Funeral Rev Dr John B Hall

On Thursday I drove down to Woodbridge in Suffolk for the funeral of Rev Dr John B Hall. It was at St John's and was an Anglican service. As I expected, I knew almost no-one there but was thankful to bump into J P Earnest, who was ther in a similar capacity to me. He was there as John had been many years a trustee of the Open Air Mission. I was there representing the Evangelical Library, which John also was a trustee for. John began life in the navy but was then converted during a terrible storm and soon began as an Anglican minsiter. He served in several places and then in retirement served as a chaplain in expat congregations in Amsterdam, Dusseldorf anf Kiev. I was surprised to learn that John was dyslexic. That didn't stop him gaining an earned doctorate from America, later in life. J P kindly stood me lunch before we headed off our separate ways.

Midweek Meeting June 4 2025

There were nine of us last Wednesday and uniquely though we were so few there were at least five of us present who could have taken the meeting. I say that because in addtion to myself and my assistant Eddie, who have both led the meeting many times and four church member regulars, we also had three visitors. A friend of mine, a German pastor called Stefan Beyer, is staying with us this week and could easily have told us about his work in Jena and/or led a Bible study. Further there was the dynamic duo J P and Fiona Earnest from Bangor who had both been at nearby London Seminary that day - Fiona doing the Flourish course for women and J P lecturing to the seminary students on evangelisitc work. J P, field operation manager for the Open Air Mission, would happily have told us about their work. They are in London next week adn will be at the derby in Epsom this weekend. Fiona is the UK Deputation and Communications Officer for the Albanian Evangelical Mission and would have happily told us all about the current work in Albania (which has been off our radar for 20 years I am afraid). Anyway what they got was a Bible study from me on Romans 8:29, 30 and then we all took turns to pray about the various things on our hearts.

Carey Ministers Conference 2015 Day 1

It is good to be in Swanwick once again with familiar faces and some new ones. I drove up with my son and his family and a South African LTS student we know. There were three sessions on this first day and things were not quite as planned. We began with a paper on the Anabaptist leader Menno Simons by Ray Trainer. This was an excellent introduction to Simons who was a radical Baptist pioneer. Ray gently led us through the situation (explaining the difference between magisterial and radical reformers) Menno's life (in which he rejected transubstantiation, infant baptism and the violent end of Anabaptist thought and was constantly fleeing his persecutors with his wife and family) what he believed and taught (including a personal faith, the sufficiency of Scripture, orthodox Christology and the importance of the church as a community) and the relevance of all this (the importance of Christ and the local churches).

We then had a demanding session on the hermeneutics of Revelation from Greg Beale that argued for symbolism at the heart of the book in light of it OT allusions, denoting judgement and yet hope for a remnant.

After food, the women had their own track with Jane McNabb while we men listened to John Hawley stirring us up to give ourselves (especially ministers) to some form of open air work. It was all very striking, including slide of John talking to Richard Dawkins in the street in Oxford, which he told us all about.