Leadership
For many years the Church at Broadmead Way has enjoyed the regular ministry of a variety of speakers on a generally monthly rota. As a ‘Faith-based’ Church this has always worked very well for us. However, both commercial and social organisations have increasingly expected to communicate with the ‘Leader’ of the Church and thus, some years ago, I was asked to accept that position.
In the early ’60s I trained as a teacher of Design & Technology and also qualified as a Methodist Local Preacher. These two strands have been my life’s work for the last sixty years. I explain how I moved up to the North East in an attached article: ‘The Stuff of Dreams’.
However, my Christian growth has developed over many years. My young parents originally met as Sunday School teachers and, as a ‘war baby’, they certainly brought me up within regular church attendance every week and I was well taught by a number of committed evangelical teachers and Church leaders. It used to be said that Methodism was Born in Song and even before my conversion, at the age of seventeen, I was always impressed by the sound theology of our classic hymns. It is only recently that I have realised just how much the Lord has been preparing me over all that time to serve in His Church.
Professionally, as a teacher, I was always ’at the head of the game’, preparing teachers for the coming advances in Technology, including bringing girls into the workshops (previously a ‘boys only’ domain). I introduced subtitling for the deaf, and became a leader of ‘Computer Education’ at a time when most teachers could not even use a typewriter! And thus my move to the North East. Alongside a very heavy responsibility as Director of Technology at Emmanuel College, Gateshead, I was also a member of the City Technology Colleges Trust, based in London, where we monitored the progress of all the Technology Colleges as established at the time of Margaret Thatcher.
My work at Broadmead Way (having retired from full-time teaching) has progressed steadily particularly over the last ten years and thus, a few years ago, I was asked to accept the rôle of ‘Leader’. Some call me 'Teacher' and others address me as 'Pastor'.
And here I must try and be brief: the Lord has endowed me with many different skills and experiences but above all, as a teacher of ‘Problem Solving’, and as a Christian, it seems obvious to me that if we identify a problem, we should make every effort to consider a variety of solutions and seriously commit to God-honouring outcomes. And thus, I believe that we should firstly make our church buildings welcoming, (my first university Thesis was entitled ‘Post war church design’).
I am convinced that we should communicate the Gospel in language that the ‘common’ people understand. We must not dilute the clear and solid teaching of the Scriptures but at the same time we should use every device to help modern generations understand the Christian message – and thus my regular use of video-projection. My long-valued love of hymn-singing persuades me to want to promote the very best of our musical heritage. My qualifications in Technology, in psycholinguistics, in teaching the deaf, In helping ESOL students or as a trained counsellor etc all persuade me to ‘get out there’ and go into all the world – even on our doorstep.