Great Bible Truths with Dr David Petts

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

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 l

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

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 f

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

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 principalsh

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.

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

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, bu

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

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 r

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 ac

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 prayin

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 reg

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

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, h

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 s

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

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 pro

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