turned out as follows: Friday 19th February – travel to London Heathrow Saturday 20th – depart Heathrow Sunday 21st – arrive Mumbai at 1a.m. (local time) – attend church in Mumbai and preach in the evening Monday 22nd – fly to Machilipatnam Tuesday to Sunday – ministry in Machilipatnam Sunday 28th – evening, fly to Hyderabad (staying overnight at the airport) Monday March 1st – travel on to Palakonda Tuesday to Sunday – ministry in Palakonda Monday 8th – travel to Coimbatore via Chennai and Bangalore Tuesday to Sunday – ministry in Coimbatore Monday 15th – travel on to Mumbai Tuesday-Wednesday – ministry in Mumbai Thursday 18th March – fly home. I have taken space to include this itinerary to show how busy our schedule was and to indicate what was probably the reason for the health challenges I subsequently faced and which I will describe later. But first let me briefly mention some of the highlights of the trip. Machilipatnam Although we were already tired from our long journey to Mumbai we needed to be up by 4.50 on Monday morning to catch the 6.50 flight to Bangalore where we changed planes and flew on to Vijayawada where we were met by Pauli, our Finnish host. We were so grateful for the comfortable taxi he had hired to take us on to Machilipatnam. Pauli and his wife accommodated us throughout our stay in a comfortable room in their home and fed us well. From Tuesday to Friday I was teaching every morning and afternoon and developed a sore throat, partly due, I suspect, to the dry heat. However, on the Saturday there was no meeting until the evening, and we were taken to visit some of the local villages and a vast beach where people were in the sea dressed in their everyday clothes. This was a very poor area which had been badly affected by the Tsunami a few years earlier. We were also interested to visit the Hyny Bible College, named after the first missionary from Finland, ‘Mother’ Hyny. Once again I am grateful to Eileen’s journal which brings back happy memories of the Sunday morning meeting: For the first half of church children from orphanages sit on the floor. They come for Sunday School and then stay for the meeting. They are so still and well behaved. They have Bibles and some take notes. They gave us garlands again… After a quick lunch we were back in a taxi again speeding our way to Vijayawada airport. Our stay had been brief and very busy, but despite our tiredness we were grateful for the opportunity the Lord had given us to visit these wonderful people and to share his word with them. Palakonda Palakonda is also on the east coast of India, but further north. The quickest way to get there was to fly inland to Hyderabad in central India and then northeast to Visakhapatnam. This would require an overnight stop at Hyderabad airport where fortunately a comfortable bedroom was available at a very reasonable price. At Visakhapatnam we were greeted by Victor Palla and one of his associate pastors. Victor was one of our former students having taken both our undergraduate and MA courses. He knew Bob Hyde well as they had both been at Mattersey together and our church in Brixham was supporting Victor and the thirty churches he had planted in the Palakonda area after leaving college. The taxi journey on to Palakonda took a further three hours and we were grateful for the large ensuite airconditioned bedroom Victor and Lydia provided for us throughout our stay. The hospitality was lavish and the food both plentiful and excellent. It’s so difficult not to eat too much when people are so generous. There was only one problem. Palakonda is famous for its malaria carrying mosquitos and both of us were bitten while we were there despite Victor’s efforts to zap the invaders with an amazing racquet powered by batteries that electrocuted them. However, thanks to prayer and the antimalarial tablets we were taking, neither of us contracted the dreaded disease. During the course of the week we ministered in numerous meetings in Palakonda and the surrounding villages. In one of them we were told how the church had started with a family becoming Christians. The rest of the villagers worshipped a tree. The Christian family wanted to cut it down but were afraid of the people. Then Christians from another village came and after praying cut the tree down. The villagers expected something bad to happen to these Christians, but when nothing of the kind happened, they all became Christians. But the highlight of our visit was undoubtedly the day we left at 10am for a meeting with ten churches in the beautiful hills surrounding Palakonda. We travelled by Jeep on extremely bumpy roads at an average speed of 10mph passing through villages that hadn’t changed for centuries. We finally arrived at a village where a large banner with our names on it welcomed us. Leaving the Jeep there we were led up a rocky, dusty path to the church where some 400 people were sitting outside it on the ground under a leafy shelter. We sat on chairs with our backs to the church building and the girls came and washed Eileen’s feet and we were both given beautiful garlands to wear. The meeting started with lots of singing followed by prayer, after which I preached. This was followed by a meal where the people sat in rows on the ground and were served with a rice dish on disposable plates made from sown leaves. In her journal Eileen commented: The whole time was special. Amazing atmosphere. And the same day, after returning to Palakonda for a short rest, we were driven to a village after dark where 200 had gathered for another meeting where, after a firework display, I was asked to preach again. We returned to Palakonda extremely tired, but very happy. It was very much the same the entire week and by the time we moved on to Coimbatore I was beginning to feel the need of a good rest. But what a privilege it had been to have fellowship with Victor and Lydia and to share the word of God with so many wonderful people in the Palakonda area whose way of life is very different from ours but with whom we have so much in common. Coimbatore After a busy week in Palakonda, the following Monday we flew on to Coimbatore via Chennai (formerly Madras) to be greeted by Lawrence and Getzi Arumanayagam and were made very welcome in their lovely modern apartment. On the Tuesday we were straight into teaching sessions both morning and afternoon in their beautiful church. I was pleased to see that the congregation was much larger than it had been when I had visited them in 1986. The teaching sessions continued on the Wednesday. They started well until something happened that I had never experienced before. In the middle of preaching I suddenly began to feel unwell. Eileen, who was sitting on the front row, said afterwards that she thought I was going to have a stroke or a heart attack. I asked if I could sit down for a moment and the people, suspecting that I was suffering from dehydration, kindly brought me some fluids and chocolate. After a few minutes I was feeling a bit better and was able to resume preaching although I remained seated to do so. Looking back on it, I’m sure that it was because of overwork and the extreme heat. I hadn’t had a rest day since we left England and India was even hotter than usual that year. But the experience had seriously affected my confidence. The next day, realising that I needed a rest, Lawrence and Getzi decided to take us for an overnight stay in Ooty where the temperature is a few degrees lower because of its altitude. Eileen said it felt almost cold at times, but I was so grateful for it. We had a delightful two days there and I began to feel better. We took the opportunity to visit the Livsey Children’s Home built in memory of Helga Mosey. Helga had come to our youth camp in the New Forest back in the seventies and was one of the passengers on Pan Am flight 103 destroyed by a bomb while flying over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. Her parents John and Lisa were well known to us, and the home had been built from part of the proceeds of the compensation they had received. The trip to Ooty did us good and I thought that I had got over whatever it was that had caused the problem on Wednesday. However, on Saturday morning I was feeling so unwell that I was unable to attend a graduation service where I was expected to preach. Instead, Lawrence phoned a Christian doctor at the hospital who arranged an immediate appointment for me. They took my blood pressure and gave me an ECG and some tablets for vertigo, but could find nothing wrong with me. Encouraged by the news, on Sunday I was feeling somewhat better and managed to preach three times, at 6.30am in Zion Church where Lawrence’s father was the pastor, at 9.30am in Bethel City Cathedral led by Pastor David Prakasam, another of our former students, and again in the afternoon at the students’ graduation where Eileen and I presented their certificates. Mumbai On Monday we flew back to Mumbai where the temperature was five degrees hotter than usual. Our hosts were Yukka and Lily, Finnish missionaries who, hearing that I was to visit India, had asked if we could fit in a couple of days of seminars before we returned to England. We were accommodated in a comfortable hotel room, but once again I began to feel unwell and ate very little breakfast. I was beginning to feel I just wanted to get home to England, but the flight wasn’t until Thursday. However, when Biju Thampi, another of our former Mattersey students, called me and asked if he and his wife, Secu, could take us to lunch, we were keen to see him and we agreed to go. They arrived at 12 and before lunch took us to see a little of what they were doing for some of the many homeless children of the area. There were dozens of children on a piece of wasteland in the shadow of a viaduct where people regularly dumped their rubbish. Biju’s ministry involved sending buses to these children where they provide them with a meal and give them a basic education. He told us moving stories of how they had been able to help these children and of miracles that had happened among them, and we decided to hand over all our remaining rupees to him as a small contribution to this vital work. By contrast, immediately afterwards they took us to a high-class hotel not far from the rubbish dump where we were treated to a delightful lunch. After what we had seen we almost felt guilty eating it. Our time with Biju and Secu had been all too brief, but as I was scheduled to teach in the afternoon, we had to say goodbye. Yukka had hired the Catholic Centre and arranged seminars for us from 3.30 to 5.00, and 5.30-7.00 that day with two further sessions scheduled for the Wednesday starting at 9.30. People had travelled great distances to be there to hear me talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately it was extremely hot and there was no air conditioning in the building and I soon began to feel unwell again. Realising I had a problem, during the break Yukka arranged for me to sit in his car with its air conditioner on and I was able to continue teaching for the first part of the next session. But sadly I had to finish 30 minutes earlier than planned and they rushed me back to the hotel and sent for a doctor who told me that there was nothing seriously wrong with me and that it was all probably due to the heat. Although that was reassuringly good to hear, it did not, of course, solve the immediate problem. The first session was at 9.30 and the temperature was no cooler and I was unable to complete the seminars. I apologised profusely and the people were very understanding despite their disappointment. They promised that if we ever came again they would be sure to hire an air-conditioned building. The next day we flew back to England, disappointed that a wonderful trip had finished as it had but intensely relieved to be going home where, hopefully, I would soon be back to normal. But I was soon to discover that my recovery would take far longer than expected. There would be new challenges to face for both of us. But that will be the subject of our next talk.
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319 My Story Talk 32 Life after Mattersey (2)
11/24/2025
319 My Story Talk 32 Life after Mattersey (2)
My Story Talk 32 Life after Mattersey (2) Welcome to Talk 32 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I was telling you how the Lord opened up a wider ministry for me after we left Mattersey and we concentrated on Countries in Europe. Today it will be Africa and Reunion Island. African Countries I have already mentioned my first trip to Africa which was to Burkina Faso in the year 2000 while we were still at Mattersey. The next trip was to South Africa in 2004, just after leaving Mattersey, which I have also mentioned already. The African countries I visited after Mattersey were Ethiopia (five times between 05 and 09), and Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa again, making a total of ten trips overall, half of which were to Ethiopia.. I visited Ghana in 2007 at the invitation of Paul Frimpong Manso, then the Superintendent of the Ashanti Region and later to become the General Superintendent of Assemblies of God in Ghana. Paul had been a student at Mattersey in the nineties, being one of the first to earn our newly validated BA degree and had later returned to take our MA too. The purpose of my visit was primarily to speak at their pastors’ conference and preach at their ordination service for new ministers. I was treated like royalty despite the fact that they were all smartly dressed in suits and ties – and some even with clerical collars – while I wore a short sleeved open-necked shirt, a special concession granted to me as someone unaccustomed to the temperature which, although it was only January, was far too high for my liking – a problem I was to face later in India in 2010. It was a privilege to see the great work that Paul was doing and to know that he valued highly the teaching he had received at Mattersey. One of the things he had said to his fellow-students about my teaching on the Holy Spirit was that in Ghana they not only believed the things I taught but that they also put them into practice! Miracles seem to happen more often in Africa than they do in Europe, but often there is a lack of sound biblical teaching to go with them. The truth is, we need both. And a major part of my ministry has been to emphasise this. My visit to Nigeria in 08 was unique in that the invitation did not come from any of the usual sources. Barrie Taylor is my daughter Sarah’s father-in-law and has exercised an ongoing ministry for many years visiting Nigeria and by regular visits has developed a strong relationship with some of the churches there. As a result they respectfully refer to him as Uncle Barrie. Barrie invited me to accompany him on one of these trips and I was delighted to do so. We flew to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, and were met by pastors John Sarota and Vitalis Yahemba, the CEO of Truth and Life Ministry. We travelled by car to Kaduna a journey of some 200 kilometres to the north of Abuja and stayed at the Catholic Social Centre sleeping in relatively comfortable rooms. But I confess I was disturbed at times by the high-pitched buzz an occasional mosquito flapping its wings at 250 times a second and by the fear that one might find its way under the mosquito net. Another disturbance early each morning was the sound of the muezzin calling from the minaret of a local mosque reminding faithful Muslims to pray. Kaduna lies very close to the northern area of Nigeria which is predominantly Muslim and where so many Christians have lost their lives for their faith. Despite the ever-present Muslim threat, Christians from the area gathered in large numbers, evidenced by the fact that while we were there the total attendance was around 2,500, meetings being held at Talmo College in a hall holding about 800 and the messages relayed to four marquees and translated into four different tribal languages. We both felt that the trip had been well worthwhile and I was particularly grateful for the opportunity to get to know Barrie better and to discover how much we both had in common. I went to South Africa again in November 2009 at the request of Paul Alexander to teach at the Africa School of Missions which he had founded some time previously. I enjoyed teaching the small class of students and the fellowship at mealtimes with staff members too. However, there were long periods each day when I had little to do and, apart from a quick visit to the Kruger National Park, which I had visited with Eileen in 04, I needed to find something to do to occupy my time. So I decided the start writing a new book. For some time I had been feeling that I should write something that would be useful as a tool in evangelism, and this was confirmed by something Brian Niblock said to me when he was preaching in our church in Brixham. And that’s how I came to write my little book, Signs from Heaven – why I believe. To my surprise, the whole thing was finished by the time I left South Africa. But perhaps the most significant moment about the whole trip was what happened on the flight home. I checked in online at the earliest possible moment and was able to get a seat at the front of economy where there was the most legroom. But after boarding the plane I was soon asked by a flight attendant if I would vacate my seat as someone had been taken ill and needed easy access to a seat on that row. So I ended up sitting in a different seat, but on the same row and, as it turned out, right next to the man who was unwell. He was accompanied by his wife who explained to me that only a few days earlier they had flown to South Africa for a holiday but on arrival her husband had been rushed to hospital. His condition, the details of which I forget, was quite rare, totally unexpected, potentially fatal, and required specialist treatment. They were returning to England in a state of shock and understandably very worried. They asked me what I had been doing in South Africa, and I said that among other things I had been writing a book about miracles. I said something like, It sounds like you need a miracle right now. It turned out that they were Catholics and, though they hadn’t been to church for a long time, certainly did believe in miracles. I shared the gospel with them, prayed for them, gave them a copy of my book on healing, and posted them Signs from Heaven as soon as it was published. Years later she told me that her husband, who had made an unexpectedly quick recovery, had now died, but that that encounter on the plane had restored their faith in the Lord Jesus. My first trip to Ethiopia was in January 2005 at the invitation of Heikki Pentinnen, a Finnish missionary who was organising an international charismatic conference in Addis Ababa and looking for a main speaker to take several sessions on the gifts of the Spirit. He had heard about me from Arto Hamalainan who knew me well through our work on the PEF presidium. Hundreds of leaders, including those from Orthodox and Coptic churches, gathered from across Ethiopia for this unique occasion and I was thrilled to see their desire to get a biblical grasp on the work of the Spirit. I made annual visits for the next four years (2006-09) teaching for one or two weeks in a Bible College in Addis at the invitation of Canadian missionaries Jeremy and Teresa Feller with whom I usually stayed. Jeremy and Teresa’s parents, Brian and Valerie Rutten, had all come to Mattersey to take our MA in Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies and were keen to have me come and teach in the college where they were serving with PAOC (Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada). On at least two of these occasions, I was accompanied by Eileen who loved the country and its wonderful people. Apart from the teaching in the college we were taken on lengthy trips to parts of the country which were far hotter than Addis where the climate is more acceptable because of its high altitude. One such trip in February 07 was to Awassa some 290 kilometres to the south. Eileen’s journal captures the memory very well: Lush vegetation, bananas, sugar cane. Beautiful. Lakes, mountains, animals, people, donkey carts. Small groups of huts. Camels, ostrich, hyena. A dead animal being eaten by a vulture and a dog watching and waiting, Young children herding animals, carrying heavy loads, water, bundles of leaves, sticks. The Pentecostal Church in Awassa where I preached on the Sunday was one of the largest in Ethiopia. 2000 people gather at 6.00 every morning to pray. There were 6000 in the 9am service. They have six branch churches with a total membership of 12,000. God is doing amazing things in Ethiopia and I’m so grateful to have had the privilege of teaching and preaching there over those few years. And I’m grateful, too, that we were able to fund the translation into Amharic of Body Builders, my book on spiritual gifts. Despite the massive growth of the church, Ethiopian church leaders recognise their need of sound biblical teaching and if I have made at least a small contribution to that, the Lord be praised. Ile de la Réunion (Reunion Island) Located in the Indian Ocean between Africa and India, the Ile de la Réunion is an overseas French territory. I have already mentioned in an earlier chapter how in 2004 I was the main speaker at the French National Pastors’ Conference in Bordeaux. It was there that I met David Cizéron who told me about his father’s work in Réunion and gave me a book about him. Aimé Cizeron was now with the Lord, but I was fascinated with the account of his apostolic ministry as a result of which some 40 churches had been planted all over the island. So I was pleasantly surprised a year later to receive an invitation to be a guest speaker at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the founding of ADD in Réunion in 2006. They were happy to pay the airfares for both Eileen and me and, as I learnt later, as a tropical island Réunion is a much sought after holiday destination particularly for the French. But we had accepted the invitation well before we knew all this because I was determined to visit the place where 5000 people were gathering within four weeks of the start of Cizéron’s ministry as a result of the miracles of healing that were taking place. So in April 06 we flew to Réunion via Paris, landing at the Roland Garros airport to be greeted by a TV crew asking how we were expecting the eight days of meeting to go. I was very tired after what had been an extremely long journey, made worse by an eleven hour delay in Paris, and simply replied, I believe the Lord will bless us greatly, which he certainly did. But that did not mean that everything would go smoothly. The very next day, our hosts, Patrick and Joanna, were showing us round a market in Saint Denis when they met a friend and introduced us to her. She then said something very strange: You are not afraid of the Chikungunya? Now there were some live chickens for sale in the market and, not knowing what Chikungunya was, I thought it must be something to do with chickens. But no. Chikungunya is a highly infectious disease borne by mosquitoes and potentially fatal! The entire island was affected by it and we had not noticed the warnings about it when we arrived at the airport. We found out later that Tom Trask, American AoG General Superintendent and guest speaker at the conference, had been warned about it in advance, but somehow no one had thought to tell us. But despite all that, we had a great eight days of meetings and the Lord not only preserved us from the chikungunya but greatly blessed all the meetings and ministry. So much so that we were invited back the following year for a longer visit where I conducted seminars for the pastors on spiritual gifts, preached in two evangelistic meetings, and took a series of Bible studies from Monday to Friday in the church in Saint Denis. The people were really hungry for the Word of God. In each evangelistic meeting over 200 people came forward in response to the gospel appeal, and there were over 700 each night for each of the Bible studies. My subject, as usual, was spiritual gifts, but I shall never forget the remarkable way some one came to Christ at the close of one of those meetings. But first I need to tell you about Véronique. Véronique was a kind lady who took us to explore various parts of the island during the daytime when there were no meetings until the evening. Réunion is a volcanic island and one such trip involved driving to the top of the volcano and then walking down into its crater. This was apparently quite safe even though the volcano erupted quite frequently and the steam was still rising from the lava months after the last eruption. One of the days we were there was a public holiday and Véronique had taken her children to the beach. While she was there she told a friend about the meetings and persuaded her to come. She came to the meeting and was so overwhelmed by the worship that she felt she had to leave. But when she was about ten minutes away from the church she suddenly heard the music from the church coming through her mobile phone. No one had called her and, unable to think of any natural explanation, she felt compelled to return to the meeting. She sat through it in tears and at the end, although I had not made a gospel appeal, came forward and asked how she could be saved. It was such a joy to be able to lead her to the Lord and to learn later that she was regularly attending her local ADD church. So the Lord was using us and blessing us in so many different ways and I look back on those years with great gratitude to God. Next time I’ll be talking about our trip to India in 2010 when I began to experience very real health challenges for the first time in my life.
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318 My Story Talk 31 Life after Mattersey (1)
11/10/2025
318 My Story Talk 31 Life after Mattersey (1)
My Story Talk 31 Life after Mattersey (1) Welcome to Talk 31 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. In this talk I shall begin to talk about our life and ministry after we left Mattersey. I’ll explain why I decided to retire from Mattersey when I did and why we moved to Devon. I’ll describe my continuing involvement with Mattersey for a further 12 years and conclude by outlining our wider ministry in Europe. Why I decided to retire when I did In 2004 both Eileen and I had reached the age of 65. As was customary for women at that time, Eileen had retired as Matron of the College five years previously and I had told the Lord that, unless he clearly showed me that I was to stay on, I would retire as Principal when I was 65. First and foremost, we both wanted only to do what the Lord wanted and as we prayed about it became convinced that the time was right for our departure. Our decision was based on several facts. The Lord had not given us any indication that I should stay on, and he had clearly shown me that the man who would be appointed as my successor would be the man of his choosing. And, as I mentioned in an earlier talk, I had already discussed the matter with other leaders who had agreed with me that the timing was right. It was not as if my relationship with Mattersey was at an end. I was not retiring from Mattersey. I was retiring as its Principal. Increasing requests for my ministry overseas had meant that a decision had to be made. I could not do justice to my role as Principal and accept so many invitations to minister elsewhere. But that did not mean that I could not continue to teach in the College as a visiting lecturer, and, at the kind invitation of successive principals, I continued to do so for another 12 years. Why we moved to Devon Of course we had always known that we would have to move because the house we were living in belonged to the College and would be needed by my successor. And we knew that we would have to move immediately. That’s why we were considering our options two or three years beforehand. Colin Whittaker had written to me encouraging me to move right away from Mattersey and Eileen and I both felt that this would be wise. For one thing, the new principal would almost certainly want to make some changes and it would be easier both for him and us if we were not living close by and being asked by our friends in the local church if we approved! Apart from that, our first consideration, wherever we moved, was to be sure that there was a good local AoG church within easy reach where we could become members. Of course, there were plenty of places like that all over the country, so why did we choose Devon? One option might be to move near to one of our children, but as they were all serving the Lord in different parts of the country and might move on at any time, that might not be the wisest course of action. So we felt it would be better both for them and for us if we were to move to a part of the country where the grandchildren would enjoy coming for their holidays. And we could think of no better place than Devon. I had been there on holiday as a teenager, and it was there that I had felt God calling me to the ministry. We knew that there were three AoG churches in Torbay, one in Torquay, one in Paignton, and one in Brixham, where Bob Hyde, one of our former students, was the full-time pastor and leader of the ministry team. Bob had invited me down to minister on at least two occasions and we were very happy with the way the church was structured and with the spiritual atmosphere in the meetings. Neither of the other churches had invited us to minister and so we knew very little about them, so we started to seriously consider fellowshipping with the Brixham assembly if we were able to afford to move into the Torbay area. I phoned Bob and asked if he would be happy about this, explaining that I was not looking for any position in the church and that my ministry would be further afield. For two or three years we had been looking at property prices in the area and, as it was not convenient to make regular 600 mile round trips to view properties as they came on the market, decided on a new property that was to be built in Paignton. We were able to view one just like it and choose a plot where another was to be built – a four-bedroom house with spectacular views over open countryside and the sea, the nearest beach being only a ten-minute drive away. We decided very quickly that this would be the house for us and, because of God’s wonderful provision, were able to buy it in 2003 and move in immediately after we retired from Mattersey in July 2004. We spent ten very happy years there until we felt the Lord prompting us to move into Brixham to be nearer to the church in 2013, more of which later. Meanwhile I continued to teach at Mattersey and expand our travelling ministry overseas. Continuing Ministry at Mattersey It was always a great joy to revisit Mattersey each year to teach various M.Th. courses, specialising on The Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, and Divine Healing. Each time we stayed with our friends, William and Anthea Kay who were still living close to Mattersey and enjoyed renewed fellowship with them. It was on one such occasion, in September 2005, that Eileen was involved in a serious accident. I was teaching a combined class of students in the College chapel when I was surprised to see Dr Dave Allen come in at the back. He walked quietly forward and approached me on the platform. Then he whispered to me, You need to go. Eileen is all right, but she’s been involved in an accident. I’ll take over here. They’ll tell you more in the office. The accident had happened less than a mile outside Mattersey on the Retford Road. Someone, I don’t remember who, drove me there immediately and the first thing I saw was a fire engine and an ambulance. I was so glad that Dave Allen had already told me that Eileen was all right, or I would almost certainly have feared the worst. I later discovered a voice-mail message on my phone, which had been switched onto silent while I was lecturing. It was Eileen saying, David, I’ve been in an accident. You need to come. I can’t breathe… … and her voice petered out. I’m so grateful that I didn’t receive that message until after I knew she was all right. It was the airbag that had saved her, but the pressure of it was causing the difficulty in her breathing. The accident was not Eileen’s fault. She was driving into Retford to do some shopping when another car coming in the opposite direction overtook a cyclist on a blind bend and crashed head-on into Eileen. As both cars were probably travelling at 50 m.p.h., the full force of the impact would have been about 100 m.p.h. Both cars were a write-off and the other driver was told that she would probably never walk again as a result of the injuries she suffered. Eileen escaped with two cracked ribs from which she recovered relatively quickly. Our insurance company provided a courtesy car for us and a few days later we drove home to Devon after I had finished the series of lectures I had been giving. Fortunately, we had enough money to buy a replacement vehicle without waiting for the insurance settlement to come through, as less than a week later I was committed to teach an MA course at the Continental Theological Seminary in Brussels. We were both so grateful for the loving care of Trude and Sylve, twin sisters from our church in Brixham who looked after Eileen during my absence. I have always been amazed at Eileen’s patience and fortitude in situations like this and the courage she displayed in face of adversity. I have already mentioned this when speaking about the accident which prevented her from travelling with me to Burkina Faso. But these qualities became even more evident in later life about which I will say more in a later talk. A Wider Ministry Apart from my continuing input at Mattersey in the years that followed our departure to Devon in 2004, much of my ministry involved teaching in Bible Colleges and speaking at National Conferences overseas. Invitations came from former students and because of contacts through EPTA, PEF, and the PWF. Eileen was usually able to accompany me and between 2005 and 2012 I ministered in churches, colleges and conferences in Belgium, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Ireland, Luxembourg, Madeira, Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Réunion, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, and Ukraine. In this talk we’ll just be referring to countries in Europe. Some of these places I visited only once, while others, like Finland and Belgium, were countries where I taught in their Bible colleges annually. The subject was almost invariably connected with the work of the Holy Spirit – his person and work, the baptism in the Spirit, spiritual gifts, and healing. Of particular importance was the time I spent with pastors and national leaders sharing with them on how to encourage spiritual gifts in the local church. Places I visited only once during these years were Sweden (05), Ukraine (06), Poland (07), and Slovakia (08). Eileen accompanied me on the trips to Sweden, for a week’s teaching in Kristinehamn, and Slovakia, for an EPTA conference in the vicinity of Bratislava. I travelled unaccompanied to Poland to teach for a week in the Warsaw Theological Seminary and preach in the local Pentecostal church. But when I visited Ukraine I was part of a three-man team from our church in Brixham. As it was my first (and only) visit, Bob Hyde and Mark Goodyear, both of whom had been before, let me do most of the teaching. In all the churches we visited the subject they asked me to speak on was spiritual gifts. There, as is sadly the case in so many places elsewhere, there is very little teaching on this important subject, so when the opportunity was given in each church, at the end of the meeting the people flocked forward for prayer. Visits I made to Ireland (06, 07, 08) were mainly in connection with my new role as a member of the Board of Governors of the Irish AoG Bible College in Greystones, a seaside village a few miles south of Dublin, where Daniel Caldwell, a former Mattersey student was now the Principal and where several other Mattersey graduates like Roy Leith and Sandy Tutty were now involved . I also had the privilege of preaching at their graduation service in September 07. Eileen and I had often visited our friends John and Ann Leese in Luxembourg as we were en route for our holidays in France or Germany and were always grateful for their hospitality. And in 2006 I was asked to be the guest speaker at their church’s weekend retreat held in Arlon in nearby Belgium. It was always a joy to renew fellowship with our friends from that wonderful church. I also preached there in September 2012 after teaching at CTS in Brussels and before driving on for a week’s teaching in churches in the Paris area of France. Over a period of about 20 years we regularly went to France for our holidays and I would often end up preaching in one of the ADD (AoG) churches there. I don’t have detailed dates for these occasions, but I remember preaching in Auch, Bordeaux, Clermont Ferrand, Metz, Mourrenx, Toulouse, and Versailles, sometimes with less than 24 hours notice! But perhaps the most interesting part of France we ever visited was the Ile de la Réunion. To which I will return next time. The countries I visited most frequently were Germany (3x), Portugal (4x), Belgium (8x), and Finland (11x). With the exception of Germany, this was because I was annually teaching in their Bible Colleges. Having said that, in 2009 I did teach for a week at Kniebis in the Black Forest at the European Theological Seminary, a beautiful college belonging to the Church of God, where the EPTA conference was to be held the following week. And in 2007, after attending a PEF related conference in Oslo, Norway, we flew to Germany to conduct seminars at the national pastors’ conference of the BFP (Bund Freikirchlicher Pfingstgemeinden), the nearest equivalent to the AoG in Germany. It was also in Oslo that I bumped into Werner Fraas, the president of the Volksmission group of German churches and was invited to conduct a tour of their churches in southern Germany in 2008. Eileen always remembered this well as we slept in a least ten different beds during the course of two weeks’ ministry there before driving on to the EPTA conference in Slovakia. I first visited Portugal in 1982 for an EPTA conference, but it was many years later that I had the opportunity to teach in their Bible College and preach in their churches. Harry Osland was an American missionary who, at the time, was director of the Portuguese Bible College in Fanhoes near Lisbon. It so happened that in 2006 he was in an MA class I was teaching in Belgium at the Continental Theological Seminary and he asked me if I would be willing to come to teach in Portugal. So for three years (07, 08, and 09) I spent a week or so in Portugal, teaching in their college and preaching in their churches. Harry not only organised the itinerary for me but also arranged for several of my books to be translated into Portuguese. He and his wife Beth became good friends and Eileen and I really appreciated their kindness and hospitality. Another contact I had with Portugal was Reginaldo Azevedo de Melo, a Brazilian brother based in Portugal who came to Mattersey as one of our students. With the cooperation of Pastor Luis Reis, who knew me through PEF, after he graduated Reginaldo arranged an itinerary for me preaching in several churches. Our trips the Portugal gave us a taste for Portuguese cuisine, something we also experienced in Madeira, a Portuguese overseas territory, and popular holiday destination because of its pleasant climate all the year round. We first went there in 2008 courtesy of our friends William and Anthea Kay who let us use their lovely time-share apartment. This inspired us to get our own time-share and we returned for three weeks in 2010 when I was asked to preach in the small AoG church in Funchal, about which I shall say more later. My ministry in Belgium was due first to my work with the International Correspondence Institute, which I referred to in an earlier talk, and secondly, to my contact with CTS, the Continental Theological Seminary, through fellowship with friends in EPTA. Roland and Judy Dudley, American AoG missionaries, had led the Portuguese Bible College back in the eighties and had moved on to Sint-Pieters-Leeuw near Brussels to head up CTS. At Roland’s invitation I taught on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, and Divine Healing on their MA programme for eight consecutive years (2005-2012). I was often asked to preach in their chapel services when we saw many students receive the baptism in the Spirit. Eileen and I were housed in one of the well-equipped apartments in the college. We always enjoyed our visits to Belgium and took the opportunity to admire the wonderful architecture in cities like Brussels and Ghent as well as preaching in churches there. And every year we were at CTS made sure that we made a visit to the outlet store of a nearby chocolate factory and bring back plenty in time for Christmas! And finally Finland, a country we visited even more often that Belgium. Apart from my contact with Teuvo Valkama that I mentioned in an earlier talk, it was friends I met at PEF and EPTA meetings who were the main instigators of our visits to that beautiful country. I first met Arto Hamalainnen at the ICCOWE conference in Brighton in June 1991 but later got to know him much better as we both served on the PEF Presidium, he as secretary and I as vice-chairman. Arto was the Missions Director for the Finnish Pentecostal Churches and was responsible for recommending me for my first visit to Ethiopia in 2005 and my visit to India in 2010, about which I will say more next time. But it was Pasi Parkkila, the Director of the Finnish Bible College, who was responsible for most of our visits to Finland. I first met Pasi at an EPTA conference – I don’t remember which, possibly at CTS in 02 or in Nantwich in 04 – but he asked me if I would be willing to teach on their MA programme at Iso Kirja, which incidentally means The Great Book – what a name for a Bible College! So, apart from 2010 when I was too unwell to go, I taught at Iso Kirja the same subjects as I was teaching at CTS every year from 2005 to 2012. But apart from teaching at Iso Kirja I also visited Finland for the EPTA conference in 06 and was the guest speaker at their National Pastors’ Conference both in 08 and 09. Eileen invariably travelled with me on our visits to Iso Kirja when most years we were accommodated in a comfortable log cabin overlooking a beautiful lake. Tuula, Pasi’s wife, a primary school teacher, kindly loaned us her car throughout our visits which gave us a measure of independence while we were there enabling us to drive into the nearest town, Keuruu, or to Jyväskylä a larger town a little further away. We were also able to visit a number of churches during our trips, including one at Seinäjoki where outstanding miracles of healing were regularly taking place in their meetings. From the reports I was hearing I could hardly imagine that there was anyone in the church left with a problem, but after my preaching some fifty or sixty people came forward for prayer, all expecting to be personally prayed for. And as we had to communicate through an interpreter this inevitable took twice as long as usual. An hour and a half after the end of the meeting I laid hands on the last person and was feeling in need of prayer myself. I was extremely tired and hungry but felt I had learnt a lesson – even when miracles are happening there will always be people in need of prayer. Perhaps the final thing to say about Finland is that at the request of Aikamedia, the Finnish Publishing Department, at least four of my books have been published in Finnish. I am encouraged that my teaching in Finland still goes on even though I have not been there in person since 2012. The Lord had certainly extended the scope of my ministry and confirmed that it was right for us to leave Mattersey when we did. Next time we’ll talk about our trips to Reunion, Africa and India.
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317 My Story Talk 30 Finding my successor and saying farewell to Mattersey
10/30/2025
317 My Story Talk 30 Finding my successor and saying farewell to Mattersey
My Story Talk 30 Finding my successor and saying farewell to Mattersey Welcome to Talk 30 in our series where I am reflecting on God's goodness to me throughout my life. Today my subject is finding my successor and saying farewell to Mattersey. From all I have said so far it has been clear that the Lord had abundantly blessed our work for him at Mattersey and there was no requirement that I should retire in 2004 at the age of 65. The system at the time was that my name was put forward for re-election every four years and the next time this was to happen was in 2003. There was little doubt that I would be re-elected if I let my name go forward, but did I want to serve another four years and continue until I was 68? More importantly, what did the Lord want? It was clear that he had been blessing my ministry beyond the College for some years and an increasing number of doors were opening for me, particularly with regard to teaching internationally on the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps I would be able to continue teaching in the College but make room for someone else to take over the principalship. The more I thought about this the more I felt it was right. Guidance comes in a variety of ways, sometimes supernaturally and quite dramatically, and at others by an increasing inner conviction that a particular course of action is the right one. I have already described the wonderful way the Lord led us to Mattersey and how, soon after we arrived there he confirmed that the building we were planning was his plan too. But now, as no clear guidance was forthcoming, I decided that we just had to do what we felt was right and ask the Lord to intervene if it was not his will. I wondered if the AoG Conference would agree to let me put my name forward for just one more year, instead of the usual four and decided to talk to my friend Paul Weaver, the AoG General Superintendent about this. A suitable opportunity arose when we both arrived a day early for a PEF meeting in Prague and were both accommodated in the same hotel. Paul assured me that he felt that, if I decided to take that route, no one at Conference would raise an objection, and we started to explore possibilities about who would be my successor. Colleagues had already told me that they couldn’t think of anyone suitable, but I realised that, whoever they were, my successor didn’t need to be another David Petts. Talking to Paul, I suggested four names who I thought could do the job and he agreed. However, I need to make it clear that it was not my responsibility to appoint my successor, though I would be part of the interview panel and hopefully people would prayerfully consider any suggestion I might make. Having informally agreed these things with Paul, I referred the matter to the Board of Governors and the Executive Council who all agreed with the procedure I was suggesting. As a result, Paul Alexander, a South African who had been a student at Mattersey and who had gone on to found the Africa School of Missions and who had been one of the four names I had mentioned to Paul Weaver, was appointed as Principal with effect from summer 2004. He was, however, expected to work alongside me from 2003 so as to get used to the way we were doing things. I personally felt it a pity that he never really did so, but he did, nevertheless make an excellent Principal and invited me to continue teaching annually on the Master’s programme, which I did until 2015. But before Paul finally took over the reins suitable arrangements had to be made to celebrate the years we had spent at Mattersey. The Board of Governors asked me what I would like, and I said that I wanted opportunity to say thank you to all who had made possible the things we had accomplished together over the past 27 years. As a result, we ended up with no less than four celebrations. First there was a sumptuous buffet banquet at the General Conference for all former students, staff and faculty who were able to attend. Then, in the final week of the Summer Term there was a celebration meal for all the present students. This was followed a day or so later by another meal for all the staff and faculty, past and present, who had ever served the College during my principalship. And finally, there was the Graduation Service on the Saturday where Ken Morgan, the Chair of the Board of Governors, expressed appreciation on behalf of the College and handed me a generous cheque. It was also the occasion when the University of Wales conferred upon me the honour of appointing me as an Honorary Academic Fellow of the university. I, of course, expressed my appreciation to all concerned and welcomed Paul Alexander as the new Principal. Two days later we vacated the house we had lived in for 25 years and moved to Devon, grateful to God for all he had done and excited about all he was yet to do. But that’s the subject of the next talk. Meanwhile, by way of a summary of our years at Mattersey, I want to read you my final report as Bible College Principal to the AoG Conference held in 2004: Thanks be to God… This is something of a special occasion as this will be the last report that I shall write as the Principal of the Bible College. I intend, therefore, instead of reporting on events in the college over the past 12 months, to look back over the 34 year period of my relationship with the college, and especially the 27 years of my principalship, in order that I might place on record my profound gratitude to God for all he has done, and to those who have helped to make it all possible. My relationship with the college goes back to 1970 when, at the invitation of the Principal, George Jeffreys Williamson, I became a visiting lecturer. It was during that period when, in January 1972, God spoke to me supernaturally in the middle of the night and told me that I was going to live at the Bible College. When David Powell became Principal in 1973 and the college moved to Mattersey, he continued to use me as a visiting lecturer until, in 1976, I was appointed by Conference as a member of the Board of Governors. In 1977 David Powell offered himself for re-election but withdrew his name at the last minute at conference. This led to my sharing the principalship for a year with Alfred Missen and Keith Munday whose experience, expertise and advice were to prove of great value to me. I was finally appointed Principal in 1978 and took up residence at Mattersey in June of that year. … for what he has done The purpose of the college has always been to prepare men and women for Christian service at home and overseas. I feel deeply privileged to have been involved in the training of well over 1000 full-time students during my time as Principal. On leaving college many have gone into church leadership roles and those who have not have been better equipped to serve the Lord in other capacities. In recent years, since we developed our degree programme up to 10 each year have gone into school teaching. Several are now in prominent positions in the Fellowship nationally or regionally. Others are doing a great job for God overseas. We are so grateful that the money we invested by giving scholarships to students from India and Africa has resulted over the years in many churches being planted in those countries. It is because I passionately believe that the training Mattersey provides results in a better-equipped Christian leadership that we have sought from the start to expand the number of students as far as our capacity and ability would allow. As a result I am pleased to report that there are some 500+ students who are currently engaged on courses provided by Mattersey Hall compared with the 48 we started with in 1978. We started the current year with 126 full time BA students, 56 part time MTh students, and 323 students enrolled on our distance learning courses. This growth has only been made possible by the development of both the programme and the campus. As far as the programme is concerned, much has been added over the years. Whereas we originally offered only a two-year diploma programme where all students took all the same subjects, we now provide a varied curriculum with specialist options for training in the specific areas where students are gifted or to which they feel called. Details of these are to be found in the latest college prospectus and there is no need to mention them here. Suffice it to say that Mattersey now offers courses that combine both academic excellence and practical relevance with a spiritual dynamic that reflects our Pentecostal heritage. But the development of the programme has only been possible because of the development on the campus. Thanks to the many gifts we received from churches and individuals, particularly back in the 1980s, the Lord has enabled us to improve the facilities on campus beyond recognition. This may be summarised as follows: 1979 Construction of the Principal's house 1980s Erection of the hall of residence providing 120 individual study-bedrooms for students Purchase of playing field doubling the size of campus to 14 acres. 1998 Erection of new chapel and three new classrooms. We are very grateful to property trust for the help they have given us in providing a mortgage for this and for other assistance they have given from time to time. In connection with all of the above, I wish to place on record my sincere appreciation for the faith of those who have served on the Board of Governors and for the support they have given me over the years. It has not all been easy, but the Lord has stood by us and by his grace we now have a campus equipped with facilities commensurate with the task that we seek to undertake. … for those who have helped Of course, there have been many helpers along the way. It gives me great pleasure to place on record my sincere appreciation to all who have served the College in any way during the course of my principalship. Worthy of special mention are my wife, Eileen, who served as Matron for 21 years; Dave and Beryl Allen who have worked with me full time since 1983; Brian Quar, whose experience in the building industry was most valuable to us in our major building projects; and William Kay, who has encouraged me and helped me to bring the college to its present academic standard. However, I am no less grateful to all who have played their part and accordingly I honour them here. (There then follows a long list). My thanks to them all, and to any whose names I may have inadvertently omitted. …for what the future holds Finally, It seems appropriate to say a word as to what I feel the future holds. As far as the college is concerned, it is clear that the job is by no means finished. I have every confidence in Paul Alexander and I know that he has a vision for further growth and expansion. I entrust to his care the college I have been privileged to lead for 27 years and the gifted and dedicated team who have been working with me. I pray that he will be able to take the college further than I have been able to. May the Lord inspire him and direct him to that end. I believe with all my heart that Mattersey is the best – though not the only – means we have of preparing men and women for the ministry. Potential leaders need to be encouraged to make the most of the great opportunity it offers. As for me, I have made it clear that I am not retiring from ministry. The call of God is as strong as ever. I am relinquishing my responsibilities as Principal in order to be free to serve in a wider capacity. As long as the Lord enables, I shall continue to preach and teach and write. I shall remain a member of the Board of Governors, though now in an emeritus capacity. Paul has kindly asked me to continue to teach some part time courses that relate to the work of the Spirit, and this I have agreed to do. I will be happy to support him in any way I can. Thank you for giving me the great privilege of serving you. When all is said and done, I have only done what it was my duty to do (Luke 17: 10). But it has given me great joy to do it. To God alone be all the glory! Respectfully submitted David Petts, Principal
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316 My Story Talk 29 Travels in Asia and Africa
10/15/2025
316 My Story Talk 29 Travels in Asia and Africa
My Story Talk 29 Travels in Asia and Africa My first trip outside of Europe or America was in 1986 when I visited Pakistan, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. It came about in a quite remarkable way. One Sunday in 1985 I was reading an article about India in a Christian magazine when quite unexpectedly I had the distinct impression that the Lord was going to send me to India. I told Eileen about it and we agreed to wait and see what would happen. The very next Wednesday evening we had a meeting in the College chapel where the guest speaker was Ray Belfield who had come to challenge the students about overseas missions. After the meeting Ray came round to our house for a hot drink before making the return journey back to Wigan. As we prayed together just before he left, I found myself praying that the Lord would show us how best we as a College could support the work of missions, and the moment I had finished Ray said to me, I’ll tell you what you can do. You can go to India. I had told him nothing about what had happened the previous Sunday, so this seemed to be a real confirmation of what I felt the Lord had been telling me. But how would I raise the airfare? Shortly after that, Bob Stevenson was the speaker at a similar Wednesday evening meeting, and at the end of his message he totally surprised me. He said to the students, Now the Principal doesn’t know I’m going to do this. In fact, I haven’t asked anyone’s permission to do so, but I want us to take an offering now. It’s for your Principal’s airfare to India. And the airfare was covered. The following January I went to India. In fact it was not just India. That month I visited Pakistan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia as well. I travelled first to Pakistan and preached for a weekend in Karachi. This was my first experience outside of Europe or America and the culture shock was massive. And it wasn’t helped by a severe attack of sickness and diarrhoea! I was so grateful that my friend Dr John Tonge had told me to pack some Imodium tablets! As a result, I was able to preach but sadly unable to eat any of the wonderful food they offered me. On the Monday I flew on to India with an empty stomach but soon recovered very quickly. I landed in Bombay (now Mumbai) and flew on to Coimbatore in the province of Tamil Nadu where AoG missionaries, Lawrence and Margaret Livesey, had planted churches decades earlier. It was truly wonderful to see the results of their sacrificial labours. I spent a little over two weeks there, preaching, teaching and visiting orphanages and schools run by the churches. David Prakasam and Lawrence Arumanayagam had both been students at Mattersey and were now training others to plant churches. One of the greatest thrills of my trip was to visit some of the many churches that had been planted by the students of our students. I saw very clearly that what we were doing at Mattersey was following Paul’s instruction to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2. The rest of my trip was spent in short visits to Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. I was based with Cyril and Barbara Cross, British AoG missionaries in Singapore, who looked after me very well. Before I flew back home I had the privilege of preaching in Bible College chapel in Kuala Lumpur, a large AoG church in Singapore, and a very lively house group led by an eighteen-year-old girl in Medan, Indonesia. If I had ever had doubts about women’s ministry in the past, that girl’s anointed leadership gift was more than enough to change my mind. My final trip to countries beyond Europe while we were still at Mattersey was to Burkina Faso in the year 2000. Several of our students at Mattersey had come from that part of Africa, formerly known as the Upper Volta. Like our students from India, most of them came on full scholarships which we provided for them. The first of these was Guetawende Roamba, the student I mentioned earlier who had recognised that a woman speaking in tongues in a College rally in Manchester was speaking in Moré, his own native language. Another, who came a few years later, was Philippe Ouédraogo who when he first arrived at Mattersey couldn’t speak a word of English. I remember picking him up at Retford Station and speaking to him in French, giving him his first English lesson on the ten-minute journey back to College. Passing a field of cows, I pointed at them and said, les vaches, en anglais, COWS. Not that that piece of information would be much help for his studies at Mattersey! But it was a start, and Philippe became remarkably proficient in English in just a few weeks. It was through him that we received the invitation to visit Burkina Faso in November 2000. Eileen was very much looking forward to coming with me but unfortunately was prevented from doing so at the last minute. Eileen had retired in 1999 after serving as College Matron for 21 years and was at home in the utility room doing some decorating. As she was putting up a frieze she climbed onto the washing machine to help her reach the top of the wall and losing her balance fell off it backwards onto the hard floor, breaking the top of her arm close to the shoulder. On hearing the news I was home within minutes – our house was in the College grounds – and rushed her to A&E who confirmed the fracture and strongly advised her not to make the trip to Africa. And when I arrived there a few days later and experienced travelling on their bumpy roads, it was clear that we had made the right decision. The leaders in Ouagadougou were so impressed that she had let me come that they sent me home a few days earlier than planned. The highlights of the trip were preaching several times in French at the National Pastors’ Conference, having a meal with, I think, seven of our former students, and being taken to visit some of the villages in the surrounding area. I shall never forget a lady giving me one of her chickens as a thank you for visiting her humble home and being taken by Philippe to a pool inhabited by several alligators. One of them, about eight to ten feet in length, was basking in the sun on the edge of the bank. Although they were wild animals Phillippe persuaded me to approach it from behind while he threw it a chicken. He then encouraged me to pick up its tail and I, not liking to appear not to trust him, cautiously did as he said. And there was no reaction from the animal! So I was able to tell the grandchildren what I had done and show them a photo to prove it, warning them never to anything so foolish! But actually it wasn’t quite as foolish as it sounds. The alligators were indeed wild, but as Philippe explained to me, the people who were not yet Christians worshipped these animals and regularly brought them food. As a result they had become relatively tame. There was, of course, an element of danger – you never know what a wild animal might do – but they were, oxymoronically, tame wild animals! I am so grateful to the Lord not only for the privilege of visiting so many different countries and cultures, and for so many opportunities to be a blessing to so many people, but also for the fun I’ve had in doing so. And this was to continue for years after my retirement from Mattersey. But before that could happen a very important decision had to be made. Who was to be my successor? Next time I’ll tell you how that decision was made.
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315 My Story Talk 28 Activities Beyond Europe
10/04/2025
315 My Story Talk 28 Activities Beyond Europe
My Story Talk 28 Activities Beyond Europe Welcome to Talk 28 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Looking back on it, I suppose I travelled fairly widely during the time we were at Mattersey. Apart from the many places in Europe we visited, I found myself on the Lord’s business in America, Africa, and Asia, though never, incidentally in Australia. These visits, which cover the period from 1982 to 2004, were either in connection with the Pentecostal World Conference which later became the Pentecostal World Fellowship or preaching trips The Pentecostal World Conference My reason for attending the Pentecostal World Conference in Oslo in 1992 was that, because it was being held in Europe, the PEF presidium had decided to hold a committee meeting there at the same time. Eileen and I had visited Norway for the first time two years previously where we had enjoyed a holiday there before attending the EPTA conference in Lillehammer. This time, however, I was alone. During one of the mornings, I was sitting high up at the back of the auditorium and was surprised to hear my name mentioned at the close of the session. Dr Ray Hughes was asking me to see him on the platform during the coffee break. I couldn’t imagine why but, of course, went to see him as requested. This was not quite as easy as it sounds because to get there I had to make my way through hundreds of people who were exiting the venue and all walking in the opposite direct from me. When I finally got there, he said to me, Oh David, as you know, you’ve been appointed to the Advisory Committee, and we’d like you to sit on the platform with us for the rest of the conference. Well, I knew nothing about this appointment. It was a complete surprise and when a year or so later I was elected to the Presidium it was an even greater honour. The 1995 conference was particularly special because it was held in Jerusalem. And this time Eileen came with me. We had never been in Israel before and we made sure that we saw as many of the biblical sites as possible. We had booked a tour with a Christian company and travelled in a small coach with a group of Brits who were attending the conference, and it was there that we met Ivor and Jan Maddison who were pastoring the church in Ollerton, not far from Mattersey. (We got to know Jan very well when she came to live in Brixham after Ivor had died). The tour involved a visit to Tiberias on the shore of Lake Galilee from where we visited Capernaum, took a trip across the lake in a boat like those used by Jesus’ disciples and from which he calmed the storm, and had a meal on the lake shore eating ‘St. Peter’s fish’, so called because of the occasion where he found a coin in the fish’s mouth. We went to Caesarea Philippi, a beautiful place, where Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ. We visited the place in the river Jordan where Jesus is believed to have been baptised, and further south we had a brief stop in Jericho. We travelled up from there to Jerusalem in time for the conference and of course visited Bethlehem and all the places you would expect, many of which have been spoilt by centuries of tradition and tourism. Eileen got to see Nazareth, but I missed the trip because I had to be in a presidium meeting. Highlights in Jerusalem were the Garden of Gethsemane, and the via dolorosa. But without a doubt the visit to the garden tomb was by far the most moving. It may or may not have been the actual site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection, although I like to think that it was, but it was certainly a powerful reminder of the truth – Jesus is not here, he is risen! And who could forget the visit to the Upper Room and joining with other Pentecostals in speaking in tongues as the first disciples did in Acts 2? After the conference we visited Masada, floated on the Dead Sea where it’s impossible to sink, and went to the cave where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered. It was there, I think, that we paid an Arab to let us take a photo of his camel! We also visited a museum where we saw a number of ancient seals, some dating back over three thousand years, and reminding us of Paul’s teaching that after we believed we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So during the trip there was much to remind us of Bible times and the truth of God’s word. We were glad that we went but have never had a wish to return. Eileen is now enjoying the heavenly Jerusalem and one day I will join her there. And all because of Jesus! In 1998 the conference was held in Seoul, Korea, at the vast Yoido Full Gospel Church led by David Yongghi Cho, numbering at the time some 720,000 members. We had at first thought to extend the trip and visit China and the Great Wall. Eileen had always had a great interest in China, but when it turned out that the visit was not feasible she decided not to accompany me. I had met Cho at the London world conference in 1976 when I gave him a copy of my book, Know the Truth, later to be renamed You’d Better Believe It. I was naturally interested to visit his church and to experience one of the Sunday services there. There were, I think, six services each Sunday to accommodate the vast numbers. Everything had to be organised and left little if any room for the exercise of spiritual gifts like tongues, interpretation and prophecy which we might expect in a smaller congregation. Presumably there was opportunity for such gifts to be experienced in their many home groups. The final meeting of the conference was held in the Olympic Stadium where it was estimated that over 100,000 people were in attendance. I was privileged to read from the scriptures, which I found a little difficult on this occasion as I had somehow mislaid my glasses on a visit to the Prayer Mountain and was using a pair borrowed from an English brother who was staying in the same hotel as me. During the conference it was decided to hold the next presidium meeting in Hawaii in 1999. The reasoning seemed to be that as Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean it was not too far from either Asia or America. However, no one considered the inconvenience for anyone travelling from Europe! But as I was the only European on the presidium I could hardly object. So that is how I came to fly to Hawaii, a 24 hour journey each way, for a three-day committee meeting! The purpose was to plan for the 2001 conference which was to be held in Los Angeles. Fortunately, the meeting finished a day early and I had a day to spare before flying home. This gave me the opportunity to take a minibus tour of the island, visiting among other things Pearl Harbour and a tropical rain forest. I also experienced macadamia nuts for the first time and learnt that the name comes a Scot named Macadam who first discovered them and who also invented tarmac! Eileen was able to travel with me for the Los Angeles conference in 2001 and in the week before the conference we both enjoyed a short holiday staying with Brian and Ann Lee, old friends from Retford who had emigrated to La Verne just a few miles from L.A. It was good to renew fellowship with them and to preach in their local AoG church. At the conference itself I had been asked to chair a theological seminar at which Roger Stronstad, a Canadian scholar whose writings I greatly admired, was to be one of the speakers. The subject was the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and at the last minute, I was asked to be the other speaker deputising for an American brother who was unable to attend. I was so grateful to the Lord for the opportunity he gave me to speak at the conference and the help he gave me to do so. The last world conference we attended was in South Africa in 2004. This conference was in many ways different from all the others. In the opening meeting the delegates were warmly welcomed by the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeke who had been deputy president under Nelson Mandela from 1994 to 1999 and served as president from ’99 to 2008. Eileen felt particularly honoured as she was seated right next to him on the front row! But much more important was the fact that so many participants were from African countries, and the meetings were marked by the freedom of expression so typical of African worship and so different from the formalism we have seen elsewhere even in some Pentecostal meetings. It was something we were to see much more of in later visits to Africa in the years that followed my retirement from Mattersey, After the conference we hired a car and travelled to the Africa School of Missions founded by Paul Alexander, my newly appointed successor at Mattersey. We broke our journey at Witbank where I preached at two services on the Sunday, travelling on to ASM on the Monday where we were warmly welcomed by the staff. They asked us if we were planning to visit the Kruger National Park, and, when we said no, one of them kindly phoned a relative who worked there and arranged for us to stay for a few nights at Skukuza, one of the safari lodges in the park. Our accommodation was in an extremely comfortable one-room apartment that looked something like a traditional African hut with a thatched roof. The restaurants served excellent food which was relatively inexpensive and offered views overlooking the wonderful wildlife. We enjoyed every moment we spent at Skukuza, especially when a company of mongooses ran across the compound in single file right in front of us. But of course it was driving outside the safari park that we saw most of the wildlife. It was early spring in the southern hemisphere, and the leaves had only just begun to appear on the trees and bushes, making it easy to spot whatever animals and birds happened to be in the area. We travelled miles each day, taking care to obey the instruction never to get out of the car except in specially designated safe places. We were also glad that the car had good air-conditioning because it was often important to ensure the windows were closed. On one occasion we stopped to watch a group of baboons in the road just ahead of us and I closed the electric windows. However, I had momentarily forgotten that, unlike our car at home, our hire car had electric windows only at the front. We only realised the back ones were still open when a large baboon leapt in onto the back seat attempting to steal our lunch! I turned round and shouted in a loud voice – Eileen later told the grandchildren that Grandad roared like a lion – and thank God, the animal obeyed! Both we and our lunch were safe. After that, we never opened the back windows again for the rest of the trip. Apart from that, the remainder of our stay there was relatively uneventful. We loved it so much that when I was back at ASM a few years later I borrowed a car and went back there. Our visit was far too short but was the highlight of our trip to South Africa. We were particularly grateful that in such a short time we had managed to see the big five – lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and buffalo, a wonderful ending to our last Pentecostal World Conference. Preaching trips But of course my travels beyond Europe were not limited to my role in the Pentecostal World Fellowship. There were preaching trips as well. At first, these centred on the USA where I combined preaching with raising funds for our building project. An American AoG pastor named Paul Curtis had a burden for Britain came to see me on one of his trips to England and said he would like to help raise funds for our new Hall of Residence. So at Paul’s invitation, in February ’82 I spent ten days preaching in AoG churches in North Carolina with a view to returning in mid-May for a period of four weeks. I enjoyed the trip in February, and the Lord blessed my ministry, and about £1400 was raised towards our building fund. Hopefully the trip in May-June would be more fruitful in that respect. I was looking forward to it and had bought my flights in advance as that was more economical. But only a few weeks before the trip Paul contacted me to apologise and tell me that he had been unable to arrange a suitable itinerary for me and that he felt that the time was not right. But I had already bought non-refundable tickets for flights both ways! And I had already planned the timetable at Mattersey to enable me to be away from the college throughout that period! After praying about it I contacted John and Sara Miles who were by then living in Naperville, Illinois, and asked their advice. Sara suggested that I was in a situation like Abraham’s when he set off not knowing where the Lord would lead him. So I used the air tickets to fly as far as New York and paid the extra to fly on to Chicago where John and Sara collected me from O’Hare airport on May the 18th. When I arrived they told me that they had contacted Richard Dortch, the Superintendent of the Illinois AoG, and that he was arranging an itinerary for me around Illinois where I was already known through my three visits back in the seventies. I stayed with John and Sara until 6th July preaching in churches in the Chicago area on Sundays and Wednesday evenings. These included Yorkville, Palatine, Dekalb, Naperville, and Lake Villa as well as Chicago itself. I also spent a day at Wheaton College, had lunch with John, who was now a French professor there, and with Peter Kuzmic from Yugoslavia, and saw the wardrobe made famous in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. On Thursday the 27th I flew via Denver to San José, California, to visit Bethany Bible College. Dick Foth, who had been the pastor in Urbana where I first preached on my visit to the States in 1972, was now the President of Bethany and I had a couple of useful days with him visiting the college and comparing notes. I had an interesting experience flying back on the Saturday. The weather was extremely hot and everyone else was dressed in shorts and T shirts. I, however, was still wearing my jacket. As I was waiting in the queue to check in, an airline official approached me and said, Excuse me, sir. I wonder if you can help me. We’re overbooked in Economy Class, and as you seem to be a suitable gentleman, I wonder if you would mind travelling First Class. Would I mind! It was the first and only time I have travelled First Class and, although I could never justify the expense of doing so, I was more than happy to enjoy the experience at no extra cost to myself. On 6th June I left Naperville and flew to Urbana where I preached on the Sunday and where my old friend Jim Hall was now the pastor. The next day I flew to Springfield MO to visit two other AoG colleges, Evangel College and Central Bible College, as well as the Graduate School located in the AoG Headquarters in Boonville Avenue. When I returned to Urbana on the Friday, Jim Hall had arranged an English Evening where I talked about the spiritual state of the UK and taught the Americans how to make a proper cup of tea! On the Sunday morning, I preached in Normal, where Marvin Foulkes was the pastor. I had preached for Marvin back in ’72 and ’74 and was delighted to see how much the church had grown since then. In the evening, I preached in Decatur from where I flew back to Chicago ready for my return to England the next day. Looking back on it, I felt that the trip had been very worthwhile, not just because it raised about $5000 for our college, but because of the opportunity it gave me to visit and learn from other AoG colleges and expand my vision for Mattersey. I was very grateful to Richard Dortch for making it possible. A year later I met Dortch in Portugal at the opening of the new chapel in the Bible College in Fanhões, near Lisbon, and he shared with me that he was soon likely to become the Executive Vice-President at PTL, the centre of Jimmy and Tammy Bakker’s ministry, and he invited me to preach for a week on their TV station. This took place in 1985 and during our stay Eileen, Jonathan, and I were treated to the luxurious accommodation of the Heritage Grand Hotel. And we came home with a significant sum of money for our building fund. We were, of course, very grateful for their hospitality and generosity, but I confess I was not really comfortable about so much luxury. Coming to terms with the cultural differences and levels of poverty or prosperity we see around the world is by no means easy. The riches of America were in stark contrast with the poverty I was to see in India less than a year later. But I’ll tell you about that next time.
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314 My Story Talk 27 More Activities in Europe
09/23/2025
314 My Story Talk 27 More Activities in Europe
My Story Talk 27 More Activities in Europe Welcome to Talk 27 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I was talking about our off-campus activities while we were at Mattersey. I began by talking about activities in Britain and concluded with our activities in Europe, particularly in connection with EPTA, the European Pentecostal Theological Association. Today we’ll be saying more about Europe, first with regard to our activities in the Pentecostal European Fellowship, and then about my preaching in national leaders’ conferences as well as in local churches. The Pentecostal European Fellowship As I have already explained, PEF was formed as a result of a merger between PEC and EPF. Little did I know when I accepted the invitation to preach at the PEC conference in 1978 that it would eventually lead not only to the founding of EPTA but also to a ministry within PEF itself, and ultimately to representing Europe on the Presidium of the Pentecostal World Conference. Because of my experience in Europe, I was first asked by the AoG Executive Council, as its chairman, to represent AoG on the PEF committee. Jakob Zopfi from Swtizerland had been its chairman for many years and, after Reinhold Ulonska retired as vice-chairman, the PEF Committee elected me to take his place. Major features of the work of PEF were the conferences it usually held once every three years. Thousands of people from all over Europe came to these conferences, though the majority on each occasion came from the country that was hosting it. Relatively few, however, came from the UK. This may have been because of the cost of crossing the channel, or even because the preaching was always done through an interpreter which English speaking people often find it hard to get used to. After preaching at the conference in The Hague in 1978, the next PEF conference we attended was in Böblingen near Stuttgart in 1984, but not in any official capacity. Eileen and I went on to attend conferences in Jönköping, (Sweden, 1991), Bordeaux (France, 1994), Fridek-Mistek (Czech Republic, 1997), Helsinki (Finland, 2000), and Berlin (Germany, 2003). There are many towns in Sweden with a name ending in -koping. It’s connected with our English word shopping and is roughly equivalent to market. It was at Jönköping (pronounced yernsherping) that I was appointed to serve as Vice Chairman of PEF. We travelled there by car, which may seem surprising bearing in mind the distance, but it meant that Eileen could come with me, and the trip would cost no more than the price of one air ticket for me. And it turned out that, as most of the delegates had arrived by plane, there was little transport available between the hotel and the conference centre. This meant that we were able to transport Dr Ray Hughes, who was the chairman of the Pentecostal World Conference and the guest speaker from America, to and from the meetings. It gave him the opportunity to get to know us and may have been partly the reason why the following year I was appointed to serve on the PWC advisory committee, and eventually as a member of its presidium. We also travelled by car to the Bordeaux conference in 1994, combining it with a holiday exploring south-western France and visiting Castera Verduzan in Gascony, and Mauléon-Licharre and Eaux Bonnes in the Pyrenees. The conference was particularly significant for Eileen because she was the wife of the Vice-Chairman. This normally carried no specific responsibility, but Sylvia Zopfi, the wife of the Chairman, had broken her leg and was unable to attend. Consequently, it fell to Eileen to preside at a meal for ladies, most of whom were French speaking. Of course there was an interpreter, but Eileen never saw herself as an ‘up front’ person and was understandably nervous. Because it was a meal for ladies, I was unable to attend, but I found out later that Herman von Ameron, the husband of the guest speaker, had crept in at the back. So I asked him privately how Eileen had got on, and he replied, She was magnificent. She was like the Queen! Following the political reforms known as perestroika introduced by Russian President Mikhail Gorbachov in the late 1980s, Czechoslovakia was divided into two separated nations, the Czech Republic (or Czechia) and Slovakia. Fridek-Mistek was the venue chosen for the 1997 PEF conference, because it lies on the border of these two countries and so provided delegates from both equal opportunities to attend. Once again, Eileen and I travelled by car, taking extra care in Czechia not to exceed the speed limit, as we’d heard that the Czech police were likely to impose heavy fines on foreigners for any minor infringement. We took the opportunity to visit Prague, a beautiful city, for a weekend before travelling on to the conference. It was now almost 20 years since I had first preached at the conference in The Hague, but for the next decade I was to become a regular speaker with the special responsibility of preaching on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and praying for people to receive. Sadly there are still many people who attend Pentecostal churches who have not yet come into the experience and in a conference where thousands are in attendance the numbers coming forward for prayer were likely to be enormous. Pentecostal pastors often seem reluctant to teach on the subject, possibly because they are frightened that, when they lay hands on those they pray for, they will not begin to speak in tongues. So I felt the need to preach not only to the people, but also to the pastors. And at Fridek-Mistek I decided to pray for the pastors before I prayed for the people. I asked all the pastors who wanted the Lord to use them in laying hands on people to receive the baptism, to come forward first. I explained that I would pray for them first so that they could then join with me in praying for the people. Dozens of pastors came forward and after I had prayed for them I asked them to turn round and face the congregation. I then called the people to come forward. Hundreds came and each pastor had a queue of people to pray for. Of course, it’s impossible to know how many spoke in tongues for the first time, especially in a meeting where so many different languages are spoken! And, even with the people I personally prayed for, there was no way of knowing if they were speaking in tongues or if they were just praying in their own native language. But one thing was particularly noteworthy. When teaching on the baptism I have always been careful to stress that the evidence we are expecting is tongues, not tingles – or shaking, or falling over, or anything else that has no clear biblical basis! However, when one of the people I prayed for did fall over, there was an immediate reaction in the queue next to mine. People started to move into my queue. Perhaps they felt that, despite all I had said, they would somehow get something extra if they fell over! There is still a desperate need for teaching on this throughout the Pentecostal movement and the charismatic renewal worldwide. After the conference we drove into Austria and stayed in an apartment in the church in Bad Ischl where Klaus Winter, the PEF treasurer, was the pastor. I preached in his church and we had a wonderful ten days there exploring Salzburg and the Salzkammergut, the wonderful area where The Sound of Music was filmed. The Helsinki conference was held in the summer of the year 2000 but was preceded by an EPTA conference held in Kaggeholme near Stockholm. We travelled by car as far as Kaggeholme but after EPTA we parked it at Arlanda airport and flew to Helsinki. As Jakob Zopfi was unable to attend because of an illness, it was my responsibility to chair the conference. I also preached on the baptism in the Holy Spirit and, as at Fridek-Mistek, had the privilege of praying for many who were seeking. Shortly after that Jakob Zopfi retired as the PEF chairman and I confess that I was rather relieved not to be appointed as his successor. I too was soon to retire from Mattersey and frankly I didn’t want the responsibility. Ingolf Ellsel, a younger man who was the leader of the BFP in Germany, was appointed as chairman, and I was happy to continue to serve as vice chairman. In 2003 the conference was held in Berlin in June. En route we stopped at Liège preaching there over the weekend. We reached Berlin in good time for the conference travelling at times at almost 150 m.p.h. on the autobahns where there was no speed limit. We stayed in a hotel on the outskirts of Berlin in Spandau, famous for its ballet company, and travelled in by underground train to the conference meetings. As in previous years I preached and prayed for people to receive the baptism and hundreds came forward. When Ingolf Ellsel asked who had spoken in tongues for the first time it seemed like just about everybody who had been prayed for raised their hand. It was experiences like this that were undoubtedly the reason why I was asked to speak at so many churches and conferences for national leaders. Churches and National Leaders’ Conferences During the years I was at Mattersey I spoke at several national leaders’ conferences as well as ministering in local churches. Most of the teaching I did at national conferences centred on the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit and how to encourage them at local church level. These included Germany and Hungary (1989), Iceland (1990), Austria (1999), Belgium (2003) and France (2004) where I was required to preach six times in French on a variety of topics. The conference was held in Léognan, near Bordeaux, and close to the site of the ADD Bible College. (ADD Assemblées de Dieu i.e. AoG). I taught several sessions in the college in the week preceding the conference and then preached at a youth event held in a marquee in the college grounds. This was an occasion where I really needed the Lord to help me. Of course we always need his help, but this time even more so. I had completely forgotten that I was scheduled to be the speaker at this event, so I said to the principal of the college, I don’t really need to be at the youth meeting this afternoon, do I? To which he replied, Mais si, vous êtes le prédicteur! (But yes, you are the preacher!) But I had nothing prepared, and I had never preached to young people in French before. Fortunately, several of my books have been translated into French including The Holy Spirit – an Introduction. I had little more than an hour before the meeting began and so, helped the French text of the section on the fruit of the Spirit, I hurriedly prepared a message on this, using examples from the life of Jesus. And the Lord really blessed it. Dozens of young people came forward responding to the appeal to seek to rededicate their lives to Christ. That really encouraged me as the I was preaching in the thousand strong assembly in Bordeaux where Daniel Hébert, whom I had met through PEF, was the pastor. But before leaving the subject of national conferences I need to mention that it was at that conference that David Cizéron gave me a book about his father’s work in a part of France I had never heard of, something which will become relevant in a later talk. As far as preaching in local churches is concerned, there are of course far too many to mention them all. I have already talked about my trips to Sweden when I preached in local churches as well as teaching in Bible Colleges. One highlight of these trips was preaching in the Filadelfia church in Stockholm founded by the renowned Pentecostal pioneer, Lewi Pethrus (whose name, incidentally, features immediately before mine in the International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements). Another highlight was travelling with Eileen to Kristinehamn at the northern end of Lake Vänern, the largest lake in Sweden, and preaching for a week for Paul Gren, one of our former Mattersey students. Germany was another country I also visited frequently. My contact with Germany came from three different though interrelated sources – EPTA which I have already mentioned, the national leaders of the Volksmission group of churches, and the local church in Heidenheim. Herbert Ros and Günter Kaupp were president and vice-president of Volksmission and had both been students at Kenley under the principalships of Donald Gee and John Carter respectively. They both had a great respect for what we were doing at Mattersey and over the years sent us a good number of excellent students who, after they had returned to Germany to take up pastorates there, invited us to minister for them whenever we were in Germany. It was also through my contacts with the leadership of Volksmission that I was invited on several occasions to travel round the churches for a couple of weeks often preaching for just one evening in each church. I was usually accompanied by Eileen, who loved travelling with me and enjoying the beautiful scenery of southern Germany and the warm hospitality we received in homes wherever we went. We undertook such trips in 1998, and 1999, when I was also the guest speaker at the BFP national leaders’ conference. (BFP was the wider Pentecostal movement in Germany of which Volksmission had become a part). We made similar trips in 1994, ’95, and ’96. But it was the church at Heidenheim that we visited most frequently. The pastor there was Albert Bühler. In the early eighties his son-in-law Jürgen Single had heard about a youth camp we were holding at Mattersey during the summer vacation and asked if he could visit it with a coachload of young people from their church as they were arranging a tour of England. We were delighted to receive them and that was the beginning of a lovely relationship we enjoyed with the Bühler-Single family and the church in Heidenheim. We also visited Luxembourg on several occasions due to our relationship with John and Ann Leese who, as AoG missionaries, did an amazing job over many years planting a church there. John had been a student at Kenley when I first started teaching there. We first visited them for a weekend with William and Anthea Kay in 1990 and then again for a holiday in ’92 with our daughter Debbie, her husband David, and their one-year-old daughter, Emily, who was our first grandchild. We have visited them many times since including 2001 when John asked me to take care of the preaching (in French, not Luxembourgish) while he and Ann were on holiday. It's also through our contact with Luxembourg that some of my books were translated into French. I will always be grateful to Caroline Hutin, a French schoolteacher who specialised in English, who spent many hours translating You’d Better Believe It, Body Builders, and Just a Taste of Heaven. Having these available was very helpful when I was preaching or teaching in French-speaking countries like France and Belgium. I am so grateful to the Lord that people have enjoyed my teaching and have usually wanted to know more. And my books, in whatever language, have made that possible. My ministry in Belgium was concentrated largely in and around Brussels, at the Continental Theological Seminary where I taught regularly for several years, and at the Christian Centre which held services in both English and French. Daniel Costanza, the pastor of the French speaking church, has used my books as a basis for teaching various courses of Bible study. Jacques Dernelle, who teaches regular courses at CTS, also pastors a great church in Tubize where I have also had the privilege of teaching and preaching. And on at least two occasions I visited Liège and gave a series of teaching which seemed to be well appreciated by the people there. In France where we frequently went on holiday we always sought to attend the nearest ADD church on Sunday mornings and I was often asked to preach. I remember preaching in Versailles, Pau, Mourrenx, Clermont-Ferrand, and Toulouse. However, in Embrun they didn’t know who I was and anyway there was already a guest preacher, a French pastor, Samuel Foucart, from Pavilly near Rouen. I enjoyed his preaching and spoke with him afterwards. We exchanged contact details and as a result I was invited in the year 2000 to do a week’s teaching on the Holy Spirit. Countries I visited only once or twice during this period were Austria, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, and Italy. In 1982 at the invitation of Carl Pocklington we went to Austria for a week and I preached in Villach and Klagenfürt. And in 2000 I taught for a few days in the church in Linz where Eddie Griesfelder was the pastor. On two occasions I preached for a week in Messina in Sicily where Giuseppe Melusso was the pastor of large AoG church. In 1991 I preached in Reykjavik (Iceland), and in Nokia (Finland) where Teuvo Valkama, one of our former students was the pastor. And in 2002 I preached in Copenhagen (Denmark) and Limerick in Ireland. I look back on all these experiences with great joy and a profound sense of gratitude to the Lord for the privilege of declaring his word in so many places and to so many people. Next time we’ll be talking about our service for the Lord beyond Europe.
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313 My Story Talk 26 Off-Campus Activities
09/09/2025
313 My Story Talk 26 Off-Campus Activities
My Story Talk 26 Off-campus Activities Most of what I have said about our years at Mattersey so far has related to what happened on the campus, and that was certainly where we spent most of our time. But our ministry was by no means confined to the campus. It was becoming increasingly international and interdenominational. So in this talk I’ll begin by describing some of my activities within Britain which took place beyond the College campus before proceeding to our travels in Europe and further afield. Activities within Britain Apart from my regular preaching in local churches around the country my main activities in Britain during this centred around: The AoG Executive Council My relationships with the charismatic renewal and expanding my writing ministry. The AoG Executive Council I have already mentioned some of the positions I had held within AoG before becoming Principal of the Bible College, but in 1984 I was elected to the Executive Council. This was important because it meant that the College had a voice at national level and that I could ensure that the interests of the College were always taken into consideration. And it became even more relevant when in 1987 I became its chairman, a position I held until 2007 when the structure of AoG was radically changed and about which I shall say more in a later talk. Since its inception in 1924 the final authority in AoG was the General Council which met annually at the General Conference. The role of the Executive was to take responsibility between conferences for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of the Fellowship. It was a great privilege for me to serve alongside respected older brothers like Veyne Austin, Herbert Harrison, Aaron Linford, Keith Monument, Aeron Morgan, Keith Munday, John Phillips, Douglas Quy, and Colin Whittaker, as well as younger men like Paul Newberry, Warwick Shenton, and Paul Weaver, who were all newly appointed at the same time as me. Each year the Executive Council elected its own chairman to serve for a year and in 1987 I was appointed. These elections were always held by secret ballot, and I was surprised to be reappointed year after year for the next 20 years. This obviously gave me added responsibility especially when it was decided in 1993 to form AoG Inc., which made Executive Council members the sole members of a new charitable company, Assemblies of God Incorporated. The purpose of the company was to protect AoG churches and ministers from any personal liability for actions taken by AoG. This was felt necessary to avoid any crises like the vast debt that had been incurred by the Overseas Missions Council over a situation that had arisen in Paderborn, the details of which I do not need to go into here. The Board of Directors of this new company was comprised of all members of the Executive Council. As directors we were given financial responsibility for the affairs of the Fellowship with the safeguard that each director was only personally liable up to the value of £1. It also gave us legal power over all the assets of the Fellowship without reference to the Conference. However, as we were appointed by the General Council by being elected to the Executive Council at the General Conference, we were always aware of our responsibility to abide by the wishes of the Fellowship as a whole. Despite the legal authority we had been given, as a matter of integrity we would never have taken independent action on any major matter without bringing it to Conference. This, as we will see later, was to change in 2007. My relationship with the Charismatic Renewal But my ministry in Britain was by no means confined to AoG. I had not grown up in AoG and ever since I heard about the baptism in the Spirit my heart has always been for Christians of other denominations to come into the experience. That had been a major part of my ministry when I had travelled round the universities in the sixties, preaching and laying hands on people to receive the Spirit. Those were the days when the charismatic renewal was getting under way, and in the seventies, while we were at Basingstoke, I had good fellowship with Barney Coombs, the Spirit-filled pastor of the Baptist Church, who was holding regular ministers’ breakfasts and monthly All Saints Nights for Christians of all denominations to hear about the things of the Spirit. So when, early in my time at Mattersey I received an invitation from Michael Harper to attend something called the Charismatic Leaders’ Conference at Whirlow Grange near Sheffield, I was pleased to accept. It was at these conferences that I met people like Roger and Faith Forster, David Pawson, Terry Virgo, Colin Urquhart, Gerald Coates and other charismatic leaders. For several years I was part of the planning committee that organised these conferences some of which were held at Mattersey. I was also a member of committee that planned the International Charismatic Consultation on Worldwide Evangelisation (ICCOWE) held in Brighton in June 1991. I continued to participate in the conferences throughout and beyond my time at Mattersey, and in fact at the time of writing this I am expecting to attend one this year. I have learnt that, although Pentecostals in Britain have been considerably influenced by charismatics, there is still very much that they can learn from us. For example, I am told by friends and family members that even in flourishing charismatic churches there is still little clear teaching on the baptism in the Spirit and spiritual gifts. But sadly, the same could be said of many Pentecostal churches. So it became my vision that Mattersey should become more than a college that prepared people to be AoG ministers and missionaries, and we advertised the college as having a distinctly charismatic emphasis. As a result several of our graduates are now doing a great job for God as Anglican, Baptist, or Methodist ministers. It also had the benefit of introducing AoG students at Mattersey to a wider cross-section of the Christian church than just their own denomination. Expanding my writing ministry But whether it be in AoG or any other denomination, the fact is that people need teaching. Genuine spiritual experience comes from a correct understanding of biblical truth. That was surely the purpose of a Bible College! And as it is not possible for everyone to come to Bible College, I was determined to make our teaching more readily available to a wider audience. I was able to do this in some measure through articles I contributed to the AoG magazine and Renewal, but in 1998 I had a distinct impression that the Lord wanted me to write more books, using the teaching I was giving at Mattersey as a basis. That expanding my writing ministry was the way the Lord was leading me was confirmed in a wonderful way by César Castellanos who in 1998 was the guest preacher at our AoG conference in Prestatyn. At the end of a late-night meeting where César had been speaking to the members of our Executive Council and their wives, he prayed for each one of us in turn. When he came to me, instead of praying, he prophesied. His prophecy included the following statement: This is what the Holy Spirit says: I will greatly anoint your pen and your writing will be a blessing to thousands and thousands of people. Now that prophecy was remarkable for at least three reasons. Firstly, César did not know me. He had only just met me that evening. Secondly, he knew I was a Christian leader, but he did not know that I was a writer! And thirdly, as I have said, in the weeks leading up to that conference I had been feeling that God wanted me to give more time to writing. César’s prophecy came as a wonderful confirmation. Since that time I have written several more books, some of which have been translated into at least fifteen different languages. They have certainly reached thousands already. I’m so grateful to the Lord that even while we were still at Mattersey he was still using me to be a blessing beyond Mattersey, not only in the UK but much further afield. But that brings me to my ministry in Europe. Activities in Europe In an earlier talk I explained how my ministry in Europe began in the seventies while pastoring the church in Basingstoke. This was as the result of contacts with Willy Droz in Switzerland and George and Warren Flattery, American missionaries working in Belgium. These relationships continued while we were at Mattersey. For several years Eileen and I led teams of students on missions to Switzerland and I had regular contact with the Flatterys through the work with I.C.I., Continental Bible College, and EPTA. And indeed, most of my work in Europe was related to either: EPTA, the European Pentecostal Theological Association, or PEF, The Pentecostal European Fellowship The European Pentecostal Theological Association EPTA was formed as a result of the Pentecostal European Conference held in The Hague in August 1978 at which I had been invited to preach. Apart from the main meetings held each morning and evening there were workshops each afternoon for various special interest groups including Bible Colleges. As the recently appointed Principal at Mattersey I was naturally interested to attend these and found them very helpful. It was good to meet with faculty and staff from other Bible Colleges and share what we were doing and what our hopes for the future were. I found myself wondering if it would be possible for us to meet on an annual basis. The PEC conferences were held every three years, so it was clear that something separate from PEC needed to be organised, and I suggested this while a few of us were chatting after one of the sessions. As there seemed to be a general agreement about the matter, we decided to look for a suitable venue and dates for the following year. I knew already that the European Pentecostal Fellowship were holding a conference in Vienna in 1979 and suggested that this might be a good time to hold a planning meeting. (EPF and PEC were at that time separate bodies, but a few years later merged to form the Pentecostal European Fellowship, about which I will say more later). So in 1979 Eileen and I, along with several other AoG personnel, attended the EPF conference in Vienna. The meeting with other Bible College people was not an official part of the conference but was tagged on at the end. However, during the conference itself I was unexpectedly asked by John Wildrianne to be the speaker at one of the sessions, as a brother from France who was scheduled to speak had been unable to come. The subject was Spiritual Gifts and fortunately I already had plenty of material on that topic and was grateful for the opportunity to speak to leaders from across Europe on a subject that was close to my heart. The talk was well received and, together with my preaching in the Hague the previous year, proved to be the beginning of a much wider ministry in Europe than I had ever expected. The meeting for Bible College leaders that we had arranged to take place after the conference lasted only a couple of hours but was a good starting point at which it was agreed to call ourselves EPTA, the European Pentecostal Theological Association. At the invitation of the brothers from ICI, we agreed to hold our first conference the following year in Brussels where, in addition to hearing papers on subjects of mutual interest, we would discuss a doctrinal statement for EPTA, conditions of membership and other related matters. The meeting in Brussels was a great success and was the first of many annual gatherings of college personnel from all over Western Europe. And when Eastern Europe opened up after the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were delighted to welcome delegates from those countries too. Over the years conferences were held in England, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, Slovakia, France, and Portugal. They were times of great blessing. Despite the name, they were not just an opportunity for theological discussion. Their primary purpose was for colleges to help each other by sharing mutual concerns, many of which had little to do with theology! It was good to know that other colleges faced the same problems as you did – practical issues like student discipline, catering, timetable, finance, governance and, something which was a major topic for several years, accreditation. In addition to all this there were great times of worship and prayer. Working in a Bible College often means facing stressful challenges and faculty and staff found EPTA conferences times of refreshing and spiritual renewal. And they were especially relaxing when we held them during the summer vacations when many combined them with a family holiday. The ones held at Mattersey were particularly popular. Eileen and I formed great relationships with many of our EPTA friends and trips to EPTA helped forge stronger relationships with our own faculty members too. I well remember the fun we had when we travelled by minibus to Germany with Dave and Beryl Allen and Brian and Audrey Quar, spending a few days relaxing in Switzerland before staying with friends in Heidenheim enabling us to attend the PEF Conference near Stuttgart followed by an EPTA conference in Erzhausen. Much of the blessing we enjoyed at Mattersey sprang from the strength of those relationships. For many years I served on the planning committee for these conferences. In the days before the internet this necessitated flying to various venues in Europe most of which I enjoyed immensely despite the occasional problem with flights, and the anxiety you experience when you don’t speak the language and the person you’re expecting to pick you up doesn’t arrive! The American brother who was picking me up had mistaken my arrival time at Stuttgart, which was 14.40 as 4.30 in the afternoon! But we learn from these experiences – I know he did – and these trips also gave me opportunity to preach in one of the local churches on Sunday morning before flying back in time for work at Mattersey on Monday. But possibly the most fruitful result of founding EPTA was the openings it gave me to teach and preach in several of its affiliated colleges. I have taught courses both at bachelors and masters level in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, and Ireland. I made several visits to Sweden where the system was rather different from the other countries I have mentioned. Because of the number of large Pentecostal churches there, there was no national college, but there were several colleges offering full-time courses based in the local church. The church at Gothenburg, for example, when I preached there had a Sunday morning congregation of over 2000 and had a large enough complex to house a full time Bible college. Stig and Marianne Hedstrom, who led that college, had brought a party of young people to Mattersey and heard me teach on spiritual gifts, told me that they needed this teaching in Sweden and asked me if I would come. On two separate occasions they organised teaching tours for me, the first starting at Gothenburg on the west coast and travelling across to Stockholm on the east. En route I visited colleges in Jonkoping, Linkoping, Mariannelund, and Brommaskolen and Kaggeholme, both in Stockholm. On the second tour about two years later I visited the same places but in reverse order, this time travelling east to west. Some of the other countries I mentioned, Belgium, Finland and Portugal for example, I also visited more frequently after my time at Mattersey and I will comment on them in a later talk. But what most of them had in common was the fact that my initial contact with each of them came through EPTA. So whether it was the annual conference, or the trips to help plan them, or teaching in some of its member colleges, EPTA was a source of personal enrichment for me, and I will always be grateful to God for the prompting he gave me to suggest it back in the PEC conference in 1978. Next time – more about PEF and my involvement with the World Pentecostal Conference.
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312 My Story Talk 25 Our Relationship with the Students
08/30/2025
312 My Story Talk 25 Our Relationship with the Students
My Story Talk 25 Our Relationship with the Students A key to the success of any organisation, whether it be a business, church, school, or college, is the quality of relationship between those who work, worship or study there. St. Paul’s use of the human body as a picture of the church is a great illustration of this principle. Each member of the body is unique and has a different function from the others, but all the members are equally important. Whatever our role, our aim should be to edify others rather than ourselves. And it’s the responsibility of those in leadership to encourage and facilitate the harmony that makes this possible. As I have already indicated, my relationship with staff and faculty members was, I think, a fairly happy one. Of course, there were times when I got it wrong, but I am sure that the success we enjoyed at Mattersey was due to the favour God granted us by giving us a team who were willing and able to work together in achieving the vision he had given us for the College. But what about our relationship with the students? This inevitably varied as the college grew, and although I shall be referring mainly to my personal relationship with the students, much of what I say will apply to other members of faculty and, to a greater or lesser extent, to members of staff too. For a body to be healthy, all the members must be in a good working relationship with each other. And this biblical principle applied to every area of College life. It was expressed in the example we set in our commitment to Christ, in our pastoral care and discipline, in what we taught and how we taught it in the classroom, in our worship and ministry in morning chapel and at church on Sundays, and in our social and recreational activities. Pastoral Care Before I became Principal I thought that it would be great to develop a personal relationship with every student, maybe by seeing each of them for about ten minutes each week. But I soon realised that this would be completely unworkable with even as few as the 48 students we had when we started. I also began to understand that not every student would appreciate having to see the Principal once a week! Relationships can’t be forced. They have to develop naturally. My first contact with the vast majority of students was when they came for their interview after they had applied to come to Mattersey. Some were understandably quite nervous about this, but this was an opportunity for me to reassure them, advise and encourage them. And as many of them came by public transport, either Eileen or I would often pick them up at Retford Station and the ten-minute journey back to Mattersey helped to break the ice and reassure them that we were human! And, of course, developing any kind of relationship with someone requires at the very least remembering their name. My father had been the headmaster of a Comprehensive School with a thousand boys, and he once told me that he knew the name of every boy in the school. I was fairly sure that such a feat was way beyond my capability, but I did make an effort to remember the names of all our students. I began by spending the first lecture period I had with first year students asking them one by one to remind me of their names. We did this going round the class two or three times and by then I was usually ready to repeat their names by memory. I’m not really sure how valuable this was, but at least it showed them a basic level of personal interest in them. A far better way, however, was what we eventually did once our children had moved away from home. We invited all new students, in groups of about a dozen, for a pizza evening at our home, which was on the College campus, and got them to wear a name badge to jog our memories. We played games like Jenga and Twister with them and tried to make them feel at home and to set an example of balancing academic studies and spiritual fervour with taking time to have fun together. And of course, these were not the only times we had fun with the students. Our annual Christmas concerts, preceded by a traditional Christmas dinner where faculty members served the students, were hilarious times together when we learned things about each other that would never be learnt in the classroom. Which was also true of the occasion I challenged the winner of the student table tennis competition and, to the delight of the students, narrowly lost by two games to one. But if such activities might not normally be considered as pastoral care, they were certainly helpful in forming relationships, which is surely a prerequisite of pastoral care providing at least some understanding of the person you are caring for. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that these activities were clearly not enough for us to form a significant relationship with students that would last throughout their time with us at Mattersey. And that’s where we began to realise afresh the value of team ministry. We knew already from pastoral life in church that an individual member might well relate better to one leader rather than another, and it was just the same in College. This was particularly true of the girls, many of whom, quite understandably, related better to Eileen than to me. In fact, so did some of the boys! As Principal I was ultimately responsible in maintaining discipline in the College which, for some at least, might have inhibited too close a relationship with me. And Eileen as matron was more easily available and did a great job in lending a listening ear, giving wise counsel to all who came to her. But as the College grew we began to feel the need to provide a facility for pastoral care that was readily available to every student with clear information on how to access it. We began by appointing a personal tutor for every student. This responsibility was shared by every full-time member of faculty and appeared to be successful until it became clear that it wasn’t working for everyone. Some students did not feel able to share their personal problems with the people who would be marking their academic work, and although the fear that it might affect their grades was in my view unfounded, it was clear that we needed to think again. What’s more I soon discovered that other Bible Colleges were facing similar problems. I learnt at a meeting of the Association of Bible College Principals that to overcome this problem some colleges were considering appointing chaplains who were not part of the regular teaching faculty to be available to give confidential advice to students and, after discussing the matter with the resident faculty and the Board of Governors, we decided to do the same at Mattersey. We decided to appoint former students who had both experience in ministry and understood what it was like to be one of our students. Our first chaplain was Roy Turner who did an excellent job for a few years until he left us to train for the Anglican ministry despite my efforts to dissuade him. Roy was followed by Steven Jenkins, another former student, who shared the chaplaincy with his wife Deborah so that the girls could have access to a female chaplain if they so desired. This arrangement worked well and by no means detracted from the relationship that those of us had who were part of the faculty. Until she retired in 1999 students continued to seek advice from Eileen and other staff members, and there was always the opportunity for faculty to have a chat with students in the lunch break or between lectures. So overall we enjoyed a friendly relationship with our students, but that did not mean that there was never a need for discipline. Discipline A happy relationship in any society is dependent on mutual consideration and respect. Jesus taught this when he said: In everything do to others what you would have them do to you (Matthew 7:12). When I started as Principal I naively thought that there would be little need for rules. If everyone behaved as mature Christian ladies or gentlemen rules would not be necessary. I soon discovered that I was mistaken! Our students came from such a wide variety of backgrounds. They came from different families, different nations, different cultures. They had very different ideas about what was appropriate behaviour. And when you’re all living under the same roof in a remote country village, there are bound to be problems unless clear guidance is given as to what is acceptable behaviour. So, as a result, we produced a set of rules which I explained to the students at the beginning of the College year. They covered a range of topics including attendance at chapel, lectures, meals etc., and especially relationships with the opposite sex. (Same sex relationships were rarely an issue in those days). Most of the students accepted these regulations without complaint, but one overseas student refused to do so and chose to leave College immediately. I had no regrets about this but decided that in future we would send all new students a copy of our rules and say that their acceptance at College was dependent on their agreement to abide by them. This we continued to do throughout my time as Principal. It may have had the disadvantage of giving some students the impression that we were becoming too legalistic, but more mature students realised the line had to be drawn somewhere and that our rules were not unreasonable. Perhaps the main exception to this was with regard to relationships with the opposite sex. A situation arose early on in my time at Mattersey when one of the girls who had formed a relationship with another student was devastated when the boy suddenly terminated the relationship. She was so upset that she felt unable to return to College to complete her course. As a result one member of faculty who knew the girl very well suggested that it was time for us to make some ruling that would stop such things happening. This was clearly impossible, but I did realise that we had a responsibility to protect the vulnerable as much as we could. This resulted in a series of regulations including things like not forming a relationship during your first six months at College, informing your personal tutor when a relationship had been formed, and so on. The fact that we felt the need to vary these regulations over the years in an attempt to improve them shows that none of them were entirely satisfactory and in some cases did more harm than good. Towards the end of my time at Mattersey I apologised to a couple for the distress these regulations had caused them when, in their final year at College, they came to me and confessed that they had formed a secret relationship two years previously and had been feeling guilty about it ever since. I know the fault was partly theirs, but I really wondered if we had made a mistake in the first place by possibly overreacting to the situation I described earlier. And anyway, there’s no point in making a rule if you have no reasonable means of enforcing it. So, looking back on it, I’m not sure that we always got it right, but right or wrong our motive was always to do what we felt was best for the College community as a whole and I am grateful to all our Senior Students who played a great part in informing me of student opinion and, where necessary, reminding their fellow students of what was expected of them as men and women preparing to serve the Lord Jesus. Finally, I hope that the way we handled these matters showed the students the importance of discipline and the spirit in which it is exercised. Church leaders in the New Testament were described as both rulers and servants following the example of Christ who, though he was Lord and ruler of all, took upon himself the role of a servant and washed his disciples’ feet. He taught by example, and nothing we say is of any value if it is not backed by the example we set. But that brings me to the subject of teaching. Teaching We usually associate the subject of teaching with what goes on in the classroom, and there was certainly plenty of that at Mattersey. There is, of course, less opportunity in the classroom to form relationships with individuals, especially when the class is large and the teaching method is the lecture. I well remember in my first term at Oxford an Economics lecture attended by over 200 students. In something of a monotone, the lecturer read what he had written and there was no opportunity to ask questions at the end. In those days attendance at lectures was not compulsory and a week later student numbers had diminished considerably. I stopped going after the third lecture and was not surprised when it was announced on the College noticeboard that the series of lectures had been cancelled ‘due to an indisposition’! Needless to say, my relationship with that lecturer amounted to zero. There were clearly three reasons for this. The lecturer had inadequate communication skills, the class was too large, and there was no opportunity to ask questions. Fortunately, at Mattersey all our lecturers were able communicators, and although at times our class sizes were larger than ideal, there was usually time for questions. I personally have always preferred to take questions at the end to ensure that I have covered all the material necessary. In fact, very often students who have wanted to ask a question earlier have discovered that the question was answered later in my lecture. However, at whatever point of the lecture questions are invited, the value in doing so is undeniable. It not only gives the student the opportunity to get clarification on anything they have not understood but also helps the lecturer to understand a little more about the student, their personality, their needs, their aspirations and their concerns. Not to mention their level of intelligence! And of course, the answer to a question can benefit not only the student who asks it, but potentially the whole class. What’s more, valuable lessons may be learned from the way the question is answered as much as from the answer itself. At a recent EPTA conference I was delighted to meet up with a former College student who told me that although he was grateful for all I had taught him at Mattersey, the most valuable lesson he had learned was from the way in which I had answered a particular question. He told me that on one occasion another student had asked a ridiculous question at which he and the rest of the class were groaning inwardly. Had he been asked the same question he would have dismissed it very quickly, possibly ridiculing the person who had asked it. Young people, even Christian young people, can be very unkind at times and Mattersey students were no exception. But apparently I had treated the student with respect, as I have always tried to do, despite the stupidity of the question. I confess I was greatly moved to hear this and am reminded that people learn more from our lives than from anything else. So teaching at Mattersey was by no means confined to the classroom. I had valuable conversations with students when we were travelling together in my car or in the College coach. And of course, there were our Wednesday morning chapel services, which were longer than on other days, and when a member of faculty or a guest speaker would preach. Students could see us in a different mode than in the classroom and I’m sure they were learning, often without realising it from the example we set. I was once preaching at an EPTA conference in Erzhausen, Germany, when I noticed that Don Smeaton, a colleague from another college, was quietly making comments to a young man beside him. After the meeting he came and apologised in case he had distracted me, but he was giving the young man who was one of his students a lesson in Homiletics using me as a model! We do learn by watching and that’s why it’s so important that church leaders set a good example in these things, whether it be in preaching, or the exercise of spiritual gifts, or how they pray for people to be healed or receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Students often received the baptism under my ministry, either privately or in the chapel or classroom. And on one occasion a student listened to my teaching, watched me put it into practice in the classroom and, following my example, that evening saw several young people filled with the Spirit as he laid hands on them during the youth meeting. I am so grateful to God for the great privilege I have had in playing a part in training and preparing so many such people who are now leaders in the church today. It is my sincere prayer that they will train others following the principles I have outlined in this talk. The precise details of how we did are not so important, but the principles taught in God’s word will never change. Next time: Life beyond the Mattersey Campus
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311 My Story Talk 24 Developing the Curriculum and Choosing the Faculty
08/17/2025
311 My Story Talk 24 Developing the Curriculum and Choosing the Faculty
My Story Talk 24 Developing the curriculum and choosing the faculty Welcome to Talk 24 where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I was talking about all the improvements we were able to make to the campus at Mattersey. We were, of course, grateful to the Lord for these improvements, especially for the provision of sufficient finances to build the new hall of residence and the beautiful new Chapel and classrooms. But these were never an end in themselves. They were the means to an end. Their purpose was to facilitate the training and education of men and women to understand the Bible and to become more effective servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. But even more important than the erection of buildings was the development of the curriculum and the choosing of the faculty. And to do that it was first necessary to determine our aims and objectives. What follows is taken from one of our early college prospectuses. If the terminology sounds a little old-fashioned today, please remember that it’s now almost half a century since I first wrote them. The NIV had only just been published and much of our preaching was based on the text of the Authorised Version (KJV) of the Bible. But even if the language might need updating, I believe that these aims and objectives would still be highly appropriate for any pentecostal or charismatic Bible college today and would form an excellent basis for its curriculum. They should certainly be the goal of every local church! Aims and Objectives The general purpose of the college is to train men and women for Christian service at home and overseas. This training involves not only the imparting of a comprehensive theological education but also emphasises the development of Christian character and spiritual growth. Because the college takes a positive stand for the authority and inspiration of Holy Scripture, its aims are essentially biblical. They may be summarised as follows: 1. That opportunity might be given to those who are called to the work of the ministry to fulfil the will of Christ that his servants should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach (Mark 3:14). 2. That through their ministry the gospel might be preached to every creature (Mark 16:15) and that disciples might be made of all nations (Matthew 28:19). 3. That the gospel might be preached with signs following (Mark 16:20) and the churches be established in the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:4). 4. That God's servants might be able always to give a reason for the hope that is in them (1 Peter 3: 15) and to speak the things which become sound doctrine (Titus 2:1). 5. That God's workmen might be approved unto God, being able rightly to divide the word of God (2 Timothy 2:15) and to contend earnestly for the faith once for all time delivered to the saints (Jude 3). 6. That God's people might come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ and that each individual part of his body might so function in its proper order that the church will make edification of itself in love (Ephesians 4:13-16). 7. That the word of God may be entrusted to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2). 8. That those who seek to love God with all their heart and soul might also love him with all their mind (Matthew 22:37). 9. That the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit might be manifested in the lives of all God's people (1 Corinthians 12:7-11, Galatians 5:22-23). 10.That the church which is the bride of Christ might be ready and prepared for his coming (Ephesians 5:25-27; 2 Corinthians 11: 2; Revelation 19:9, 21-22). Developing the curriculum In using the word curriculum, I am referring to the entire College programme, not just the academic timetable. This included worship in chapel five mornings a week, weekly student prayer groups, days of prayer at least once a term, and church on Sundays with opportunities for students to sing, testify or preach, as invited by the local pastors. We experienced some wonderful times of blessing, particularly in our Wednesday morning Chapel services, which were longer than on the other days and where the resident faculty and staff were present as well as all the students. It was the spiritual life of the College that provided the inspiration and motivation for the academic discipline of study in the classroom. But there was, of course, plenty of inspiration in the classroom too. That derived from the quality of our teaching staff – more of which in a moment – and the subject matter of the courses most of which were directly related to the Bible, the inspired word of God. Of course, the structure of the timetable varied over the 27 years I was Principal, but the underlying principles remained the same. What follows is just an example of what we were offering towards the end of my time as Principal. Courses available included: Certificate in Biblical Studies (One Year) Diploma in Biblical Studies (Two Years) BA in Biblical Theology (Three Years) and for suitable candidates who completed all three years we also awarded our Diploma in Christian Ministry. In addition to all this we were also validated to award an MA in Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies which was a part-time two-year course. This was much appreciated by people already in church leadership some of whom had no formally recognised theological qualification. This was only possible because we had sufficient faculty members who had earned a Ph.D. But, without question, our most important course for people who wanted a thorough preparation for Christian ministry was our three-year B.A. in Biblical Theology combined with our Diploma in Christian Ministry. Over the three years these included teaching on the following YEAR ONE Bible Survey, Hermeneutics and Homiletics, Evangelism, Care and Counselling, Christian Doctrine, Christian Leadership, Church History Survey, Children’s and Youth Work, Other Faiths, and New Testament Greek. (For those who did not opt for Greek, there were special courses on the English Language, John’s Gospel, and Luke/Acts). YEAR TWO O.T. General, N.T. Christian Origins, Early Church History, The Holy Spirit, Mark in Greek, Christian Apologetics, Christian Ethics, 1 Corinthians in English, Romans in English, Anthropology, Hebrew, Media Work, Church Planting. YEAR THREE O.T. Theology, N.T. Theology, Pentecostal Distinctives (The Baptism in the Holy Spirit and Divine Healing), History of Revival, Philosophy of Religion, John in Greek, Hebrew Set Texts, Christian Missions, Ecclesiology, Youth Work, Pastoral Training. But no matter what course we provided, our aims and objectives remained the same throughout. Any qualification gained was never intended as an end in itself. Personally, I saw my own academic qualifications rather like the apostle Paul saw his Roman citizenship. He certainly would not glory in it. It meant nothing compared with the excellency of knowing Christ, but he wasn’t afraid to make use of it when appropriate (Acts 22:25-28). I knew that the success of the curriculum could only be measured by the extent to which its aims and objectives were being fulfilled in the lives of the students. And that could certainly not be accomplished by academic learning alone. Our students were accepted on this understanding. Any academic achievement they might gain would be a bonus. Their primary motivation must be a sense of calling, a desire to serve Jesus. Choosing the faculty And, of course, our biblical aims and objectives so important to the development of our curriculum were equally relevant to the choosing of those who would be teaching its courses. They must not only be in agreement with our AoG Statement of Faith but also be people of experience in the work of God and have a divine anointing to teach. Academic ability in itself was not enough. I had had enough experience at Oxford where some of those teaching no doubt had great academic ability, but whose communication skills left much to be desired! But of course, however great your ability to communicate, you need to know what you’re talking about! I have listened too often to people with great communication skills preaching absolute nonsense! Even in some national and international conferences! So our choice of faculty was influenced by the need to find people who believed the Bible, were filled with the Spirit, knew their subject, and had a God-given ability to teach it. And that meant the ability, not to make simple things sound difficult, but to make difficult things easy to understand. I think the greatest compliment I was ever paid about my preaching came from old George Hurt when he said to me, The thing I like about your preaching, Pastor, is that you never say anything I can’t understand. And if Eileen were still with us, she would readily confirm that wherever we went people would say the same. I am so grateful to God for that ability. I did not learn it. It was just the way he made me. But not just me. It’s the true evidence of the ministry of every teacher, and I’m so grateful for those the Lord sent to work alongside me endowed with a similar gifting. I have already mentioned Ernest and Joan Anderson who moved back into pastoral ministry in 1980 and John Carter who died at Mattersey in 1981 and their significant contribution to the life of the College. After their departure I was so pleased that Colin Warner, who had started with us as a visiting lecturer, accepted the invitation to come to us in a full-time capacity as our Director of Studies in 1980 and saddened by his decision to leave us in 1983. Colin, who is now with the Lord, was a gifted man with great academic ability and did much in those early years to steer us towards a more academic curriculum. His decision to leave arose from a difference of opinion between us and I am aware that I could probably have handled things better. However, I’m glad to record that he went on to a fruitful ministry in the Coventry assembly and as a lecturer at Birmingham Bible Institute. A few years later we also worked happily together on the AoG Executive Council. David and Beryl Allen joined us in September 1983 and faithfully served the College throughout my principalship, retiring in 2005, a year after me. Beryl taught the first-year English course and as College Librarian did a great job in turning what had previously been little more than a collection of books into a well organised and properly classified library. Towards the end of her time she was assisted by Anne Dyer, who caried on the great work after Beryl retired. Dave, as he preferred to be called, had, like Beryl, formerly been a schoolteacher before entering the AoG ministry. He taught a variety of subjects including Church History, his knowledge of which never ceased to amaze me. He later became the College Dean, taking the responsibility for matters of discipline. Dave is now with the Lord, but I, along with many generations of Mattersey students, have every reason to be grateful for the massive contribution he and Beryl made to the success of the College. Colin Hurt also joined us in 1983. Colin and Julia had been AoG missionaries in Malaysia and, on hearing him preach, I instantly recognised a man with an outstanding teaching ministry. Colin had no formal theological qualifications, but, for that matter, neither had I! Julia had received a word from the Lord that I was going to invite him to teach in the College, so when I asked to see him he happily accepted and the served the College full-time from 1983-85 and again, after a few years back on the mission field, from 1988-93. He taught a wide variety of subjects and was greatly appreciated by students and both he and Julia, who assisted Eileen on the domestic side, were great assets to the life of the College. William and Anthea Kay joined us in 1984. Eileen and I already had a strong relationship with William and Anthea because of the years we spent together in Basingstoke. My only reluctance in inviting them to come to Mattersey was that I wasn’t sure if the Board of Governors would approve. Three things might count against William. He was a personal friend, and the appointment might look like favouritism. He was not an AoG minister, and he had a PhD which might be seen as a negative rather than a positive because of the anti-academic attitude of some of our ministers at the time. But the Lord encouraged me with a verse in Isaiah which lit up for me as I was praying about William: I have called him, I will bring him, and he will succeed in his mission. So I shared my concerns with the Board and was delighted to hear George Forrester, the chairman, say, Well brothers, I think that if David feels that we should appoint this brother, we should do so and the Board unanimously agreed. Anthea ran the College’s Correspondence Course Department for several years and William taught a variety of courses until his departure in 1994 to a post with the University of Wales. But his main contribution to the College was his firsthand knowledge of Higher Education, his personal encouragement to me to do an MTh and then a PhD, and his help in enabling us to get accreditation for our BA in Biblical Theology. He went on to help other Pentecostal colleges across Europe and beyond to gain similar accreditation and did indeed succeed in the mission to which God had called him. The next member of faculty to join us full-time was Vernon Ralphs who served as Director of Studies from 1986 until his retirement in 2000. Along with those I have already mentioned, Vernon was a key player in helping the College upgrade its academic programme. He also had a clear prophetic edge prophesying in 1986 that within three years the Iron Curtain that divided Eastern Europe from the West would be removed, and it was of course in 1989 that the Berlin Wall was broken down. Teaching staff who joined us full-time late on included Richard Davis, Glenn Balfour, Andrew Davies, Dave Garrard, and Robin Routledge. Richard Davis replaced Brian Quar as Bursar but also taught some of our courses after he had completed our MA in Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies. He served the College from 1994 until some time after I retired. Glenn Balfour and Andrew Davies were both former students who had taken our London BD course back in the eighties. They had gone on to acquire Master’s degrees and eventually PhDs in Theology. They started to lecture part-time in 1994 and in 2000 took up permanent posts with us. They continued to serve well beyond my principalship, Glenn becoming Principal for a short period and Andrew a Professor at Birmingham University. Dave and Ruth Garrard were Canadians who served as missionaries in Africa. They came to Mattersey in 1996, Ruth working with Eileen on the domestic side, and Dave, who had a PhD relating to Missions, bringing fresh insights on the subject and teaching a variety of other courses too. He was still teaching at Mattersey when I left. And finally, at about the same time, Robin Routledge joined the faculty. A local Baptist minister with a charismatic experience and a PhD in Old Testament Studies, Robin was a highly valued member of our team and eventually became full-time during Paul Alexander’s time as principal. But of course the full-time faculty, important as they were, were by no means the only reason for the success of the College. Over the years there were many visiting lecturers, as well as various chaplains, secretaries, cook supervisors, kitchen and domestic staff, gardeners, and maintenance engineers. These all got a mention in my final report to Conference in April 2004 the text of which I will include in a later talk. For now, it is enough to say that I will always be profoundly grateful to all concerned for their contribution, however great or small. As I have often said, We could not have done it without you.
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310 My Story Talk 23 Improving the College Facilities
08/06/2025
310 My Story Talk 23 Improving the College Facilities
My Story Talk 23 Improving the College facilities The Urgent Need for Action When we arrived at Mattersey it was abundantly obvious to all concerned that, to say the least, the facilities on campus were far from satisfactory. Set in seven acres of beautiful grounds the setting was certainly picturesque, but the old mansion, Mattersey Hall, was in constant need of attention, as were the other two buildings. Before AoG acquired it, Mattersey Hall had most recently been used as a Preparatory School for young boys. A Memorial Hall had been erected over the road by Mrs. Sowerbutts, the widow of the previous principal, but this was no longer being used as David Powell had thought it too expensive to heat. There was also a building adjacent to the old mansion that had been erected, I think, in the 1930s to provide dormitories for the prep-school boys. During Powell’s principalship, our male students were housed in these dormitories which were poorly heated – one of them the students called ‘the icebox’ – and another which accommodated ten men who each had a bed, a small wardrobe, and a chair. Another two dorms had no internal access to the toilets and, in the snowy winters Mattersey was experiencing at the time, visiting the toilet at night was a far from pleasant experience. The conditions for the ladies, though limited, were somewhat better. They were housed in three upstairs rooms in the old mansion. Each room had its own washbasin and provided accommodation for five students, but, as with the men’s dorms, there was no private personal space. What’s more, the heating system was far from adequate, there were no recreational facilities, and the laundry facilities were a couple of twin-tub washing machines, suitable for a private house, but not for 40-50 students living together for 40 weeks of the year. The classrooms had chairs but no desks. There was no chapel and virtually no library. By contrast, Eileen and I were very grateful for the beautiful new house that was built for us in the College grounds during our first year at Mattersey, but we were naturally very concerned about the conditions for the students. Needless to say, we dealt with these problems as quickly as we could. The twin-tubs were replaced with two industrial quality washing machines. We made a start on getting the books in the library classified and turned a large hut in the grounds that had been used for storing junk into a games room with facilities for table tennis, darts, and snooker, though I was conscious that in those days some of our pastors would not approve of such things! But to make the major changes that we really wanted to see meant erecting in the College grounds a hall of residence that would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and, as I have already pointed out, although the College was officially owned and controlled by AoG, it was not funded by AoG! There were occasional gifts from churches, but these amounted to less than 5% of what was needed to run the College. Apart from that, our only other source of income was what the students paid in fees. And what the students could pay in fees was largely dependent on whether or not they could get a grant from their Local Education Authority (LEA). And that depended on where they lived as grants for courses at colleges like ours were entirely at the discretion of the LEA. It became clear to me that, if we wanted to be able to pay for the improvements we needed, we would need either to upgrade the standard of our courses so that our students would be more likely to get grants, or to receive a miraculous injection of cash which only the Lord could provide. In the end it took both. Our finances became much stronger when we finally received validation for degree courses in 1992, but until then any major improvements would only come through faith in God’s ability to supply the need miraculously. And that would require faith – but not just mine. The College was not mine. I knew I would need the full backing of the Board of Governors to go ahead. The need was obvious to all concerned, but the Board rightly felt that the matter was so big that we should seek the advice and approval of the Executive Council, and at a joint meeting it was decided we should not proceed without the backing of the AoG General Conference. But first we needed to gather sufficient information about the specific cost and details of the project, and my first task was to establish whether to not we would be likely to get planning permission. The Hall of Residence – a leap of faith On contacting the Bassetlaw District Council early in 1979, I was delighted to hear that they foresaw no objection to our building and recommended we apply for outline planning permission, and, with the help of Mr Jeffery, a brother recommended by Pastor Eddie Durham who was a member of the Board, outline planning was approved in January 1980. Meanwhile, Hedley Palmer, another member of the Board recommended that we consider as a builder PJ Whitehurst who had done some excellent work in constructing several of our churches. His representative, Mr John Grice visited the college and, understanding our requirements, recommended that we adopt a rather different plan designed by PJ Whitehurst at a cost of £524,560. This would provide 120 individual study-bedrooms, and a new dining hall and kitchen all under one roof. The Board met with the Executive Council to discuss this proposal, and it was agreed that we should go ahead subject to the approval of Conference and that as Principal I should write a letter to be countersigned by Keith Munday as General Secretary and sent out ahead of Conference to give time for the delegates to consider the matter and pray about it. During the debate, as was only to be expected, a wide diversity of views was expressed, ranging from a comment by David Powell, the previous Principal, that he had a grave sense of foreboding about the whole matter to those who were enthusiastically in favour. The difficulty was that there was no money to pay for the project! Perhaps that’s why for me what proved to be the most significant contribution to the debate was what George Parrott said. For him the only important issue was whether I as Principal had heard from God about the matter. And, to be honest, I had to say that I had not, but that did not alter the fact that we desperately needed these new facilities. If God was in it, I was sure that he would provide the money. Finally, the matter was put to the vote and to my relief received the necessary two-thirds majority. Once the decision was taken, my friend Brian Quar, who was not only a pastor but also a Civil Engineer and a Director of a Design and Construct Contracting Company, wrote to the Board expressing his delight at the decision made at Conference, but also pointing out two areas of concern. He explained these in some detail and recommended an appropriate course of action offering to be of help in any way he could. As a result, he was coopted onto the Board of Governors for the purposes of the building project and two years later moved to Mattersey to take up the combined roles of College Bursar and Pastor of the AoG church in Mattersey. I will always be grateful to the Lord for sending Brian and Audrey to us. He relieved me of any responsibility of overseeing not only this building project but also the construction of our new chapel and classrooms in 1998. Brian is now with the Lord, but I take this opportunity to express my gratitude for his friendship and help without which much of what was accomplished at Mattersey would not have been possible. Progress seemed relatively slow over the next few months, but that was probably a good thing because although AoG had voted to go ahead with the project, they had not promised to pay for it! After the vote had been carried by so large a majority, I fully expected the money to come pouring in. But very little came! Everyone seemed to be leaving it to everyone else! As the time for the signing of the contract drew near we still had very little money, and I began to be anxious. Who has to sign the contract? What happens if the money doesn’t come in? Who goes to prison if the money doesn’t come in?! These were serious questions that were troubling my mind, and I kept remembering George Parrott’s question: David, have you heard from the Lord? Eventually, in desperation I said to Eileen, I need to hear from God about this. I’m going to pray all night, and if he doesn’t speak to me, I’m going to phone the Board of Governors and cancel the whole thing. So I began my night of prayer . After several hours, at around 2am, I began to feel like giving up. God wasn’t speaking and I really didn’t know what to do. I decided to take a break, so I sat down on the settee and picked up a copy of Redemption Tidings magazine. As I opened it the title on the editorial page struck me forcibly: FAITH. So I began to read. Now if you have ever been in desperate need to hear from God and have been in a meeting where someone has brought a prophetic word which you have known was just for you, you will understand just how I felt as I read that editorial. Every single word of it came as Thus says the Lord to David Petts. I knew that God had spoken. I knew that we were to go ahead. I knelt down by the settee and sobbed into the cushion and asked God to forgive me for my lack of faith . Then I went to bed. From that moment I never doubted that God was behind our building project after all. But that is not the end of the story. The next morning I went down to the College and walked into the office. Ernest Anderson was standing there and I excitedly told him what had happened. That’s wonderful, David, he said, I was praying all night too. I thought it was strange that we had both decided independently to pray all night and I could not imagine why he had decided to do so. Oh, I said, What were you praying for? I was praying for the same thing, he replied, I knew that unless you, as the Principal of the College, heard from God, the thing would never happen. Oh, thank you Ernest, I said, but you could have gone to bed at 2 o’clock! I immediately telephoned Colin Whittaker, the editor of the magazine. Colin, I said, you have written the greatest editorial you will ever write, and I told him what had happened. Then he told me that he had known when he was writing the editorial that he was writing it for the College, but of course he could not be that explicit in print. Jesus said that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses (Matthew 18:16) and, although the context in which he said it was not to do with guidance, I knew beyond doubt that this matter was established. I had received faith through hearing a word from God. Over the next year I went around the AoG District Councils telling them how the Lord had spoken to me. People began to be convinced that God was really in this project and at last the money began to come in. Much of it was gifts from churches, but it sometimes came in rather unusual ways from individuals, like the cheque for £1000 I received through the post with a piece of wedding cake from a couple who had just got married, or like the supermarket bag that was handed to me anonymously containing over £4000 in cash! It was through the kindness of such people that we were able to get started. There was not enough to complete the whole building, but in September 1981 we were able to complete the shell of the whole building and erect 32 new bedrooms in the first wing. This, of course, was not enough for all 85 students, but it did mean that the 3 ladies’ dorms in the old mansion could be released for other purposes. They were to become an excellent facility for the library which had previously been housed in one of the classrooms, which was far from ideal. It was not until September 1983, however, that we had sufficient funds to complete the second phase of the building. We now had over 70 bedrooms, which meant that all our residential students could now be accommodated in the new building. There were also a dining room and kitchen and a student common room, which meant that the old kitchen and dining room could now be converted into a student coffee bar and tuck shop. All this was wonderful, and we really enjoyed our new facilities, but the job was not yet complete, and the next few years were a real test of our faith. The next phase of the building was not complete until 1989 when the first floor of the entire building was eventually finished and two new classrooms were constructed on the ground floor of the final wing. These, however, were converted into 16 bedrooms only two years later when in 1991 the new building was finally as we had originally planned. Why had it taken so long? Ten years from start to finish! Only God knows, but I was certainly learning important lessons from the experience. Faith for the impossible only comes by hearing a word from God. It is through faith and patience that we inherit God’s promises. And God usually only provides things for us as we need them. We didn’t need the whole building immediately, but by the 1990s we had the facilities we would need for the great increase in the number of students that the Lord knew was coming when the college received validation to provide degree courses and the students were able to get mandatory grants. More of that next time, but no account of the improvement in college facilities would be complete without mentioning that in 1986 we were able to double the size of the campus by purchasing the seven acre field adjacent to the campus which proved a valuable asset for student recreational activities and for the Summer Praise Bible Weeks we ran for several years. And in 1998 we erected a beautiful, new chapel and classrooms in the college grounds, this time funded by a mortgage because our financial position had become so strong. So the Lord provided for us in a variety ways, not, as I had originally hoped, through the supernatural provision of half a million pounds right at the start – which, by the way, would be the equivalent of at least five million today – but gradually, as he knew we would need it, through gifts, through the hard work we put in promoting the college and making the need known, through the help and expertise we received free of charge from people who caught the vision, and, as we shall see in the next talk, through our producing a curriculum that was both thoroughly Pentecostal and at the same time was of a high enough academic standard to achieve validation for degree courses that made us more attractive to applicants because of the grants they attracted. God does provide for our needs, but he does not always do it in the ways we expect or want him to! Next time: Developing the curriculum and choosing the faculty
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309 My Story Talk 22 Facing New Challenges
07/05/2025
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. 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. 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. Donald Gee, Wind and Flame, p. 60 William K Kay, Inside Story, p. 208.
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308 My Story Talk 21 The Rocky Road to Mattersey 1972-1978
06/24/2025
308 My Story Talk 21 The Rocky Road to Mattersey 1972-1978
My Story Talk 21 The Rocky Road to Mattersey (1972-78) Welcome to Talk 21 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I finished my series of talks on the years we spent I Basingstoke by telling you how in January 1972 God clearly told me that we were going to live at the Bible College. This didn’t happen until 1978 when I was appointed principal of the College which by then had moved from Kenley to Mattersey. Today’s talk will cover some of difficulties we faced on the way and how the Lord eventually brought us through. In December 1972, after he had served only two years as the Principal at Kenley, George Jeffreys Williamson suffered a heart attack, probably as a result of over-work combined with an accusation that was made against him by one of the students, and shortly after this the Board of Governors reluctantly accepted his resignation. Meanwhile, as there was no resident tutor at the time due to the departure of John Phillips, the Board asked some of the visiting lecturers, including me, to spend a few days at the college encouraging and taking care of the students. While I was there, Eric Dando, a member of the AoG Executive Council, asked me confidentially if I had ever thought of becoming the principal. This was not a complete surprise to me because of what the Lord had shown me earlier that year about living at the College, but at that stage I had not thought that I might be the principal. And I had never told anyone except Eileen about it. So I asked Eric why he was asking that question. He told me that it looked likely that Williamson would sadly be resigning and he felt that I might be a suitable person to take over. Although I felt that at the age of 33 I was possibly too young to be appointed to such a responsible position, I shared with him how the Lord had spoken to me back in January. The months that followed were something of a rollercoaster as Eileen and I lived with the tension that we all experience in times of uncertainty. We knew that the Lord had called us to the college, but was it his plan that I should be the principal? And was it to happen yet? All we could do was hang on to what God had shown us and rest in the certainty that whatever happens God is always in control. As it turned out, because a new principal could not be appointed until the General Conference the following May, the Board of Governors asked David Powell, the pastor of the Rotherham Assembly, to take care of the College until then. Meanwhile I was waiting to see if I would be nominated. Apart from Eric Dando, Arnold Shaw from Bracknell and Pastor Appleby from Reading had also expressed their confidence in me, but although individuals could make suggestions, nominations would only be accepted which had the support of at least one official council. And when Pastor Appleby suggested my name in a District Council meeting, the chairman, Billy Richards, said, In a few years, perhaps, which was to prove to be prophetic. I was encouraged by this, as Richards was, like Dando, a member of the Executive Council and a man I highly respected, and it was evident that he did see the potential in me but felt that now was not the right time, which confirmed what I had already suspected. It was clear that I would not yet be leaving Basingstoke, but that the Lord would fulfil his purpose for me at the proper time, and I had peace about that. That is until the unprecedented events that took place in May at the General Conference! Immediately before the vote was to take place to determine which of the men who had been nominated would be the next principal, there was a prophetic word saying that the man God had chosen knew who he was and that he should come forward and declare it! This threw the conference into confusion as it was completely contrary to the normal democratic process practised at conference. The Chairman had to make a decision. The prophecy had to be judged. He conferred with the Executive Council. The matter was put to the conference, and it was agreed to proceed in line with the prophecy. The man whom God had chosen knew who he was, and he should come forward and declare it. Was I the man? The problem was, I knew I was called to the college, but the Lord had never told me that I would ever be the principal. But while I was still churning these things over in my mind, David Powell, one of those who had been nominated, walked forward and told conference why he felt he was the man. I need to say, in passing, how unfair this procedure was to the two other nominees, one of whom, Clifford Rees, was not present because he was speaking at a meeting in another part of the conference. He told me afterwards that he would not have accepted nomination if he had not felt that he was the man. After Powell had made his statement the chairman gave opportunity for people to make comments or to ask questions, and one of those who came forward was my old pastor, Alfred Webb. His way back to his seat went right by me and I decided to ask his advice. A few months previously I had confidentially shared with him how I felt God had called me to the college, and so I quietly asked him if he felt I should share it with the conference. His reply was, Yes, it could be a B that leads to an A. So that is how I came to tell the entire conference, explaining that I had not come forward before as I could not claim that God had called me to be the principal, but that I did know that God had told me I would live at the college, and that if Brother Powell were elected, and felt it were appropriate, I would be willing to serve under him. That day Powell was appointed having received the required two-thirds majority vote of the conference, and a day or so later, when I had heard nothing from him, I approached him and said that I hoped he did not mind what I had said, to which he replied, My heart is with you I this matter, brother. Wait and see what happens. So I waited, and soon I discovered that he had appointed someone else to work with him. It was weeks later, however, before I received a letter from him saying that he would be happy for me to continue as a visiting lecturer teaching the same subjects as before. In fact, I was the only member of the old faculty who was invited to do so. I decided to accept even though my visits were to be monthly rather than fortnightly due to the fact that the college had now moved to Mattersey, some 200 miles north of Basingstoke, much further from home than Kenley had been. During the four years that David Powell was the principal, the college was facing considerable difficulties due to the fact that only part of the property at Kenley had been sold and there were insufficient funds to refurbish and develop the property at Mattersey. This was very evident each time I visited the college as a lecturer and, from 1976 onwards, as a member of the Board of Governors. And although these problems were not of Powell’s making, it was also very clear to me that there were administrative issues that could easily be rectified without incurring any additional expenditure. As a result my desire to be more fully involved in the work of the college was increasing steadily, but at the time there seemed little likelihood of this happening soon. But then, quite unexpectedly, in January 1977 Powell informed the Board of Governors that he had decided not to stand for re-election at General Conference. (At that time all heads of department were subject to re-election every two years). So the other members of the Board agreed unanimously to nominate me. But when the news was out that Powell was not standing for re-election I was not surprised to discover that two others had accepted nomination from different councils. There was of course no guarantee that I would be elected especially bearing in mind the confusion that had arisen at the time of Powell’s appointment, but I was nevertheless quietly optimistic that this might be the year when the Lord’s word to me would be fulfilled. However, shortly before the conference we received the staggering news that Powell had changed his mind! He was going to stand for re-election after all. This was, to say the least, administratively inconvenient, and was not a little nerve-racking for me, but I was reassured by the Board of Governors that they would in no way withdraw their support for my nomination. But that was by no means the end to Powell’s vacillating behaviour. On the first day of conference, he announced that he was withdrawing his name from the list of nominees. Once again the entire conference was thrown into confusion. As a result, when the vote was taken, none of the candidates received the required two-thirds majority and the appointment of the principal was placed in the hands of the Board of Governors and the Executive Council. A few weeks later, at a meeting where I was of course present as a member of the Board, various names, including mine were suggested and voted on by secret ballot, but none of us received the necessary two-thirds majority. So what next? It was finally decided to defer the appointment until the 1978 conference and meanwhile to appoint for the next year a team of three principals each of whom would serve for a term at the college but who would throughout the year be jointly responsible for the college. This was sometimes referred to later as the year of the three principals and, crazy as it may sound, turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I was appointed to serve for that year along with Alfred Missen and Keith Munday and benefitted greatly from their wisdom and greater experience in ministry as we made decisions together about the curriculum, the members of faculty, the timetable for the year, rules for students, and so on. I agreed to take the first term and, with the exception of the two weeks I was at camp in the New Forest, was resident in Mattersey from the end of July until Christmas, going home only for occasional weekends to see the family. The other weekends I was away on ministry, often with some of the students promoting the college. It was on one of these occasions that I went with about 50 of our students to Newport in South Wales. There was a big inter-church meeting on the Saturday night and on the Sunday the students went to different churches to sing, testify, and preach. I stayed in Newport to preach in the church there. After Sunday lunch the pastor, Eric Dando, asked me if I would like to phone Eileen, which of course I was grateful to do. After telling her that the weekend was going well, I asked her how she was and was shocked to hear her reply. I’m O.K., but I very nearly wasn’t! Oh! What’s happened? I replied. She told me that there had been a women’s missionary meeting in London and that she and several of the ladies from the church in Basingstoke had gone to it. They had travelled in two cars and on the way home, on the road between Reading and Basingstoke, several horses ran into the road in front of the cars. It seems that they had escaped from a nearby field. One of the horses collided with the car in which Eileen was travelling in the front passenger seat. The impact was so great that the front of the car roof caved in, to within an inch of Eileen’s head. The car was a complete write-off and, as the people from the car in front walked back to see exactly what had happened, they feared the worst. At this point it is important to explain that at that time the wearing of seat-belts was not compulsory in the U.K. and the car in which Eileen was travelling didn’t have any. Bearing in mind the speed at which the car had been travelling when it collided with the horse, both Eileen and the driver should have been thrown forward through the windscreen. Indeed, the woman seated behind Eileen was thrown forward so violently into the back of Eileen’s seat that it was twisted out of position. Yet Eileen was not thrown forward, and none of those travelling in that car was seriously injured. They all walked away relatively unharmed. Eileen told me that throughout the whole incident she was strangely conscious of something – or someone? – holding her to the back of her seat, preventing her from being thrown forward. Was it a coincidence that on that very evening I had been preaching in Newport on a subject I have rarely preached on before or since? My subject was ANGELS. On another such occasion we took a bus-load of about 45 students to Bethshan Tabernacle in Manchester. There were several hundred people in the meeting during which the students sang and testified and I preached. As soon as I had finished preaching , an Irish woman near to the back of the meeting began to speak in tongues. As I was still at the microphone, it seemed right for me to interpret so that everyone present would hear and understand what had been said. So I spoke out in faith trusting that God would give me the right interpretation for what had been said in tongues. When I had finished, we sang a hymn and the pastor closed the meeting in prayer. As soon as the meeting was over, one of our students, Guetawende Roamba from Burkina Faso, rushed up to me. He was clearly very excited, and when I asked him what was the matter, he told me that the woman who had spoken in tongues had been speaking his native language. Now in Burkina Faso they speak French, and because I speak French, I knew that she had not been speaking French. So I wondered what language it might be. What language? I asked. Moré, he replied. It’s our native African language. Only the educated people speak French as well. Frankly, at that time I had never heard of Moré – and we found out later that the Irish lady who had spoken in tongues had never heard of it either! But I was excited that I had been present when speaking in tongues had been recognised as a real language. At the same time, I was not a little concerned because I was the one who had given the interpretation! As I mentioned in an earlier talk, I had been interpreting tongues since 1960 when I was a student at Oxford, but it had always been (as it always must be) ‘by faith ’, and I had no certain evidence that the gift was genuine. I had simply trusted the promise of Jesus that God gives good gifts to those who ask him (Matthew 7:11), but it’s easy to imagine how embarrassed I would have been if I had ‘got it wrong’ in the presence of one of my Bible College students! I hardly dared ask the question, but I knew I had to. And what about the interpretation, Gueta? Was it accurate? And of course, it was. I wouldn’t be telling this story if the interpretation had been wrong! What an amazing thing! The Holy Spirit inspired an Irish woman to speak an African language which she had never heard, or even heard of, and then gave the interpretation to an English man who had never heard of it either! So exciting things were happening during the term I spent at Mattersey. The Lord was certainly encouraging us, but in the light of all that had happened at previous conferences I knew there was no guarantee that my position as principal would become permanent. Friends like Paul Newberry and Henry Drabble had told me they thought I would never be appointed as principal. My Oxford MA would count against me! And towards the end of the term there was to be a special conference at Mattersey to debate whether AoG really needed a Bible College! What’s more, humanly speaking my financial position was far from secure. Keith Davidson, one of the elders at Basingstoke had given up his secular employment to give himself full-time to the work of the church, but had exhausted his savings, so I had told the church to pay him instead of me as I felt that the Lord might soon be moving me on. These were the kind of things that were occupying my thinking until, during the New Year Convention in Denton at which I was preaching, I finally came to the conclusion that nothing really mattered except for the fact that Jesus died for me. I gave it all to him. And he did meet all our financial needs that year, although I had no guaranteed income, and in the 1978 conference I was finally appointed as Principal of Mattersey Hall Bible College.
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307 My Story Talk 20 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 5
06/12/2025
307 My Story Talk 20 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 5
My Story Talk 20 Ministry at Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 5 Welcome to Talk 20 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I was telling you how God was clearly blessing my trips abroad, to Switzeralnd, France, Belgium and the USA, and, thanks entirely to the gift that God had given me, my teaching was in increasingly great demand both at home and overseas. But how did all this fit in with my responsibilities as the pastor of the church in Basingstoke? The Lord showed me that the answer lay in two things – writing and team ministry. Writing ministry Today, of course, it’s relatively easy to communicate with people all over the world by a variety of options available through the internet. But before the internet, apart from radio and television, speaking on which was not readily available, Christian literature was the main means of communicating with potentially thousands of people. What you write can travel further than you can. One example of this was Andy Anstey, a Canadian who became a student at Mattersey during the early years of my principalship. He told me that he had been baptised in the Spirit in a university library in Canada as a result of reading my book, The Dynamic Difference. I have never been to Canada, but one of my books had found its way there. It had started as a booklet I wrote for the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship in 1971, Be Filled with the Spirit. Jim Hall had used it on my first trip to Illinois and persuaded me to expand it, as a result of which Receive Power was published in 1974 in time for my second trip to the States. It was finally published in 1978 by Gospel Publishing House, Springfield MO, under the title, The Dynamic Difference. I was also writing articles for magazines like Redemption Tidings and Youth Aflame, the AoG youth magazine. At Basingstoke I had given a series of Bible studies on the Fundamental Truths of Assemblies of God, and I asked Vernon Ralphs, the editor of Youth Aflame, if he would like me to write a series of articles on the subject. Those articles were eventually published by Peniel Press as a book under the title, Know the Truth, in 1976, and with the cooperation of the publisher, I was able to give a free copy to every AoG minister at the General Conference that year. And something similar happened with another series of articles I wrote for Youth Aflame. At Colchester I had duplicated a series of short talks for young people who had just given their lives to Jesus and these were eventually published as a book in 1977 under the title How to Live for Jesus. Both these books are still being used, over fifty years later, by a number of churches today, though Know the Truth is now published under the title You’d Better Believe It. It has been translated into several languages including German, French, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Urdu, and Nepalese. Another publication that is still being used widely around the world is the distance learning course I wrote on the Major Prophets for the International Correspondence Institute in Brussels under the title Themes from the Prophets. I have already mentioned that this was a subject I was lecturing on in Kenley Bible College and I already had many pages of lecture notes that I had produced and duplicated for the students. So when Dr George Flattery, the brother of Warren and founder and director of ICI, asked me if I would be willing to write the course, I was happy to do so. This involved several visits to Brussels, each of which lasted for two weeks, where I could get on with writing the course undistracted. It was also a great opportunity to meet other Pentecostal educators from around the world, including the renowned New Testament scholar, Professor Gordon Fee who was writing the course on 1 Corinthians and became a good friend. So I will always be grateful for the opportunity I was given to be a part of ICI, but especially for the induction teaching they offered to all their course writers, which included the requirement to read The Art of Readable Writing by Rudolf Flesch the basic message of which, as I remember it, was to write as you speak, rather than writing in the academic style you were required to use at school or university. Other things Flesch recommended were, wherever possible, to use short words rather than long ones, personal names rather than pronouns, the active voice rather than the passive, and short sentences rather than long ones – which prompts me to close this sentence before it gets any longer! So, to summarise, I had realised that by using literature a person’s ministry could be extended far beyond their time and ability to travel. But that in itself did not solve the problem of reconciling what I perceived to be my obligations to the church where I was pastor with the travelling ministry the Lord was clearly opening up for me. And, as I was praying about this, he answered my question by whispering into my heart the word Antioch. Of course, I knew that Antioch was the place where the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26), but at first I couldn’t see how it was relevant to my problem, so I decided to turn to Acts to see if I could find the answer. And I did. The answer was the development of team ministry. Developing Team Ministry The church at Antioch was started by believers who had been scattered as a result of the persecution of the church that took place after the stoning of Stephen. Some of them went to Antioch spreading the word to both Jews and gentiles and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. When the apostles at Jerusalem heard about this they sent Barnabas to take care of the work, and even more people became Christians. Realising that he needed help, he went to Tarsus to find Paul and brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught great numbers of people. From this it is clear that they were both, to say the least, key people in the church. And yet in Acts 13 we are told that the Holy Spirit sent them away from the church for a time in order to pioneer churches in other countries. The reason they were able to do this and, on their return, find that the church was still strong, was because they were not the only leaders in the church. Acts 13:1 talks of three others at Antioch who were prophets and teachers. As I read about this it became obvious to me that this was the Lord's answer to my question. If I was to continue travelling we would need other leaders in the church. So I started on a detailed study of what the New Testament has to say about the leadership of the local church, and I discovered that churches were led by a team of elders, overseers, or pastors, and as I investigated the passages where these are mentioned I saw very clearly that these were all interchangeable terms. In the New Testament the elders were the pastors. They were the ones who were the shepherds of the flock and had the responsibility of watching over, or overseeing it. I have gone into this in detail in my book, Body Builders, and so there is no need to repeat it here. All I need to say is that I came to the conclusion that the traditional system of having just one person as the church leader really has no biblical basis and that team leadership must be the way forward. I have already mentioned how the pastor in East Saint Louis had come to the same conclusion and it soon became apparent that this was something the Lord was saying to many different leaders around the world. I preached on this in the Home Missions Conference at Weymouth in 1973 and was pleasantly surprised that I was not the only one to hold this view. But where were these new leaders for our church in Basingstoke to come from? The answer was simple. We already had them, but they had never been recognised. There were two men, David Moncaster and Keith Davidson, who, I felt, both met the biblical qualifications mentioned in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. But before I asked the church to appoint them, I spent several weeks teaching about the principles of church leadership. If we are going to persuade people to break away from long held traditions it is vital that we show them very clearly that what we are proposing is in line with scripture. I have already mentioned that Bill Mitchell had already been recognised as an elder in the church before I came. But after my teaching on the biblical qualifications of elders he graciously came to me and said that in the light of what I had taught he thought he was probably a deacon rather than an elder and offered to resign. I told him that I thought he was probably right, but that, as his resignation might be misunderstood by some of the members, I would prefer him to remain as an elder, nominally at least, as long as we both understood that this was not really his role. And to this he readily agreed. So for the final few years of my time in Basingstoke the church was led by a team which we referred to as the pastoral oversight, Willaim Kay being added to the team a little later. The church continued to grow under this system of leadership, and when the Lord moved me on to Mattersey the church was in safe hands. The call to the Bible College I have already mentioned that in 1970 I started as a visiting lecturer at Kenley Bible College. On one of my visits in January 1972 I learned that John Phillips, who was a full time residential tutor at Kenley would be leaving, and as I was travelling home that evening, I was wondering who might be chosen to replace him. It would surely be someone who was already teaching at the college and I was thinking through the names in the college prospectus when I came to my own name. But I quickly dismissed the thought as I was sure that I would be considered too young for such a responsible position. And anyway, God had called me to build a big church in Basingstoke, hadn't he? But no sooner had I thought this than I felt a check in my spirit and said, But of course, Lord, I'll do whatever you want me to do. But if you ever do want me to leave Basingstoke I will need very clear guidance on the matter. You may remember the struggle I had when we first moved to Basingstoke and how for some months I wondered if we had done the right thing. I didn't want a repetition of that. But now, having prayed that prayer, I tried to put the matter out of my mind. This turned out to be harder than expected and that very night, some time between 1:00 and 2:00, on Tuesday 25th January, I woke up with a burning conviction that I was going to live at the Bible College. I tried to shake it off, but it would not go away, so I went downstairs to pray. What I said to the Lord went something like this: Lord, you know I need my sleep, so if this is of you, and you want me to go to the college, would you please tell me quickly? And he did! As I opened my King James Bible, it fell open at 2 Chronicles 34:22. I could hardly believe my eyes. It contained the words dwelt… at the college. With the exception of the parallel verse in 2 Kings 22:14, this is the only reference to the word college in the whole Bible. This had to be more than coincidence. I had asked the Lord to tell me quickly, and he did. But, rather like Moses in Exodus 3 and 4, I found myself making excuses like, I’ve only been in Basingstoke for four years, and, They wouldn’t choose me. I’m too young. I don’t have enough experience etc. But just as God had an answer for every objection Moses made, he had an answer for mine too. For each objection I made he led me directly to a Bible passage that answered it. As a result I was entirely convinced that I was going to live at the College. I didn’t know when but thought that it might be in September after John Phillips had left. In fact it was five or six years later! I have discovered that one of the hardest things in understanding the will of God is his timing. I have also discovered that God seems to give us the clearest guidance when he knows that there is trouble ahead! It’s only the certainty that we are in his will that will sustain us through trials and difficulties and tests to our faith. And there were to be plenty of those before we got to Mattersey! But that’s something for our next talk.
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306 My Story Talk 19 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 4
06/01/2025
306 My Story Talk 19 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 4
My Story Talk 19 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 4 Welcome to Talk 19 in our series where I am reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Today I’ll be talking about how, while I was at Basingstoke, the Lord started to open up a wider ministry overseas. It all began when early in 1971 Willy Droz, a pastor from Switzerland appeared on my doorstep and introduced himself. He had trained at the International Bible Training Institute in Sussex where he had met his wife Brenda. He knew about me through the SPF newsletter which reported details of my travels around the universities preaching on the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He was organising a youth weekend retreat at les Rasses in the Swiss Jura mountains and asked if I would be the main speaker. I had not been to Switzerland since my first visit in 1958 when I heard about the baptism in the Spirit from Laurie Dixon, and I eagerly accepted the invitation. But I first made sure that they would not expect me to preach in French. There are no less than four different languages spoken in Switzerland, German, French, Italian, and Romansh (spoken only by a small minority). Les Rasses is in the French-speaking area, known also as La Suisse Romande. It was fifteen years since I had taken my French A level and I had forgotten, or thought I had forgotten, all of it. So I was grateful for the assurance that my preaching would be interpreted, which was a particularly interesting experience as I was at least familiar with the language into which I was being interpreted. In some ways it’s much easier when you don’t know the language and just have to trust the interpreter, but, when you know the language, you’re constantly checking to make sure the interpreter is getting it right! And on one occasion I surprised everyone by saying, Non, je n’ai pas dit cela – No, I didn’t say that. So the French I had learnt at school had not entirely deserted me, but I have to confess that, when I was introduced to the wife of the pastor from Geneva, I could not even remember how to say, I’m pleased to meet you. It was only when in La Chaux-de-Fonds they lodged me for a few days with an elderly woman who spoke no English, that I was compelled to speak French and found the language coming back to me. But I was far from ready to start preaching in French. The opportunity to do so came three years later in March 1974 as the result of my meeting Jerry Sandidge at an SPF house party at Capel, then the home of the Elim Bible College. Jerry told me he was the director for University Action in Eurasia for the American Assemblies of God, had heard about my ministry in Britain and the USA – about which, more later – and invited me to preach in the University of Louvain (or Leuven) in Belgium on the subject, Charismatic Gifts – are they for today? He also said that he could arrange for me to speak at CBC, the Continental Bible College, later to become the Continental Theological Seminary, near Brussels, where they had two language streams, one in English and the other in French. It was there, I think, that I first met Warren Flattery, who asked if I would mind taking one of his French classes. In French? I asked. Oh no, he said, I always do it in English. To which I responded by politely asking how long he had been living in a French speaking country, and didn’t he think he ought to be doing it in French? And so I asked him for a French Bible and, as I had a day or so to prepare for it, after apologising to the class up front for the mistakes I was sure to make, I somehow managed to preach my first sermon in French. At the end of which the class applauded and Warren said, Lui, s’il peut le faire, moi, je peux le faire! If he can do it, I can do it! And the class applauded again, and from then on Warren took all his classes in French. In my case, the applause was certainly not for the quality of my French, but, I suspect, was an expression of sympathy and appreciation that I had made the effort. The next opportunity came in 1977 as a result of my meeting Marie-France, a French student at Mattersey. The Bible College had moved in 1973 from Kenley to Mattersey and in 1976, in the final week of the summer term, I was giving a lecture when I happened to mention that on one occasion in Switzerland I had spoken to someone in French. Marie-France approached me afterwards, pleased to know that there was someone she could speak to in her own language. The outcome of that conversation was that over the next few years Marie-France came to stay with us in Basingstoke on several occasions. She became a good friend of our family and a great help to me in improving my spoken French. Several of my sermons had been recorded on cassettes and Eileen had patiently typed them up, word for word as I had preached them. Marie-France kindly offered to translate them for me, so that I could refer to them whenever I might need to preach in French. The following year, having heard about me from Marie-France, the pastor of her church in Paris invited me to preach whenever I would next be on the continent. So while I was in Brussels for a fortnight writing a course for ICI (International Correspondence Institute, later to become Global University) – more of which later – I travelled to Paris for the weekend and preached one of the sermons Marie-France had translated for me. The French, of course, was excellent, but I can’t say the same about the delivery! I was so nervous that I read every word of it! And I did the same the following year when Willy Droz arranged for me to preach in several churches in Switzerland – Vevey, Ste. Croix, Payerne, Lausanne, Saxon, Colenberg, Neuveville, Couvet. I think it was in Vevey that some people came up to me after the service and, after chatting with me, in French of course, for about twenty minutes said, Thank you for your message. It was very good. But why did you read it all? To which I replied that someone had translated it for me and that I did not have enough confidence in my French to do it without reading it. But they replied, You’ve been speaking with us in perfectly good French for the last 20 minutes. You should trust in the Lord. And I can hardly believe that I made the following stupid reply, Yes, I know how to trust the Lord in English, but I don’t know how to trust him in French! But the time did come when occasionally I would have to trust the Lord to help me preach in French without notes, but that’s a story for a later talk. It’s time now to mention the trips I made to the USA while we were still in Basingstoke. I have already mentioned John Miles who was my closest friend while we were at Oxford. He was part of that group of Pentecostal students who very much took the initiative in the formation of the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship. After graduating John spent a year or so school teaching in England before going to the Congo as a missionary. It was there he met and married Sara, an American missionary and where their first child Julia was born. By 1972 they were back in the USA where John did a PhD in French at the University of Illinois and eventually became Professor of French at Wheaton College. However, at one point they were thinking of returning to Congo and in 1972 John wrote to me saying that, if I was thinking of visiting them in the States, I should do so fairly soon. His letter coincided with one of my regular visits to Kenley Bible College where I met Don Mallough, a guest lecturer from America who, over lunch, asked me if I had ever visited the States and encouraged me to go if I had the opportunity. In those days travelling to the States was far less common than it is today, and to me the decision to go there was far from easy. However, I was talking to Eric Dando, a well-known preacher and member of the AoG Executive Council and asked him what he thought. His reply went something like this: Well, David, I go to America like I go anywhere else. If I feel that I can be a blessing to them and they can be a blessing to me, I go. That put things in perspective for me and on that basis I decided to go, even though at the time I had received no specific invitation to minister anywhere. So I arranged to go for the month of October, and shortly after received an unexpected letter. It was from Jim Hall who had heard about the work I was doing for the SPF in the universities in Britain and asked if I would do something similar in Illinois where he was the Assemblies of God Director for University Action. So that’s what I did. Jim arranged preaching engagements for me in churches morning and evening every Sunday and on Wednesday evenings. An offering was taken in each meeting, half of which was designated for the University Action department, the other half for me, to cover the cost of my airfares and a gift for my ministry. This was a complete surprise for me as I had decided to go to the States before I knew of this. It was also a wonderful answer to prayer. We had been struggling financially as the church was not yet able to pay me an adequate salary and any funds we originally had as the result of the sale of our bungalow in Colchester had now run out. But now our needs were met, and I came home with a renewed faith and expectation that God would always find a way to meet our financial needs. But the most satisfying thing about the trip was not the financial reward but the response I received in the churches and universities. I was based at Urbana with John and Sara, and I preached there the first Sunday morning I was there. I preached on repentance and was amazed to see how many people came forward in response to the appeal. I received a similar response everywhere I went, and I quickly learnt how different Americans are from us Brits in responding to an appeal. But for most of the month I was travelling around the state of Illinois accompanied by Jim Hall who acted as my chauffeur and guide and was a great encouragement to me. We learned a lot from each other over the many miles we travelled together and became great friends. We visited eight universities altogether, spending two days in each. These were: Illinois State University, Normal; University of Illinois, Urbana; Northwestern University, Evanston; Northern Illinois University, DeKalb; Western Illinois University, Macomb; Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; Southern Illinois University, Carbondale; and Eastern Illinois University, Charleston. Over the course of the three weeks we were touring, dozens of students were baptised in the Spirit and began to speak in tongues, one professor telling me how grateful he was to God ‘for the wisdom he had given’ me in the way I taught the Word and how I prayed for people to receive. And Jim Hall was so encouraged that he sent a report about my ministry to Aaron Linford, the editor of Redemption Tidings, which was published shortly after I returned to England. I made a similar trip to Illinois two years later in October 74, visiting the same universities, but this time speaking on two main themes, The fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and The Christan’s Armour (Ephesians 6:10-20). On each of these trips I had left Eileen and the children back in England and we all missed each other very much. For Eileen it was particularly difficult as in 1972 Jonathan was only two, and the girls were just seven and eight. One example of this was when I returned at the end of October 72 and Eileen had driven up to Heathrow with the kids to meet me. During my trip people had asked me about the weather in England and if it was very foggy – I think they must have been watching some of the Sherlock Holmes movies – and I had replied that we occasionally get a bit of fog, but not very much. But ironically, when our flight approached Heathrow, the captain announced that our landing would be delayed because of fog. The delay was so long that we had to go back to Shannon in Ireland to refuel and we eventually landed at Heathrow four and a half hours later than scheduled. And all this time Eileen was waiting with three young children in a very crowded Heathrow. But the third time I went to the States Eileen and the children came with me. This was for six weeks from mid-February to the end of March 1977, and the children had to have special permission to miss school. This was granted on the educational value of the trip and on the condition that whenever possible they went to school in Wheaton, where John and Sara Miles were now living. Most of my ministry during the trip was in churches rather than in universities, although I did speak to students at a breakaway retreat in Carlinville, the headquarters of the Illinois district of Assemblies of God. I also conducted a seminar in Wheaton College on the baptism in the Spirit, more of which in a moment. Once again, the churches we visited were in Illinois. These included Rockford, Urbana, Granite City, Springfield, Naperville, Schaumberg, East Saint Louis (where we took the opportunity to go to the top of the famous arch), and La Grange. The experience at East Saint Louis was interesting for two reasons, first because after the morning service the whole congregation stayed behind for what they called an agapē meal, or love-feast, where they presented a delicious array of both hot and cold dishes. That church was also significant because during the meal the pastor showed me the notes of a sermon he had preached which were almost identical to what I had preached that morning. It was on the subject of team leadership based on the church in Antioch (Acts 13), about which I will say more next time. The Lord was clearly saying the same thing to different people in different parts of the world. Our experience at La Grange was even more interesting. I preached there on the first Sunday of our trip and they invited me back for a series of meetings from Sunday to Wednesday towards the end of our stay when I gave a series of talks on Gideon. We were invited by a family whose children were about the same age as ours for a typical Thanksgiving meal specially prepared for us as it was not really the season for Thanksgiving. It was on the Wednesday before the final service and we really enjoyed it, so much so in fact that we arrived a little late for the service and I was so full I could hardly preach! Even more interesting was the fact that they enjoyed the ministry so much that they asked me if I would seriously consider accepting the pastorate of the church as the pastor had recently announced that he was moving on. The offer was extremely tempting, but, as I will explain later, by this time I was already convinced that the Lord was calling me to Mattersey. Other significant features of that trip included a visit to the Assemblies of God headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, a journey to Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the invitation of Oral Roberts to attend as his guests a seminar at the Oral Roberts University, and finally, a seminar I was asked to conduct at Wheaton College on the baptism in the Holy Spirit on Saturday 19th March. On the Friday evening I had been asked to appear on television by a Christian TV station in Chicago and was on my way there accompanied by Pastor Tom Richardson when he received a phone call to say that they had made a last-minute decision to have instead a telethon evening to raise much needed funds. Although this was disappointing, we had no alternative than to return to Wheaton where the next morning I preached on the baptism in the Spirit and several came forward for prayer and were filled with the Spirit. When the meeting was over, one of them asked me if I had heard Professor James Dunn the previous evening. I said no, at which she expressed some surprise. Dunn, who is well-known for his rejection of the Pentecostal understanding of baptism in the Spirit, had given his reasons for doing so, but I, without knowing what he said, had answered him on every point. This was clearly, without my knowing it, due to the leading of the Holy Spirit in all I had said, and was in itself an evidence of the truth of what I was preaching.
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305 My Story Talk 18 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 3
05/23/2025
305 My Story Talk 18 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 3
My Story Talk 18 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 3 Welcome to Talk 18 in our series where I am reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time we saw how, during the years we were there, the church in Basingstoke grew as a result of the consistent and regular preaching of the gospel by means of Sunday night gospel services, evangelistic missions, personal evangelism and door-to-door work, and ministry among children and young people. And the fact that God graciously confirmed the message by miraculous signs according to his own will was undoubtedly a significant factor as the supernatural gifts of the Spirit were regularly in evidence in our meetings. But our years at Basingstoke also saw a significant widening of my ministry beyond the local church not only in preaching but also in writing, both in the UK and further afield. Ministry beyond the local church Speaking engagements within the UK With the exception of my ministry in universities and colleges as Travelling Secretary of the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship, the vast majority of my speaking engagements were at the AoG Bible College or in AoG churches or conferences. The invitation to lecture at the Bible College, which was then in Kenley, Surrey, came in 1970 from the newly appointed Principal, George Jeffreys Williamson. Kenley was a couple of hours’ drive from Basingstoke, and I went on a fortnightly basis staying overnight and giving lectures on the Major Prophets, Comparative Religion, and New Testament Greek. Apart from the Greek, I had little or no prior knowledge about the subjects I was teaching and so the lecture preparation time was considerable. But I enjoyed the challenge and added to my personal education in the process. I could not have possibly known it then, but my time at Kenley turned out to be the start of over fifty years of teaching in Pentecostal Bible Colleges around the world. I was also receiving invitations to minister at large conventions and national conferences. Despite the charismatic renewal that was happening at the time in some of the other churches, Pentecostals, having been rejected and ostracized for decades, were still rather suspicious of what was happening, and tended to keep pretty much to themselves, gathering together in large celebrations, especially at significant times of the year, when there was a public holiday – Easter, Whitsun, August, Christmas and New Year. These were amazing times of blessing as people, hungry for the word of God, gathered for fellowship, worship, and to hear specially invited speakers. Some Easter Conventions, like the Cardiff City Temple (Elim), where I was privileged to minister on more than one occasion, would last from Thursday evening until the following Tuesday, very often with two speakers in each meeting. In the mid-seventies, when I would sometimes be booked for up to five years in advance for Easter, I preached at conventions in Preston (72 and 74), Tunbridge Wells (73), Bishop Aukland (75), Peckham (76), and Coventry (77). Apart from these popular events which were arranged by local churches, there were also national events like the AoG Annual General Conference, attended by thousands, and the Home Missions Conference organised by the AoG Home Missions Council. In 1969 I was asked to speak at the HMC Conference in Coventry on the subject, Preaching the Gospel in the 1970s. And in 1973 at a similar conference in Weymouth, I spoke on the importance of team leadership in the local church, about which I will say more next time. Even more significant, however, was General Conference which in the late sixties took place in Bognor Regis and from 1971 to 1989 was held at the Butlins Holiday Camp in Minehead reaching a record high attendance for the AoG Jubilee Conference in 1984. I was a speaker on one of the main celebrations (back then referred to as ‘rallies’) on several occasions, the first of which was in Bognor in 1969. But perhaps the greatest privilege was for many years being made responsible for speaking at the receiving meeting which was held every year for people who were seeking the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Over the years we saw hundreds begin to speak in tongues, some of whom told me that they had been seeking for years but had never heard it explained so clearly. Other events at which I ministered regularly were youth rallies organised either by local churches or by AoG District Councils, and the National Youth Rally. I was a member of the AoG National Youth Council (1973-76), who were responsible for organising this annual event at which I would usually either lead or preach. I suspect that the reason I was elected to the NYC was partly because people had come to know of the work we were doing among young people at our youth camp. That may also have been the reason for the evangelistic missions I was invited to conduct. On two occasions Colin Whittaker, who was then the AoG pastor at Luton, asked me to conduct an eight-day youth mission. For one of these I was assisted by members of the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship who sang and testified in the evening meetings but also did a great job in distributing invitations to the young people as they came out of school. The other time, I was alone, but part of the week’s programme was to preach in one of the schools where I was supported by a Christian band and where dozens responded to the appeal at the end of my message. Another time I was asked by the Christian Union at Chester College – now Chester University – to do a five-day evangelistic mission for the students in the college. When I arrived just after lunch on the Monday, a member of staff conducted me to the bedroom they had allocated for me. I hope you don’t mind, he said, we’re putting you in a room that was occupied until recently by a student we have had to expel from the college. He had been practising witchcraft . I was rather surprised by this, to say the least, but I put a brave face on it and said, as casually as I could, Oh, that’s fine. No problem! But when I entered the room, I confess I began to wonder what evil presence might be lurking there. The half-burnt candle on the windowsill didn’t help . Had that been part of his devilish paraphernalia? Or had they just had a power -cut recently?! Then I remembered what Jesus had promised to his disciples as he sent them out on the task of world evangelisation: Surely, I will be with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20). I reminded myself of other Bible verses like Behold I give you power over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you (Luke 10:19) and I began to take courage. I settled into my room and started to prepare myself for the meeting at which I had to speak that evening. After a few minutes there was a knock at the door. Two men stood there. They had seen the light on in my room and wondered who it was that was in there. Are you a new student? they asked. No, I replied, I’ve come to conduct a mission for the Christian Union. That’s interesting, said one of them. It’s strange they should put you in my old room. It was the man they had expelled for practising witchcraft ! He had come back to visit his friend. Of course, I invited them to the meeting that evening and the ‘witch ’ said he might come. And sure enough, when the time for the meeting came, there he was sitting in the audience. I preached the gospel and I would like to be able to say that the man gave his life to Christ, but he didn’t. Instead, he came and argued with me! This went on for some time after the meeting had closed, and after about half an hour, feeling that we were getting nowhere by arguing, I decided to invite him to come to the meeting the next day. I think you’ll be particularly interested tomorrow, I said. The subject is Jesus the way to power . How real is the supernatural ? Is it safe? I don’t think you know the first thing about the supernatural , he replied. What a challenge to a Pentecostal preacher! Well, I don’t know much about what you get up to when you practise your witchcraft , I said, but I will tell you one thing. When you come under the control of a familiar spirit , you can’t say Jesus is Lord, can you? I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me! I had said this on the basis of my understanding of 1 Corinthians 12:1-3, but I was not prepared for the effect it had on this young man. He went visibly pale and said, How did you know that? Taking courage by his reaction, I said, Because the Bible , which is God’s word tells me so. And I’ll tell you something else it says. You may not acknowledge that Jesus is Lord now, but the day is coming when you will have to, whether you like it or not. For the Bible says that one day at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father ! As I quoted these verses from Philippians 2:10-11 to him, he retreated out of the room! I went to bed at around 11pm and fell asleep straight away, sleeping soundly until about 7 the next morning. While the students were having their breakfast, I went down the corridor to the washroom to shave. While I was shaving, I saw in the mirror the face of the ‘witch ’. He was standing right behind me. Good morning, he said. Did you sleep well? Yes, thank you, I replied. Are you sure? Yes, perfectly sure. I went to bed around eleven and slept soundly until about seven. Really? I can’t understand that! Why? What so unusual about having a good night’s sleep? Well, you see, he confessed, I was so annoyed with what you said last night that I stayed up all night practising my witchcraft . I was trying to get a poltergeist into your room to disturb you. I’ve done it many times before and it’s never failed. That’s why they expelled me from the college. I can’t understand why it didn’t work this time. Oh, I said, I wish you had told me. I could have told you not to waste your time. Don’t you know that Christians are immune to such things? Later that day he was seen leaving the college with his bag packed. Leaving? said one of the Christians. Aren’t you coming to the meeting today? No, he replied, that fellow knows too much about the supernatural. What a sad story, but despite the satanic opposition, during the course of those five days over 40 students made a decision for Christ. But finally, before we turn to the speaking invitations that began to open up for me overseas, which I’ll tell you about next time, a word about those I was receiving from within the UK apart, of course, from the things I’ve already mentioned – teaching fortnightly at the Bible College, preaching in universities and colleges, serving on the National Youth Council, and ministering at conventions, conferences and missions. In addition to all that, looking back at my diaries I discovered recently that between 1972 and 1976 I was ministering on average over twelve times a year in churches other than Basingstoke. Why do I mention this? Because with that amount of ministry there is always the danger that the family may suffer as a result of it. I am so grateful to Billy Richards who spoke to the ministers in our district about pastors who discovered that their kids had grown up before they knew it and who regretted that they had spent so little time with them. On hearing that, I was determined that that would not happen in our family, and so, whenever I returned from a trip away, Eileen and I would make sure that we all spent extra time together, like going for a drive or walk or picnic in the beautiful Hampshire countryside and followed by a favourite meal for tea. And we made sure that we always had good summer holidays too. Apart from camp, which was a holiday for the kids, but hard, though enjoyable work for Eileen and me, we always tried to make sure that as a family we had two weeks away together. At first these were always in the UK in places like North Wales and Cornwall, but our most notable trip by far was in 1976 when we went to L’Auberson, a small village just a mile from the French border in the Jura region of Switzerland. Back then holidays abroad were far less common and far more expensive than they are today, and such a trip would have been financially impossible for us had it not been for the inheritance Eileen received from her father who had sadly died from a heart attack in 1975. We travelled by car stopping overnight just once en route at a hotel – the children’s first experience in one – in La Veuve, a small village near to Chalons-sur-Marne and arrived at L’Auberson early in the evening. Actually it was earlier than we thought. We had put our watches on an hour when we entered France and assumed that the time in Switzerland was the same, but, as we found out later, in those days the time was the same as in England, so when we went to bed at what we thought was nine o’clock, people were rather surprised that we were going to bed at eight! And when we arrived at church the next morning in time for the ten o’clock service the door was still locked because it was really only nine! The pastor was Willy Droz – more about him next time – and I had not told him we were coming and had tried to time our entrance just in time for the service so that he would not ask me to preach. After all I was on holiday! So, of course, I ended up preaching after all – in French. But that brings me to the next subject – speaking engagements abroad, which we’ll talk about next time.
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304 My Story Talk 17 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 2
05/11/2025
304 My Story Talk 17 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 2
My Story Talk 17 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 2 Welcome to Talk 17 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I was talking about the evangelistic missions we organised in Basingstoke, but these tended largely to attract adults, and the children and young people needed to be reached too. So that's our subject for today. Children’s Work At first, the only children we were reaching were those who came to our Sunday School, which was held at 10am before the 11am Communion Service. One of those children was Rosie Wilcox (née Wright), who later became Jonathan’s Sunday School teacher. Fifty years later, I still exchange Christmas cards every year with Rosie and her husband Paul. However, we soon began to reach other children in what was then a more unusual way. To the best of my knowledge, we were the first AoG church in Britain to organise a pre-school playgroup. I had felt for some time that most church buildings were not being used to their full potential. I talked with Bill Mitchell, the church elder, who himself was a businessman, and he wholeheartedly agreed. The church building was standing empty in the daytime for six days a week. And we were on the edge of a new council estate where most of the houses were occupied by young families. So, we checked out the legal requirements, and discovered that our facilities would accommodate up to 40 children, provided that we had one adult for every eight children present. We obviously needed to invest in the right equipment, and Eileen knew exactly what to get. In fact, with her administrative skills, she was the ideal person to take charge of the whole thing, and before Debbie and Sarah were old enough to go to school, they could be with her while she was at playgroup. We started by opening for three mornings a week, but the demand for places was such that before long we were open for five. And we had adequate workers to take the full complement of forty, so for five mornings a week, as well as supervising and organising the children in their play, they were able to tell them about Jesus. That was, of course, the most important thing, but another welcome benefit was that, from the small charge we made for each child, we were receiving enough income to pay the mortgage on the building! And an unexpected result of running that playgroup was the request I received to exorcise a ‘ghost’ from one of the nearby houses! It happened like this. It was 12 o’clock and the playgroup session was ending. I happened to be present having a chat with Bill Mitchell, when one of the mums came in and said, Is one of you the vicar? And although I don’t usually go by that title, I said, Yes, I am. She then asked if I could help her because, she said, there was a ghost in her house. Could I get rid of it? To which, knowing that in Christ we have authority over the forces of darkness, I replied, Yes, of course. How much will it cost? she said. Nothing, I replied. Wow! That’s good, she said, the spiritualist wanted a fiver. She gave me her address and, that evening, I went with another brother to visit her. We told her that her greatest security would be to let Jesus into her life and led her in a prayer for salvation. Of course, the so-called ‘ghost’ was actually a demon, because there is no biblical evidence for the existence of what people call ghosts, but the woman did not know that. She said that it usually appeared at the top of the stairs. So I went up after it and, although I could see nothing unusual, I did feel a distinct drop in temperature. So I commanded the thing, whatever it was, to leave in the name of Jesus. At once the woman, who was standing in the hall with the other brother, suddenly shrieked. There, didn’t you see it? It went right past you! So, although I couldn’t see it, I chased it down the stairs, opened the front door, and told it to get out and never come back. The following Sunday she was in church to say thank you and told me that it had gone. So running a playgroup certainly put us in contact with the people in ways we did not expect, but in Britain’s fastest growing town the playgroup and the Sunday School we ran in our church building were by no means sufficient to spread the good news among the children, and we soon decided to launch a second Sunday School in a school on the Oakridge estate. This was only possible thanks to the commitment of our teachers who, having taught in the morning in Cranbourne Lane, were willing to give up their Sunday afternoon to teach the same lessons to the children in Oakridge. Another children’s work was started by Hilda Gibbons, an elderly widow who opened her home every week to some thirty children on the Winklebury estate. And we reached hundreds of children through the holiday clubs we organised. These lasted for a week or so towards the end of the long summer holidays. They were led mainly by Anthea and William Kay assisted by other church workers, SPF students and other Christian teachers all of whom we accommodated throughout their stay. Notable examples were David Littlewood, later to become an AoG pastor, and Phyllis Parrish (née Sowter) who was baptised in the Spirit while she was with us and later became a student at Mattersey and a missionary to Bangaladesh. Youth Work Some of the older children who came to the holiday clubs were also attracted to our Friday night Youth Meeting. This was our main means of reaching young people on a regular basis and, for most of the time we were at Basingstoke, was led by me. Our church was situated right next to Cranbourne Lane Comprehensive School, where Debbie and Sarah became pupils and I became a parent governor. We also attracted young people from other parts of the town where some of our members were teachers. The church minibus, faithfully driven by William Kay, was vitally important for this work, although it wasn’t worth much financially. At the time we had no suitable garage for it, so it was parked each night in the road at the back of our house. One night, in the early hours of the morning, we were woken up by the sound of our dog barking and then I realised that someone was banging heavily on our back door. As I went to the window I became quickly aware of another noise – the constant sound of a car horn. It was our minibus, and the neighbour banging on the back door had come to ask us to silence it. I quickly threw on some clothes and hurried outside to see what I could do. To my surprise the driver’s door of the minibus was wide open. I wondered why, as I was sure I had locked it the night before. But my first task was to silence the horn, so I quickly disconnected the battery. Now the horn was silent I could go back to bed, hoping that not too many neighbours had been disturbed. Next morning, as I was apologising for the noise in the night, another neighbour told us they had seen what had happened. Two men had broken into our minibus, but the moment they opened the door the horn had suddenly started sounding. This apparently had caused the men to panic, and our neighbour had seen them running away. Their attempt to steal our minibus had been thwarted! Of course, it may be possible to think of a rational explanation for all this, but it’s important to mention that the horn on the minibus would not normally sound unless the ignition was switched on, and there was no form of burglar alarm fitted to the minibus. But whether there’s a rational explanation or not, as far as I was concerned God had protected our vehicle. He works in natural as well as in supernatural ways, and we will probably never know why that horn sounded just at the right moment – except that God knew that we needed that minibus! In addition to the weekly youth meeting, we also organised at least two week-long missions, one where Warwick Shenton was the evangelist, and another led by Paul and Janice Finn who were the national youth evangelists for Assemblies of God. We were able to get them into several of the secondary schools in the town where they spoke in school assemblies. This way we knew that the vast majority of teenagers in Basingstoke had the opportunity to hear the gospel. But it was at the regular weekly youth meeting and its associated activities that close personal relationships could be formed with the young people. We organised walks in the countryside, barbecues, and games evenings where we had great opportunities to get to know them better – and for them to get to know us better too. And nowhere was this truer than at our annual youth camp. New Forest Pentecostal Youth Camp While we were at Colchester I had organised a youth camp on the island of Mersea and, thanks to Eileen’s culinary skills and to the things I had learned as a teenager in the Boys’ Brigade, this proved highly successful. So towards the beginning of our time in Basingstoke I made enquiries as to what sites might be available for us to do something similar near us, and I discovered that the Hampshire Education Committee had one near Brockenhurst in the New Forest. It was set in beautiful countryside, was within a short driving distance from the coast, and had the advantage of flush toilets and showers! All the equipment – tents, marquees, tables, benches, cooking utensils etc. – was provided on site, which was managed by a very helpful warden, a Welshman called Eddie Davies. So we decided to give it a go and, as an initial experiment, took a group of about 15 young people for a few days in the school summer holidays. It went so well that we decided to return the following year for a full week and to invite other AoG churches to participate. I put an advert in Redemption Tidings and over the years the numbers increased to some 150 young people each week. Eileen and I planned the weekly menu which, although it was somewhat restricted by the cooking equipment provided at the site, nevertheless comprised three hot meals a day, prepared by teams of dedicated workers. The only exception to this was that when we all went out for the day – to the Isle of Wight, for example – everyone prepared their own sandwich lunch straight after breakfast with the food we provided for them. Much of the food we bought came in large cans obtained from the cash and carry store in Basingstoke and transported down to Brockenhurst in the minibus in advance. The rest we bought on a daily basis from the International store in Brockenhurst who, incidentally, issued vast quantities of Green Shield stamps, which, when you had saved enough of them, you could trade in for a variety of items displayed in the Green Shield catalogue. I seem to remember that Eileen and I got our coffee percolator that way! The daily programme involved breakfast, during which each of the tents was inspected for tidiness and hygiene, followed by a short devotional involving a song, a prayer, and a Bible reading. The daytime was taken up with recreational activities including at least one day trip to either Hengistbury Head or the Isle of Wight, afternoon trips to Milford-on-Sea, or a treasure hunt in the New Forest. As a family we all enjoyed going down to Brockenhurst a week or so in advance to prepare for this, when we would compose a poem giving clues to the route. But the most important part of the camp programme was without question the meeting we held in the marquee each evening. These involved worship, prayer, testimonies, and preaching followed by an appeal. Every year we saw dozens of young people respond, either for salvation or for a renewed commitment to Christ. And many were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. I still receive testimonies from people, now in their sixties, of how they met with God in those meetings. After each meeting there was a break when we opened our tuck shop for half an hour. This was followed by a time of singing in the marquee, or, once a week, around a camp fire. The only exception to this was the long hot summer of 1976 when we were at camp for three weeks and when everywhere was so dry that it was illegal to light fires anywhere in the New Forest. Those weeks spent at camp during the seventies were wonderful times of blessing for all involved and form some of the happiest memories of my life. But such blessings do not come by accident. They come as the result of prayer, commitment, and teamwork. None of it would have been possible without the dedicated help of Basingstoke church members like Hilda Gibbons, and visiting pastors and their wives who over several years brought their young people to camp and shared in the work and ministry. Of special note among these were Mike and Beryl Godward from Corringham, Brian and Audrey Quar from Crossacres, Manchester, and Colin Blackman from Tonbridge Wells, all of whom became good personal friends. But these were not the only relationships that were formed or developed at camp. We really got to know our own young people much better too. Some of them came down early to help unload cans of food from the minibus and to assist in the erection of the tents, and I learned that forming relationships with young people, letting them know that you love them rather than just preaching at them, was the way to gain their loyalty and respect. This is essential if we want them to follow our example in following Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). One example of this was Linda. She, along with her twin sister, Sue, had become regular attenders at our Friday night youth meeting. On one occasion we were having a sausage-sizzle in the church grounds. Linda was standing next to me looking into the fire when she told me she was thinking of leaving us. So, putting my arm round her shoulder, I said to her, Oh don’t leave us Linda. We all love you. We’d really miss you. Linda didn’t leave us, and her relationship with Eileen and me deepened when she came to babysit for us from time to time. I recently discovered a letter she had written to Eileen in 1974 in which she said, Entering your home is so different… there's such a lovely atmosphere within it... as soon as I entered the home I felt more confident in myself. Thanks for talking to me, so far since I've spoken to you I’ve felt up on top of the world… I want to say a big thank you, but I don't think I could ever write or say it the way I feel to a friend like you... Thank you for praying for me. Later, when her leaving college coincided with my becoming principal at Mattersey, Linda became my secretary, only leaving when she married a student from Switzerland, where she now lives. But in 2012 she made a surprise visit to England when she came to our Golden Wedding anniversary. Of course, Linda was an exceptional case, but her story does illustrate the value of making time to develop relationships with children and young people wherever possible.
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303 My Story Talk 16 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 1
05/03/2025
303 My Story Talk 16 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 1
My Story Talk 16 Ministry in Basingstoke (1968-78) Part 1 Welcome to Talk 16 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness throughout my life. Today I’m going to begin by telling you how in January 1968 we came to move from Colchester to Basingstoke. During 1967, as part of my SPF travels, I was preaching in Oxford when an old friend from the Elim church asked to see me. He was hoping that an Assemblies of God church might be planted there and wanted to find out if I would be interested in coming to take over its leadership. I told him that I would pray about it but that my initial reaction was that I did not feel any sense of leading in that direction. Some weeks later, I had an unexpected phone call from my friend Michael Collins who, as I have already mentioned, was a fellow student with me at Oxford and part of the original SPF group there. He told me that he had heard from Oxford that I might be thinking of leaving Colchester and that, if that were the case, he wanted to sound out whether I might be interested in coming to Basingstoke. He explained that they were looking for a pastor and would like to invite me to come and preach one Sunday. The church had not had a pastor for three years and numbers had dwindled to only 12 people. Although they were not able to pay me much, the potential was great, as they had a new building on a large piece of land and Basingstoke had a rapidly expanding population. This was an exciting challenge, but numbers at Colchester were now around 80 and I was relatively well paid. Did I really want to take on another small church and take a substantial drop in income? And did we really want to leave behind the many friends we had made at Colchester? So I told him that I did not think it likely that the Lord would move me from Colchester but that if they wanted me to preach for one Sunday I would be happy to do so. As far as moving there permanently was concerned, I determined in my heart that I would only consider it if I received a unanimous invitation from the members of the church. We would also need them to provide housing for us, as the salary they were likely to offer would be far too low for us to be able to get a mortgage. These matters were discussed when I went to preach there, and the financial position was clarified. The church’s income was £14 a week. £8 of this was taken up with mortgage repayments on the new church building and, if they needed to provide us with accommodation, the remaining £6 would be taken up with that. So anything they could offer me would be an act of faith on their part – and required not a little faith on my part too! In the circumstances, I thought it highly unlikely that they would be able to meet the criteria I had set, but 100% of the members did vote to invite me, and after a couple of months I heard that they had been able to purchase a house for us. Taking this to be the will of the Lord, we informed the friends at Colchester of our decision, sold our bungalow, and moved to Basingstoke in January 1968. The move to Basingstoke went smoothly and the house the church provided, a typical three-bedroomed semi-detached, had the advantage of central heating, a luxury we had not been used to. With the profit we made on the sale of our bungalow in Colchester, we were able to have new fitted carpets throughout, and to buy furniture for the lounge as well. We also bought a small second-hand car, having left the minibus in Colchester. We were welcomed warmly by the church members, and the building was packed for my Induction Service with people from other churches who had come to show their support. The speaker was Billy Richards, the AoG pastor at Slough, in his capacity as Chairman of the West London District Council. His cousin, Bill Mitchell, who was an elder in the church, was at the piano, and we were inspired by his God-given talent and grateful for his commitment to play at every meeting. Other key people were the deacons, Janet Collins (Church Secretary), John Nicholson (Treasurer), David Moncaster (Sunday School Superintendent), and Michael Collins. Another person who was present at the Induction Service and to become an asset to the church was William Kay, who had written to me asking advice as to how he could serve the Lord after he had graduated from Oxford. As he had come to Christ while he was at university and had had no real experience of life in a local church, I told him that this should be his first priority and made a few suggestions as to where he might go, adding as a PS that I was moving to Basingstoke and that he might like to come and help with the work there. Which he did, and within a few months a young schoolteacher, Anthea Bell, was to join our church and eventually become William’s wife and a great asset to the church. At the beginning of our time there, Eileen’s primary role, of course, was looking after Debbie and Sarah, who were still under school age, and then Jonathan who was born in October 1970. However, she was soon to find an outlet for her ministry when we started our church pre-school playgroup, but more of that later. Niggling doubts So overall there was much to encourage us during our first few months at Basingstoke, but we were missing Colchester and both Eileen and I were having doubts as to whether we had done the right thing in moving. Part of the reason for this was that when I had given up my teaching job we’d had real confirmation about it through the gifts of the Spirit, but we’d had no such confirmation about moving to Basingstoke. Could we have really missed the will of God on such an important matter? The answer came in a posthumously published article in Redemption Tidings written by Donald Gee. He was talking about how a church should choose a pastor (and, by implication, how a pastor should choose a church). He said that such matters should be determined by sound judgment and sanctified common sense, and not by the operation of spiritual gifts. And this came from the pen of a world-renowned Pentecostal leader and author of Concerning Spiritual Gifts. This was just the reassurance I needed, and I later came to realise that God’s will is not difficult. By definition, God wants his will, and if we really want it, he will ensure that we get it! We will prove his good and perfect and acceptable will if our lives are truly consecrated to his service (Romans 12:1-2). Church growth And, of course, one major aspect of God’s will is that he is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). In the years we were there, Basingstoke was the fastest growing town in England and there was a vast harvest field on our doorstep waiting to be reaped. We sought to do this in three main ways – personal evangelism, evangelistic missions, and children’s and youth work. Personal evangelism In those days the primary way of seeking to win others for Jesus was to invite people to church where they would hear the gospel. This was something we did every Sunday night in our Gospel Service, even if very often the only people there were already Christians. However, even if today it’s easy to criticise this style of evangelism, it did have the advantage of regularly reminding Christians of what the gospel is and the urgency of proclaiming it. But clearly the Gospel Service approach to evangelism would not be enough. Neither would a leaflet inviting people to our meetings, unless of course it contained a clear gospel message. Jesus did not command his disciples to go into all the world and invite people to gospel meetings. He commanded them, and he commands us, to go into all the world and preach. God’s people needed to be trained how to do so. While I was at Colchester I had completed a course on personal evangelism produced by Billy Richards and I had found this very helpful. So I decided that in our Wednesday night Bible Studies I would teach the people at Basingstoke the principles I had learned from this. We then embarked on a programme of door-to-door work, conducting a ‘religious opinion survey’, and found that most people were willing to share their views with us and for us to share the gospel with them. Admittedly, not many came to church as a result, but at least they had heard the gospel. Evangelistic Missions But our biggest attempt at reaching people with the gospel was in 1970 when we organised a fortnight’s evangelistic and healing mission conducted by evangelist Melvin Banks. I invited Melvin for two reasons. First, he was clearly gifted as an evangelist, and I had come to understand that my own gift was predominantly that of a teacher. And secondly, because remarkable results were being reported of hundreds being saved and healed through Melvin’s ministry, and I strongly believe that healing is one of the signs that God gives us to confirm the message of the gospel. In preparation for his coming, we spent months training the people for this big event, which was to be held in the Basingstoke Town Hall, not in our church, and got them ready for an intensive follow-up programme of personal visitation to the homes of those who made a decision for Christ. We printed thousands of leaflets which were designed by Melvin and which majored strongly on some of the many miracles he had seen in his ministry. Not surprisingly, on the very first night the Town Hall was packed. Melvin did not preach about healing. He preached salvation. And to my amazement, when he made the gospel appeal, 57 people raised their hand. And then he prayed for the sick. And miracles happened. It was the same every night throughout the fortnight, and by the end over 600 people had signed decision cards. I thought we were experiencing a real revival! But sadly, when our team of trained follow-up workers visited their homes, it became apparent that the vast majority had not really understood what they were doing. They had come to the meetings because they wanted to be healed and that was why they had raised their hands, even though, to be fair to the evangelist, the message he preached was not about healing, but salvation. Out of the 600 who had raised their hands, only 12 people were added to our church. Of course, we thanked God for the 12, and we had the satisfaction of knowing that the others had at least heard the gospel, but the sense of disappointment among our people was palpable. And I came to the conclusion that at least part of the problem was the advertising. People with a longstanding physical ailment will understandably try anything to relieve their suffering, and that’s what they have in mind throughout the meeting, even while the evangelist is preaching. They are prepared to do anything he tells them to, so when he tells them to raise their hand, they do, but it’s a mistake to assume that that means they are saved. And as I thought more about it I realised that Jesus and the apostles did not advertise their healings. Their healings were the advertising. So, somewhat disillusioned by this style of evangelism, it was six years before I decided to invite another evangelist for a series of meetings. I eventually asked my old pastor, Alfred Webb – who was really an evangelist rather than a pastor – if he would come and do a week’s teaching on personal evangelism followed by a week of meetings where he would preach the gospel. And this time I encouraged the people to pray for an outstanding miracle of healing that would take place before the evangelist came. And those prayers were answered in a rather dramatic way the Sunday after Easter. It was the evening service, and I was preaching about Thomas. He was the disciple who had been absent when Jesus, three days after he was crucified, appeared to his disciples on Easter Sunday. When the other disciples told Thomas that Jesus was alive, he simply refused to believe it. It was impossible! But a week later Jesus appeared to him too and showed him the wounds in his hands and feet. I remember saying something to the effect that the same Jesus whom Thomas had been able to see and touch was present with us right now even though we could not see him. After the sermon, as we sang a closing song, a middle-aged woman walked – I should say hobbled – to the front of the church. This was a complete surprise to me as she had never been to our church before and I had not invited people to come forward for prayer, as we sometimes do. Neither had I mentioned healing. So I went to her and asked: Can I help you? She responded by saying: If Jesus is present as you say he is can he heal me now? Immediately I knew that this was the miracle we had been praying for. He can and he does! I said. Be healed in the name of Jesus! And she RAN back down the aisle, instantaneously and completely healed. I found out later that her name was Ruby. She and her husband, John, both became Christians and members of our church. And when we produced the leaflets that would inform people about the visit of Alfred Webb, we told Ruby’s story and used it to point out that we all have a greater need than the healing of our bodies. What really matters is the healing of our souls, the forgiveness of our sins, which is available to all who will come to Jesus. While Alfred Webb was with us about 20 people made decisions for Christ and about 12 of them were added to the church – a far higher percentage than the 12 out of 600 people who had signed decisions cards in the Melvin Banks meetings.
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302 My Story Talk 15 Ministry at Colchester 1962-68 Part 3
04/22/2025
302 My Story Talk 15 Ministry at Colchester 1962-68 Part 3
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 . 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.
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301 My Story Talk 14 Ministry at Colchester 1962-68 Part 2
04/15/2025
301 My Story Talk 14 Ministry at Colchester 1962-68 Part 2
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 99th 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.
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300 My Story Talk 13 Ministry at Colchester 1962-68 Part 1
04/06/2025
300 My Story Talk 13 Ministry at Colchester 1962-68 Part 1
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.
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299 My Story Talk 12 Brasenose College Oxford Part 3
03/28/2025
299 My Story Talk 12 Brasenose College Oxford Part 3
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 2nd July, 1960, and eventually were married by Pastor Alfred Webb at Bethel Full Gospel Church, Vicarage Road, Dagenham, on 28th 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.
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