Interview
5 mins 31 second read
My parents were sent out by Sudan United Mission (SUM) to Nigeria in 1958 as medical missionaries. They were there for 18 years, mostly in the north-east of Nigeria, not far from where Boko Haram are now centred. I was born in the Mission (now church) hospital and brought up in Nigeria until I was 11 years of age, spending six years at an international missionary boarding school. I finished my education in the London area, and then studied theology at the university in Aberdeen, where I met Lesley, and we got married in 1987.
We contacted three sending agencies, one of them being SUM, which had just become Action Partners, who accepted us to serve with the Church of Christ in Nigeria. Before going I was ordained within our sending church and became assistant pastor for two years before moving to Nigeria – where two of our three children were born. We then served at a missionary training institute in Ghana for one year until we were pulled out and returned to the UK. Ghana and Nigeria, two west African countries, very different in wonderfully different ways.
On our return, I was invited to rejoin the leadership team of Emmanuel Church in Fleetwood, where, for the next 19 years it was a real joy to serve as senior pastor. Then I took a year’s midlife-crisis-gap-year-sabbatical – a very positive stepping out – in which Lesley and I headed off to Cape Town in a Land Rover that I had spent some years restoring. It took us 13 months to get there and back. In all that time, not once did the Land Rover break down – and we didn’t have a single puncture in 40,000 miles!
It was a key time for us. We sensed quite strongly that we should not put out any feelers as to what might happen next, just being very open to what God might say; we just got into the Land Rover and set off. As we were travelling through Namibia we had an email out of the blue, from the previous director of the Mission, which was then called Pioneers UK, letting us know that he would be stepping down the following summer, and encouraging us to prayerfully consider applying for the role. And so we did – we talked and prayed, prayed and talked, between Namibia and Kenya, and came to the decision that, yes, I would apply. The board of Pioneers UK must have had nobody else applying, Chris, because they offered me the role! We arrived back in July 2018 and soon afterwards I started as Director of Pioneers UK.
Part of the answer is that I was born into the Mission if you like, as my parents had given 18 years to the Mission, and then Lesley and I were sent by the same Mission. So there was that sense that the Mission was family, was known to us. But I was really grabbed by Pioneers’ purpose statement to seek to plant the church of Jesus amongst unreached peoples and places across the world. One of Pioneers’ eight core values is partnership with the local church wherever possible. If it was not there I don’t think I would have applied. For me partnership with the local church, the sending church in the UK and Ireland, and also the receiving national, indigenous churches across the world is hugely important. In my opinion, the mission of God belongs first of all to the church not to the mission agency.
“I was really grabbed by Pioneers’ purpose statement to seek to plant the church of Jesus amongst unreached peoples and places across the world.”
As we know, since 1881 AWM-Pioneers – under various names over the years – has had an enduring, God-inspired passionate focus for reaching the people of the Arab world and Pioneers UK – under various names over the years – has had an enduring God-inspired passionate focus for reaching unreached peoples wherever they might be found, including the Arab world. I discovered to my huge enthusiasm and gratitude, that Karl Kumm, the founder of SUM in 1904, was a member of the North Africa Mission into the early 1900s, beginning his overseas service in the north of Egypt. So for me it’s wonderful that these two historic Missions founded under God have historic links to the peoples of the Arab world and to the African peoples as well. Through people, God has also woven connections going back more than 100 years. I have a real personal passion for the Arab world alongside the African world and I’m just looking forward to seeing both of these passions to mobilise and to see the church of Jesus planted in the Arab world, the African world, and across the world.
Phil Elam and I were operating as co-National Directors for some months until Phil sensed the Lord saying that it was now time for him to step out of his role, so it has changed. I really miss Phil, I miss his gifts, I miss his experience, but what it means is that there is now one National Director. I’m really crying out to the Lord for His equipping so that I will be able to lead a team that has been brought together from two different Missions, with integrity of heart as well as hopefully increasingly skilful hands. To see one integrated team, sharing the passion for reaching unreached people groups and planting the church amongst them, but also, with a bit of a wry smile on my face, relating to a newly formed board that has come equally from AWM-Pioneers and Pioneers UK backgrounds. They are all very good people and I look forward to many very interesting discussions ahead!
Lesley and I had always enjoyed jumping into our Land Rover, heading out and camping, often wild camping. To find a place where nobody else is in sight is delightful. Now we have a second-hand campervan, having sold the Land Rover, and so for me, just getting out onto the road and finding the places least travelled, and the more remote it is, anywhere in Europe, the happier I am! And if we can combine camping and travelling, with family and friends, that’s wonderful!
“I’m just looking forward to seeing both of these passions to mobilise and to see the church of Jesus planted in the Arab world, the African world, and across the world.”
My parents came to live with us at the end of last year. Lesley was their carer. My dad, David, passed to glory in February, but mum, Gwenyth, is still with us. A real privilege to live with them again and to share this time with them. Lesley’s parents are also getting older; so our prayer is just to love and to care for our parents. That’s an area for personal prayer, that would be absolutely wonderful.
With regard to the ministry, there is still a lot of stuff to work out practically, in terms of systems, different cultures, different personalities, different experiences, in seeing the two distinct teams who have already become one team. We are now a combined staff team of about 42, a mixture of full-time, part-time and volunteer staff. Whenever you have a group of people, like us, interacting together there will always be things to work our way through together.
Also pray that as senior leadership and staff teams, along with the board, we are able to discern prayerfully before God our trajectory, our strategic vision for the next ten years, still holding true to our historic objectives, purpose and passions.
