Twenty-Five Years

On Sunday 1st of September, we celebrated our minister, Ben, being with us for twenty-five years. The following has been adapted from a weekly newsletter article that our minister, Ben, wrote for the day.

Twenty-five years ago we were preparing to leave my previous church in Westcott, Surrey. I’d been there for six years, the first being my ‘year-out’, which slipped and slipped… It seemed like we’d been there a long time and packed a lot of significant milestones into that time: my wife graduated, I passed my driving test, we got married, we moved into our first house, we started our first ‘proper’ jobs, and had our first child. I also went to Spurgeon’s Bible College to do my Diploma in Pastoral Studies, little did I know that I would be back there later to do a Masters and DMin with your encouragement.

It was soon after my graduation that I met with the Trustees for the Connexion to talk about ordination. One of the group that met me was the minister at Wormley. During these discussions he asked if I might be interested in coming to Wormley and working here alongside him. Not long after I came up to preach and soon we found ourselves on the church weekend away in Hemsby, and soon after moving to Wormley. God brought all sorts of things together for this to occur. We moved in on August 31st 1999 and my contracted start was the 1st September.

It quickly felt like we were home and part of the family (a growing family with second child being born in 2001). I can’t quite believe that 25 years have passed since then! In these years we have done and experienced so much together, and seen God at work in all sorts of ways (there isn’t space to list everything, but I think of dancing in the Millennium at the manse party, tent missions, On The Move, FUSION, concerts we’ve put on, Alpha courses, building projects, church plants, weddings, baptisms, funerals, many many assemblies, taking Paul Cookson around the schools, the foodbank, generations passing through Toddlers, facing Covid together and finding new ways to be and do church, and most significantly seeing God at work in people’s lives in gradual and dramatic ways).

Thank you for celebrating with me today and the generosity you have shown us over this time! It has been a privilege to be a part of this family and I can’t see what God has in store for us next…