Post by JEM on Feb 11, 2012 13:21:13 GMT
MISSION INTO ALL THE WORLD
SAFFRON WALDEN BAPTIST CHURCH
THE HISTORY OF OUR SUPPORT FOR MISSON
Since 1546 we have been partners before God with
St Mary’s C of E, [ The State Parish Church ]
Abbey Lane Church [ The Independent Church ]
The Society of Friends [ The Puritan Quakers ]
sometimes we have worked in cooperation and sometimes apart, but we still have historical links as one Church of Christ-Saffron Walden, and those 3 other partners with us have shared in mission by planting churches in neighbouring villages
as have the Methodists since they arrived later in the 1860’’s
Historically class has effected how the congregations operated
The Primitive Methodists Castle Hill and Hill Street General Baptists operated together in outreach to the humble poor, the working class labourers, artisans and farm workers. These too supported trade unionists and the early Co-op Society.
While the Abbey Lane Church, Castle Street Wesleyan Methodists and Upper Meeting Baptists, being largely middle class tradesmen, shopkeepers and farmers cooperated
and the Quakers helped both groups
From the 1780’s our Church was engaged in church planting first at Ashdon, and then at Thaxted, and Langley, and Great Chesterford in the 1840’s
At Ashdon after 20 years of open air witness, house to house visiting and cottage prayer meetings our minister, Matthew Walker 1786-1809 became first minister of the newly formed Baptist Church. They later established a church plant at Radwinter which in the 20th century we sustained by sending our lay preachers there,
At Thaxted there had been an earlier General Baptist Church of over 200 members but that had faded away without trace as many other General Baptist churches did, but members of our church with our minister encouraged about some believers there to set up a new Baptist Church with a building in a potato field- now Park Street .
At Langley people who rode or walked into Walden to worship at our church set up their own in the village and our minister introduced to them their first pastor who was the father from Ipswich of a young man who went from our Church into the ministry, later to become President of the BU - James Webb,
At Great Chesterford in the 1840’s the Wakefield family started a Congregational Church which still continues and 5 members of that family living there were members of our church and were amongst our chapel trustees.
At Great Sampford the church began locally but was greatly helped over several decades by Peter Cowell from our church.
Josaih Wilkinson also encouraged the Independent congregations at Newport and Balsham.
Part of Mission includes training leaders and from our Church have been set apart to be ministers and missionaries a number of men and women..
Josiah Wilkinson our 3rd minister arrived here a bachelor aged 23 in 1809 and had just this one pastorate and died in 1848 . He trained lay preachers for the Essex Baptist Union and Josiah prepared a number of young men from our congregation for entry into Stepney Academy, now Regents Park Baptist College Oxford and other colleges to train as ministers..
Details of those who were set apart for such ministry are on this board under another article.
Ecumenical Cooperation
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From the early 19th century the local churches worked together as well as apart, and in 1812 the C of E, Abbey Lane, High Street and Hill Street Baptists, and the Quakers United to form a local district branch of the Bible Society and establish branches of it at Dunmow and Stansted. Our Baptist Minister along with the Vicar were joint-secretaries, under the chairmanship of the Lord of the Manor of Audley End. Later ministers to serve at secretaries were Audley Gillson, Alfred Rollason and John Young
After that all the congregations shared in support of the Bible Depot dispensing Bibles, Testaments, Gospels and portions.
In the period 1829 - 43 we supported locally the Religious Tract Society Auxillary, which in it’s first year distributed locally 5000 tracts, and lent out 200 volumes of Christian books. The tracts included titles such as “Daily Food”, “The Dairyman’s Daughter”, “Early Piety”, “Young Cottager”, “Divine Cordial”, “Daily Expositor” and “ Soul’s Conflict”., some of which appear to be books, booklets or magazines rather that leaflets as we think a tract to be today. One of their regular Visitors visited 100 families a week in the yards and alleys of old Walden Bearing in mind the degree of illiteracy, at this time the circulation was considerable; but Visitors would also witness personally, and read things to people.
As Sunday School and Day School education for the masses developed, more children were able to read for themselves and to their parents.
In 1832 some 250 tracts [ which may gave included books and booklets ] were distributed at Audley End Fair.
These churches from 1820 set up the Town Mission and appointed a Missioner to reach out to the 60% of the population that seldom or never attended church. He visited all the slum areas of town dispensing tracts to those able to read, reading the scriptures, caring for the poor and reporting back regularly to a committee that dispensed funds to help the poor. One of these missioners was Peter Johnson a member of our church. As was Mr Whatley leader of the Wimbish Mission Chapel .
Out of the work of the Walden Town Mission Missioner developed Sewards End Baptist Mission of which we had oversight from 1863 - 1963 though it had it’s own committee from 1946-1963. The original wooden mission, now 2 garages, was replaced with a purpose built Mission Hall in 1938. It is now part of a house.
See elsewhere on this Web Board site the Sewards End Mission Story.
John Player, who for a time about 1790 had been a scholar of a school run by our Baptist minister and had later served in London as a civil servant to the Fleet organizing it’s provisions, retired to Walden and joined Abbey Lane Church about 1830
He led a group of Christians on a survey of all the homes in Walden and nearby villages to determine who in every home could read, and which ones had got Bibles or not.
From that survey where there were homes where no one could read children were taught to read and every home that had not go a Bible was given one.
In 1836 John Player became Mayor and 6 others of his helpers became councilors and out of that 3 schools in Walden and several village schools were established and the Teacher Training College in South Road set up.
Those 3 Walden schools, for boys, girls and infants are now
R A Butler Schools. But remember that John Player was first influenced to becoming a Christian by our minister at a school in the gallery of our church,
By 1876 it was reported at the Bible society Meeting that since 1812, 27,000 copies of th scriptures had been Distributed in Saffron Walden and the villages around it.
Later in the 19th century our church with Abbey Lane established with missioners, Union Mission Chapels at Wimbish and Debden. Now both houses
In the late 19th century our Church, Abbey Lane, the Methodists, and all our church plants, became members of the Bishop’s Stortford and District Free Church Council which stretched from Sawston to Epping and Ware to Dunmow.
After the 1st World War into the 1990s these Walden Free churches and church plants, formed the Saffron Walden and District Free Church Council which later merged with the Council of Churches into Churches Together in Saffron Walden. Just as the Methodists and Congregationalists had their own local circuits, we were part of the North West Baptist Church Fellowship into the 1970’s with the Stortford and Harlow Churches.
As Baptists we have certain responsibilities in which those who are not Baptists are unlikely to support us
In the 18th and 19th centuries we worked in partnership with St Andrews Street Baptist Church, Cambridge, and with the Cogwheel Trust based there in the 20th century.
We also helped establish Potter Street Baptist Church Harlow both with people and money when the New town was built in the 1950’s. Eric Swan served some year assisting the Boys Brigade at Bishop’s Stortford Methodist Church.
Through the BMS WORLD MISSION We have supported since 1806 through a series of missionary secretaries
Our first pastor Joseph Gwennap personally was a supporter of the new Baptist Missionary Society founded in 1793 whose Treasurer was Andrew Fuller, who is part of the East Anglian network of the Fuller family, as was our Founderess Elizabeth Fuller.
But it was our second pastor Matthew walker who first developed interest here in the work of the BMS. Our third pastor Josiah Wilkinson really got behind this. When Josiah was 26 and in his third year at Walden, news arrived of the disastrous fire at the Mission Press at Serampore in India, and like many of his colleagues Josiah rallied his people in support and the offering raised £25 pound-0 shillings and 9 pence, which in today’s value would be £1350, to help William Carey to rebuild.
By 1820 regular annual collections were in operation and Josiah was soliciting donations from local Quaker ,and Free Church friends especially for education and translations purposes. The Golden Jubilee of the BMS was celebrated here in 1843. When William Carey’s nephew Eustace Carey came to speak here That year they raised here £60 that year [ about £6000 in today’s values ] including the sale of jubilee medals . As the treasurer added up the figures wrong by £1 when we checked that in 1975 we sent them the difference, but not the interest.
During the period 1874 - 1881 our BMS Gifts averaged £28, a year. [ £1020 today and today we give about £5200 ] This may have been an annual collection on a particular Sunday. In those days the weekly offering was £2 a week. Gifts were also made at this time for mission work in Essex, France and Ireland.
In 1884 our first Missionary Council was formed [ The Mission Committee ] with Miss Starling as Secretary and Mr A Viney as Treasurer. He went eventually to live in Johannesburg in South Africa on account of his banking business activities. He maintained a link with Saffron Walden as witnessed by the Viney Prize awarded in Edwardian times in the Sunday School for those with perfect attendances which he funded.
In October 1890 Cottage prayer meetings were arranged and some members addressed them on missionary themes while other members spent time in tract distribution in the locality From about 1904 the Sunday school were supporting a boy apprentice in the printing trade in the Congo then a Belgium colony. [ now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and formerly Zaire ]
Miss Starling was replaced as Mission Secretary by the Rev John Sage who after 40 years in the Baptist Ministry, the last few years at Ashdon, had retired to Walden and become a Deacon.
In 1906 our Church was supporting Pastor Saillou’s Mission in France.
Robert Winter Catt , the local Prudential Assurance Agent took over from Rev Sage. Robert who was Superintendent of Sewards End Mission and Church Treasurer, in 1914 became th last Pastor of the Hill street Baptist Church,
Robert was replaced by Henry Hart, and he by Miss Trew, and she by Mrs J Cowell who lived at Roos Farm which brings us into the 1930’s
During the 1920’s and 1930’s children in the Sunday school and the Senior Christian Endeavour [ teenagers upwards ] use to perform concerts , shows, plays, and demonstrations to raise money for the BMS.
In 1942 in preparation of celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the BMS Mrs Ethel Saville created the Carey Cloth, embroidering on a table cloth the initials and surnames of the Minister, Church Secretary, Church Treasurer, Organist, Deacons and as many Members of the Church and Congregation as were willing to part with one shilling. In all 189 subscribers Mrs Thirza Gray the first wife of the Minister collected the money which went towards the Church’s 150 guineas target for the Special Appeal Fund, and this was in the middle of World War Two.
Ethel herself was well committed to mission and service walking out to Sewards End many Sundays to play the harmonium and teach the children there, and later she played for weddings, and funerals and other social events; along with services in Sheltered Homes and Residential Homes, and accompanied the team that took leadership of services at the Hospital. Ethel was also a committed serving member and vice president of our weekly Women’s Own and her sister Hilda was wife to the Church Treasurer Ernest Newton manager of the local PO Sorting Office, and they moved to Kirby Cross , on the coast north of Clacton where they started the Baptist Fellowship in their bungalow.
Ethel and Sam her husband ran a shop in town and retired to a house at 15 Gibson Gardens, which after his death Ethel bequeathed upon her death to the Retired Baptist Ministers Housing Society and so became the home of Rev John and Mrs Elaine Webb for many years and continued to be used for hospitality, and where prior to 1997 the visiting Salvation Army cadets from their training college in London lodged when here to conduct their annual door to door collection of the town assisted by young people from the Churches, ours included. Later the monthly meetings of the Men’s Discussion Group met there.
Now it is the home of Rev. Tony and Jean Mason who are heading up new Mission support activities.
During the war years Miss Edith Cornell. A clerk at Adams’s and Land, the Church’s solicitors, served faithfully as Missionary Secretary. Annual deputation visits by missionaries became our tradition.
A regular girls sewing group, and rummage sales helped raise funds for the BMS. The offerings of the Sunday Afternoon Sunday School used to raise between £30 and £50 for BMS, and the children taught to support mission.
We used to enjoy the visits of Dr Nancy Bywaters or her mother, both of whom had served in China, and live locally.
The indomitable Miss Nellie Marsh, one of the teachers, a spinster who had lost her sweet heart during the First World War and could love no one else as much, gave her life to teaching children and encouraging mission support amongst them and served as Sunday School Mission Treasurer. She circulated a quarterly leaflet from the BMS each copy in black ink on shaded paper with a “black and white “ illustration, using to the full the limited resources depicted a person in the national dress of each particular country and told us about that country and the work of our missionaries there. Later we were introduced to the BMS Magazines for children and teenagers, “Wonderlands” & “Quest”.
In 1950 Miss Heather Reed, also a solicitors clerk, of the same firm at 15 became Church Missionary Secretary for the next 15 years. Under her leadership a Girls Auxillary of the BMS met weekly from 1952 to the early 1960’s. This group helped in various fund raising activities and serving churches across the district. They also save “3d off next purchase” labels from soap packets for the BMS. This probably enabled someone to get soap free for sending to missionaries.
In the 1953 coronation Carnival Procession the Church entered a Missionary Theme Float as this coincided with the 160th anniversary of the BMS. Chris Wiseman represented William Carey. Later carnival float had similar themes except the one John Maddams organised one year with the help of Doris and Alfred Coston which depicted Christians in various trades and professions emphasising the diversity of skills God needs in the work of His kingdom. Associated with this some of the Young People Fellowship gave out tracts amongst the crowds.
Things changed sharply in the Sunday school in 1958 when the Church Organist, local Baker and Pastry cook, Elias Anthony resigned from years of service as Sunday School Secretary. Then we discovered that the Sunday school was bankrupt, and he had been funding it personally for years. Now the children’s offering had to be used to fund the Sunday school for another decade before the Church accepted responsibility for paying. At first we gave a couple of pound a month to BMS and depicted our progress on a picture chart. During the period 1958 to 1965 little was done to foster the BMS in the school.
In 1961 Heather formed a Missionary Council with the aim of linking up with other parts of the Church family - and so there were representatives of the Deacons, the Women’s Own and the Scouts but these all came from the same family, Arthur, Ivy and Richard Coote, with John Maddams representing the Sunday School in the role of Sunday Bible Club leader for the older children. In the late 1950’s we collected jam jars and stored them in the Church Cycle Shed to be picked up by the Robertson’s Jam Company who paid so much for them and this money went to the Baptist Union Home Work Fund, later renamed Baptist Home Mission. Started before the War people had been encouraged to give 6d a month and Mrs Daisy Turnbull, mother of Jack, Angus and Mary, was Home Work Fund Secretary for many years until Deacon Aubrey Copping the Borough Council Rating Officer took it on.
For two years 1954 - 1956 John Maddams, who had come to the Church first to be dedicated aged about 6 months in 1939 by his ex- Sunday School teacher, choir member Mum, Alice, and had been in the Sunday School since he was 5, and supporting mission since he was 9, began at the age of 15 the Charity Collecting Centre at his family’s home at 15 Pleasant Valley.
This early recycling agency collected for sale in aid of charities, metals, metal foil, used stamps, old and foreign coins, newspapers, rags, and collected comics and magazines for the local hospital for patients to read. He also ran a petition to stop the deliberate spreading of myxmatosis amongst rabbits to cull them.
Following his conversion to Jesus Christ in September 1954, John began a Scripture Union branch amongst his cousins’ children. In 1955 that was moved to the Baptist Sunday school where John was an assistant teacher. Out of this developed in 1956 the Ministry of religious Propaganda and Evangelical Journalism, later renamed the Ministry of Christian Literature which in 1958 began sending Christian literature overseas, in conjunction with the Missionaries Literature Association of the Baptist Men’s Movement.
Later still when they were also sending film-strips, cassettes and videos it was renamed Ministry of Christian Communication and from AD2000 has been known as Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] and up to 2011 has reached out to over 55,000 people. Of whom 20,600 have been outside the UK scattered across over 170 countries.
Through this ministry inspired by God the Holy Spirit , in which he was associated by other young people of our Church and the Methodist Church many copies of “Bible speaks to Britain”
“Sunday Companion and “Christian Herald “ were delivered to the residents of the Almshouses. Hatherley , and the Hospitals but from 1958 many magazines were sent overseas. Some in parcels as with tracts, scriptures and books. Some regularly to specific Christian workers.
Many addresses changed hands. In one way and another contacts were established in 114 countries from Denmark to Canada, the Falkland Islands. Bolivia, Ceylon [ Sri Lanka ]. Especially there with Stephen Welagedera and Matale Baptist Church, and with South Africa, Zaire, Nigeria and France. Co-ordination of suppliers in the USA, Australia. Canada, India and the UK with distributors elsewhere helped distribute much. The bulk of this work was then handed over to others better able to conduct and finance it but the work continued on in new ways. Many members of the congregation had helped with this work.
In 1965 Heather Reed resigned after 15 years service and John Maddams was invited to take on the role in the light of his overseas work with the Ministry of Christian Literature. He accepted on condition that the Church appointed a representative Missionary Council to link all church organisations in support of mission and this was established in May 1965.
Historically we have missioned and may mission
Through our own group, family, congregation and community, to partners, children, relatives, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, enemies.
Through our Sunday Club, Youth work, BB, Lunch Club,
Songs of Praise Services, use of premises for the community [ eg MIND ] and the ministry of every member.
Also from our Church, the Youth Hostel [ recently closed ] began, the Day Centre was formed, [ on our premises at first] and Hill House became flats we had members serving on it’s original committee and did a lot of fund raising for it.
As Partners in Churches Together helping other churches in their projects, and supporting
5th Saffron Walden Free Church Scouts, .VBS, SWAT, Common Ground Youth outreach, The Salvation Army, Boys Brigade, Girls Brigade, SWYPE Youth club,
Through the Eastern Baptist Association including it’s Church of the Year Appeal and Essex Baptist Prayer Fellowship
Through the Baptist Union of GBNI
BU Home Mission
West Ham Central Mission
Spurgeon’s Homes now Spurgeon's Child care
The Baptist Colleges
Retired Baptist Retirement Homes Association
----The Baptist Bungalows and 15 Gibson Gardens
The BU Corporation Building Fund
Through Baptist Men’s Movement initiatives
Mission Literature Association sending magazines to missionaries
Operation Agri, providing seeds, rabbits, equipment, chicks, microscopes
Tools with a Mission, several times we have collected tools
BMM Housing Association through which Hill House Saffron Walden was made into 17 flats . The BMM HA was later sold to the English Churches Housing Association.
Through the European Baptist Federation
Around 1905 assisting the Southern Ireland Mission and Baptist Mission in France
or through the support of Bert Clark from our Sewards End Mission who went to serve in 1946 in the ruins of Berlin in Germany with the Salvation Army and sent German New Testaments
or supporting Eurolit in the 1970’s providing mini-libraries to pastors in Eastern Europe
or supporting Ian Jones teaching in Poland
or our twinning with
Bromma BC in Sweden in 1974
Recklinghausen BC, in Germany in the 1980’s ,
Dobrich BC in Bulgaria, in the 1990’s
Through the Baptist World Alliance and BWA Relief Fund.
We have sent delegates to congresses and we have also funded people from other countries to attend.
Through the BMS WORLD MISSION
We have supported since 1806 through a series of missionary secretaries
In 1965 we set up Missionary Council. Later called the Missionary Committee that operated to 1997 which helped us to increase income and raise new funds for particular projects and support our missionaries, or former members of our church serving as missionaries from our church in China, India, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Brazil, Congo, and Ethiopia.
The committee also established Home Mission Sunday, College Sunday, Bible Sunday, and used harvest to raise money for Operation Agri. ,
The Committee also encouraged support for The Handmaiden missions that helped the BMS
The Bible Society, Scripture Gift Mission, The Leprosy Mission,
The Christian Optical Service, collecting spectacles for recycling
Mission Aviation Fellowship. TEAR Fund. and the Hospital Equipment Enterprise
Eventually the Church agreed to the principle of giving an agreed percentage of General Fund income in equal amounts to BU Home Mission and BMS World Mission. (now about £5000 each)
The Committee also helped organise Wants Boxes of clothing, knitted goods, exercise books, pens, drawing materials, bandages, packet soups, safety pins, etc to send to specific missionaries.
For about 20 years we have operated a Missionary Prayer Group At First at Little Walden supporting work in Congo and later at Doug and Betty Thorton’s praying for our Link missionaries and those who went out from our church. And we currently meet from 10am - 11am or longer, on the 1st Monday in the month at Doug and Betty’s home to support MECO in Iraq, ARAB VISION, our BMS Link missionaries in Thailand, Sisters of Cambodia, and other needs raised on the BMS Web site or from Lighthouse Ministry [ MCCPF ] and our TEAM last year to Brazil and the fund raising for that and before that for Andrew Heinrich’s trek for Action Aid in Africa, 2 projects our church got behind and we will be praying for Denise Vincent’s Sponsored trek in China..
We have supported mission since 1965 through our Annual Christmas Charity providing help for about 120 missions and charities including some new local charities.
In 1980 we helped reorganise the local Bible Society Committee with5 of the office held by Baptists.
We have helped market Traid Craft and Fair Trade products
Over the years we have helped fund raise, or donated from Church funds, or recruit subscribers for
Stort Valley Schools Trust at one stage for several years we were giving £700 - £800 for this
Stort Valley Friends of Gideons.
Christian Aid though supporting Christian Aid Week, Hunger lunches and other ways
International Help to Refugee Children including receive children from abroad on holidays
Mercy Ships
Operation Mobilisation
EURO Evangelism
Action Aid for Africa including supporting Andrew Heinrich’s Massai Trek
Sponsorships by members of our congregation.
Christian Solidarity
Open Doors Mission
Torch Trust for the Blind
Christian Witness to Israel
Fellowship of Faith for Moslems
The Barnabas Fund.
Afar Aid
Afrinspire including tree planting working in Uganda etc
SU / CSSM
YWAM
Christian Enquiry Agency
Mike Turner has organised several collections of clothing for Whitechapel Mission and before he came we did so through the Council of Churches.
Boys Brigade have raised a lot of money as part of their Awards Scheme and at Camp with an Annual Camp Appeal for many overseas projects.
We have encouraged people to give second hand books and Bibles to BOOK AID
and held a Book Fair to provide books for overseas via the Ranfurley Library Scheme.
We have collected food for the Salvation Army Food Bank and Books and Toys for deprived children at Christmas.
And with other churches and schools in the town supported the Samaritans Purse - shoe boxes collections.
Some have helped provide holidays for children from Belorus
Some of our congregation have served as volunteers working for OXFAM SHOPS
Our former Women’s Own 1938 - 1997 used to knit garments and blanket squares for BMS Missionaries to use and for Wendy Spark to take to Ethiopia.
In 2002 3 members ran a Christian Presence on the Common at Car Boot Sales dispensing on request freely Christian books, Bibles, Testaments, Gospels, magazines, cassettes, videos and conversing with people .
Malcolm Brown led a VBS visit to Bulgaria
For some years we have through Glenys Goodwin been collecting postcards to send to her sister Heather Yule and her husband David a former officer of our BB for MAF who sell them to collectors to provide fuel for their aircraft
Members of our Small Groups some years ago were given from Church funds £100 per group for new mission initiatives some locally and some abroad.
Part of our Church’s mission was to provide NT’s for boys in BB in 1983 and since to provide GNB Bibles for children in Sunday Club.
In recent years some members of the congregation have helped Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] projects
including through Christian Resource Ministries via Scotland to Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya, South Africa and India.
Including
1.new local language Bibles presented to 15 pastors in Northern Mozambique each with congregations of 25 - 40 with no hope of buying Bibles in an area being resettled after the Civil War.
2.100 Bibles to replace those lost in a tropical storm that battered many villages destroying homes.
3.Bibles for Malawian pastors gathered together for a 2 week intensive training course
4.Bibles given to a Church in Kenya
5 Bible given to orphans at the hostel / school for which we have also provided pictures, and maps, and £500 worth of storm damage repairs.
They wish to give a Bible to each Junior, and with limited means to do so, as they go on to Secondary school
This year to supply 16 would cost £120 and they have another 46 children to provide for at £7.50 per copy.
Some members of the Victoria Avenue / Goddard Way group have assisted in the setting up of a new church 5 years ago in a village called Mangoase near a Port called Bawjaise on the Gold coast area of Ghana with 100 people living in a few huts and nothing else no water supply, no shop, no market, no postal service.
One young man from there was at college with Robbie Amusu who Lighthouse Prayer Ministry has been in touch with for several years a young businessman and lay evangelist
The 2 of them visited the village in at Christmas 2004 and prayed and planned a week mission for the following Easter 2005 using a team of students from Winneba University who held open air gatherings and house to house visiting and they had to take in a lorry load of bottled water as there is no mains supply
That year some of us put up money for the team based at a house at Bawjaise to buy land at Mangoase to set up a farm which enables the pastor there now to be largely self supporting and share with poorer neighbours
We also funded the materials for a bore hole to be dug by local labourers.
At Christmas 2005 we helped fund another mission at which there were 31 converts, for one of whom was cripple we provided a wheel chair
This group constructed their own place of worship, a wooden shelter with a thatched roof
At Easter 2006 the converts were baptised and for 2007 a young man Fred Anim new out of Bible College at Kumasi came as pastor for a year most of which time he was ill
We helped pay his stipend and an experienced member of the team Francis Mensah who managed the farm became Lay Pastor from 2008 - 2011 and then went as a missionary to Seirra Leone.
The congregation has now grown to over 80 and in 2011 the number of pillars were increased and God enabled us at Saffron Walden to supply them an oil fired generator and some 30 new hymnals
Some second hand ones, 80, we sent by sea in February-March 2011, finally reached the people they were intended for, in July 2012 having been stored in a post office as they did not know who to give them to, after Francis Mensah moved. The Church has now been taken into care of the Disciples of Christ Church at Bawjaise.
Robert made several journeys by motorbike in 2011 and led at Easter a team in a weeks mission then at Bawjaise Market though it was a bit washed out by a lot of rain. Due to all his exertions Robbie now aged 32, was taken ill and had to return to his home village in the Volta area for nearly a year but is in circulation again. He has been used to introduce the Bible personally to several top Executives to Companies in Ghana..
Further Bible Distribution.
In 2008 we supplied 27 second hand GNB and NIV Bibles to a Christian Community on an Island on Lake Mweru in Northern Zambia including some from a UK School that was replacing them with another version. In 2011 another 14 were supplied.
In Jan 2010 some of us with other people locally gave second hand and unused university text books and manuals to a collection sent by Book Aid to two Zimbabwean Universities
In Sept 2010 we had a request from a Nigerian student group at Ibadan University for 160 Bibles. We could not send them but sent copies of SOON and VIA through which individual students could access Bible study courses [ with the text] and free New Testament. We heard no more
In January 2011 we had requests for 360 Bibles from Nigeria who had accessed our web site
162 for a student group at Ibadan University to use in evangelism a different address.
200 for Faith Baptist Church Ibadan who claimed they could get them from a local bookshop at £1 each if we send £200. We prayed the LORD to supply a cheque for £220 to send them £200 and pay the fee. He provided what was needed .
We were later enabled to send to another Church, a Pentecostal Church, and since then supplied 240 to another group, Glory Baptist Church . During 2012, we sent further Bibles to Nigeria making 1,400 in all. Plus 10 to Malawi, 3 to replace Bibles lost by pastors in floods this year and to 1 whose house burnt down and to 6 pastors in Northern Malawi who had no Bible at all These 10 were local language editions. We have also supplied 58 to Zambia in the Bemba language for use on the island on Lake Mweru, and they need 300 English Bibles there now and we have funding for 72 of them. They cost £5 each.
We sent arranged with WEC and they afreed to send copies of SOON to all these contacts . The needs go on. More Christians but all so poor the cannot afford to buy Bibles
Through the Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] since 1954 various members of the church and congregation and our youth organisations have
Posted Gospels to specific receivers to distribute in Czechoslovakia and Cuba for the OPEN DOORS MINISTRY
Posted outreach material in French to France for France Evangelistic Mission.
Posted pioneer outreach material to Turkey for Friends of Turkey which over the years led thousands to take up Bible study courses and led to the formation of several churches.,
Some of us have sent regularly SOON and BIENTOT quarterly evangelistic papers to people in various African countries who have requested them,
Three Members of the congregation have marked Bible Study course papers arising from that
One member used to transcribe books in Large Hand Print for the Torch Trust for the Blind Library.
In the 1980’s outreach material was sent to 5000 young people in over 100 countries age 8 - 18 who were members of the LOOK AND LEARN PEN PAL CLUB. Since them we have made many contacts using 4 overseas Pen pal agencies, [ of which worldwide there are over 500]
Cassette recordings of our services have been send to various people around the English speaking world
Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] has in the past 2 years provided 6 cassette / CD players for use by trained teams in remote parts of 6 countries in front line pioneer evangelism.
Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] by God’s enabling since 1954 has reached over 62,000 people, including over 22,400 overseas, across over 170 countries, using over 286,000 items of resources, and apart from running costs dispensed over £45,000 in small grants through a number of small team projects and a small group of people and since 2003 has distributed outreach literature to around 17,000 homes in the town and 44 villages in and around Uttlesford District linked to our own and several other websites,
To God be the glory for enabling this. We pray that the Lord the Holy Spirit has thus been able yo minister to people not otherwise reached, as our web side seems to suggest. We hope to continue this in 2012.as the Lord enables. .
In 2011 the Lord enabled us through new friends and appeals through the Bulletin of the Project 31:8.Group set up by Tony and Jean Mason and other friends to fund the freight and transport costs from Ipswich in Suffolk England to Nchelenge in Northern Zambia of a large consignment of training equipment from Tool With A Mission to enable the community there to set up a Community Vocational Training Centre staffed by volunteers led by Pastor Chanda Jackson who is a Church Elder and an evangelist who God has used greatly in 2011 and earlier on the island on Lake Mweru in leading hundreds to Christ. We are also by the help of various friends to fund the education there of 10 Aids Orphans.
God gave the BMS a millionaire in the 19th century, at least a very rich man, that enabled BMS Congo mission to build a string of mission stations along the River Congo that became the bases through which hundreds of thousands of people became Christians and many were healed at a hospital and a string of clinics, and educated at a string of schools.
GOD CAN DO IT WHEN HE WANTS TO AND WHEN HE IS ASKED
indeed he has brought into our congregation in recent years some people with high bracket jobs and incomes who are using their wealth for His work here and from here.
Simon Mattholie does not think we should send second hand resources abroad Well I don’t share that view because I know from 50 years experience how useful second hand material has been but there are opportunities out there for new ministries and churches who need new resources
Bibles and Hymnals especially, to meet this need will take hundreds and thousands of pounds, and we as a Church with a falling income cannot do anything. Maybe we can’t but we know a person who can
Jesus Christ can change the impossibility into possibility if we ask
Simon Mattholie himself in 2011 left Walden to become Director of Rural Ministries serving some 60 churches across UK to engage in more Church planting.
WHY SHOULD WE ENGAGE IN MISSION ?
FIRSTLY A BIBLICAL FOUNDATION FOR MISSION
Our authority comes from the Bible as the Word of God
1.The Manifesto of Jesus Christ Luke 4 v 18 - 19
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and provide recovery of sight for the blind,
He has sent me to release the oppressed, [ the persecuted ]
He has sent me to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour “
2.Christ’s Promise and Warning in Acts 1 verse 8
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea [ Southern Israel] and Samaria, [ the Northern Tribes ] and to the ends of the Earth."
Jerusalem your home town, Saffron Walden or your village
Judea your country, England or the UK
Samaria, your neighbouring country or enemies, Ireland, France and Germany, or simply Europe as UK has fought most of Europe and evangelized it over the centuries.
and the uttermost parts of the world.
and Jesus implied that we would be witnesses for Him whether we chose to or not, for good or ill and the world would judge Him according to how we behaved.
,
3. The Great Commission MATTHEW 28 v 18-20
18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
and MARK 16 v 15 He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned
4 The Testimony of St Paul in 1 Corinthians 9 v 19 - 24, Paul writes
19Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.
20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.
To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.
21To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law.
22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak.
I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some
So that is the limit of our mission by all things to all men by all possible means to save some.
So there may be no limit to what we may do in mission that some may be saved,
Galatians 6 verse 10 As we have therefore opportunity let us do good unto all men, especially to those who are of the household of faith.
In September 2011 we hosted an exhibition “MISSION CONTINUED” of Baptist life and witness in Saffron Walden over 300 years 1711 – 2011 visited by over 120 adults and over 100 school children when we displayed many documents and artifacts and around 2000 of our large photo collection over 28 stands including the first one focused on the development of the English Bible from the OT Hebrew Bible to the text edition of the Standard English Version published in 2007. A lot of Brochures were handed out and the Saffron Walden Historical Society published a 5 page article under the same title as the Exhibition.
Since writing this the Church has set up Saffron Walden Besom Group to help people in need in practical ways locally, and through Lighthouse Ministry help including clothing was sent to orphans in Ethiopia and more Bibles to prisoners in Zambia.
We have established through the Project Group support, on-line and by other means for Open Doors Ministry and Christian Solidarity Worldwide for prisoners and persecuted Christians and plan another regular prayer meeting for this work.
The Church established in 2011 - 2012 a working team to redecorate the church premises using offenders doing community service work. Some 12 were involved and some said they wished they had been given longer sentences as they had never experienced the hospitality the Church has shown them with free meals and personal friendship.
Terry Burgess has now been appointed to serve as Church Mission Secretary
Our Youth Pastor has resigned to take up full time work evangelism in small groups in several secondary schools in the district with the Stort Valley Schools Trust,
One young student member of the congregation has been working as part of a support team in the UK raising money to help establish a mobile dental and medical unit in Uganda, and another daughter of one of our members is pioneering work in the North of England reaching the immigrant community.
At Christmas we raised over £700 to he[p provide new children's play equipment at nearby Carver Barracks where there are about 280 soldiers families living on base and some of the Mum's have organised a project to provide a play park, cost £100,000 .
At Christmas too we raised over £1000 for the Whitechapel Methodist Mission at our Carol service
The Congregation including the BB Juniors put together for the Samaritan Purse Christmas Child project over 170 shoe boxes of good things, toys, books, writing materials as part of a town wide project including other churches schools and youth groups organised by our Tracy Todman
Peter and Dawn Wagstaff have organised events to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis Research with Peter doing sponsored swims of the English Channel and Denise Vincent did a walk along some of the Great Wall in China to raise sponsorship money for MacMillan Cancer Care Nurses.
We have our Church Website www.sw-bc.org with downloads of some of the sermons on it, and the Church has a Facebook Page, and quite a lot of our folk of all ages communicate on Facebook, or by Twitter, or by Text - all means of mission in the course of our every day life.
There are probably too, much else being done by members of our Church Congregation that I don't know about.
The Church is seeking a new Minister to lead us in our ongoing mission.
So Mission continues, Where next LORD ?
?
What READER are you doing to engage in Mission?
What more is the LORD calling you to do ?
One series of sermons we will have in 2012 will be following the Christianity Explored Course . We are encouraged to find out more about it on www.christianityexplored.org
PS January 2019 In the past few years LHPM extended the distribution of VIA Magazine to having reached every Parish in Uttlesford once, and new homes as they become occupied and in all the villages on both roads from Walden to Trumpington, to Horseheath, Linton, parts of Haverhill, about 10 other localities outside our district. We have supplied a total since 2011 of 15,156 Bibles to Nigeria, with 300 more requested, and provided the mission in Malawi with a new Canoe, a new 2 man tent, a new Projector and a new screen, and 17 bikes for pastors and a new solar powered CD Player to Global Recordings Network UK for use in remote places each year for 12 years and equipment to Saffron Walden Street Pastors and a new coffee machine for The Garden Room Day Centre Saffron Walden, .
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access:- www.rejesus.co.uk
Don’t be afraid you are deeply loved by God. Be at peace. Take heart and be strong”
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SAFFRON WALDEN BAPTIST CHURCH
THE HISTORY OF OUR SUPPORT FOR MISSON
Since 1546 we have been partners before God with
St Mary’s C of E, [ The State Parish Church ]
Abbey Lane Church [ The Independent Church ]
The Society of Friends [ The Puritan Quakers ]
sometimes we have worked in cooperation and sometimes apart, but we still have historical links as one Church of Christ-Saffron Walden, and those 3 other partners with us have shared in mission by planting churches in neighbouring villages
as have the Methodists since they arrived later in the 1860’’s
Historically class has effected how the congregations operated
The Primitive Methodists Castle Hill and Hill Street General Baptists operated together in outreach to the humble poor, the working class labourers, artisans and farm workers. These too supported trade unionists and the early Co-op Society.
While the Abbey Lane Church, Castle Street Wesleyan Methodists and Upper Meeting Baptists, being largely middle class tradesmen, shopkeepers and farmers cooperated
and the Quakers helped both groups
From the 1780’s our Church was engaged in church planting first at Ashdon, and then at Thaxted, and Langley, and Great Chesterford in the 1840’s
At Ashdon after 20 years of open air witness, house to house visiting and cottage prayer meetings our minister, Matthew Walker 1786-1809 became first minister of the newly formed Baptist Church. They later established a church plant at Radwinter which in the 20th century we sustained by sending our lay preachers there,
At Thaxted there had been an earlier General Baptist Church of over 200 members but that had faded away without trace as many other General Baptist churches did, but members of our church with our minister encouraged about some believers there to set up a new Baptist Church with a building in a potato field- now Park Street .
At Langley people who rode or walked into Walden to worship at our church set up their own in the village and our minister introduced to them their first pastor who was the father from Ipswich of a young man who went from our Church into the ministry, later to become President of the BU - James Webb,
At Great Chesterford in the 1840’s the Wakefield family started a Congregational Church which still continues and 5 members of that family living there were members of our church and were amongst our chapel trustees.
At Great Sampford the church began locally but was greatly helped over several decades by Peter Cowell from our church.
Josaih Wilkinson also encouraged the Independent congregations at Newport and Balsham.
Part of Mission includes training leaders and from our Church have been set apart to be ministers and missionaries a number of men and women..
Josiah Wilkinson our 3rd minister arrived here a bachelor aged 23 in 1809 and had just this one pastorate and died in 1848 . He trained lay preachers for the Essex Baptist Union and Josiah prepared a number of young men from our congregation for entry into Stepney Academy, now Regents Park Baptist College Oxford and other colleges to train as ministers..
Details of those who were set apart for such ministry are on this board under another article.
Ecumenical Cooperation
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From the early 19th century the local churches worked together as well as apart, and in 1812 the C of E, Abbey Lane, High Street and Hill Street Baptists, and the Quakers United to form a local district branch of the Bible Society and establish branches of it at Dunmow and Stansted. Our Baptist Minister along with the Vicar were joint-secretaries, under the chairmanship of the Lord of the Manor of Audley End. Later ministers to serve at secretaries were Audley Gillson, Alfred Rollason and John Young
After that all the congregations shared in support of the Bible Depot dispensing Bibles, Testaments, Gospels and portions.
In the period 1829 - 43 we supported locally the Religious Tract Society Auxillary, which in it’s first year distributed locally 5000 tracts, and lent out 200 volumes of Christian books. The tracts included titles such as “Daily Food”, “The Dairyman’s Daughter”, “Early Piety”, “Young Cottager”, “Divine Cordial”, “Daily Expositor” and “ Soul’s Conflict”., some of which appear to be books, booklets or magazines rather that leaflets as we think a tract to be today. One of their regular Visitors visited 100 families a week in the yards and alleys of old Walden Bearing in mind the degree of illiteracy, at this time the circulation was considerable; but Visitors would also witness personally, and read things to people.
As Sunday School and Day School education for the masses developed, more children were able to read for themselves and to their parents.
In 1832 some 250 tracts [ which may gave included books and booklets ] were distributed at Audley End Fair.
These churches from 1820 set up the Town Mission and appointed a Missioner to reach out to the 60% of the population that seldom or never attended church. He visited all the slum areas of town dispensing tracts to those able to read, reading the scriptures, caring for the poor and reporting back regularly to a committee that dispensed funds to help the poor. One of these missioners was Peter Johnson a member of our church. As was Mr Whatley leader of the Wimbish Mission Chapel .
Out of the work of the Walden Town Mission Missioner developed Sewards End Baptist Mission of which we had oversight from 1863 - 1963 though it had it’s own committee from 1946-1963. The original wooden mission, now 2 garages, was replaced with a purpose built Mission Hall in 1938. It is now part of a house.
See elsewhere on this Web Board site the Sewards End Mission Story.
John Player, who for a time about 1790 had been a scholar of a school run by our Baptist minister and had later served in London as a civil servant to the Fleet organizing it’s provisions, retired to Walden and joined Abbey Lane Church about 1830
He led a group of Christians on a survey of all the homes in Walden and nearby villages to determine who in every home could read, and which ones had got Bibles or not.
From that survey where there were homes where no one could read children were taught to read and every home that had not go a Bible was given one.
In 1836 John Player became Mayor and 6 others of his helpers became councilors and out of that 3 schools in Walden and several village schools were established and the Teacher Training College in South Road set up.
Those 3 Walden schools, for boys, girls and infants are now
R A Butler Schools. But remember that John Player was first influenced to becoming a Christian by our minister at a school in the gallery of our church,
By 1876 it was reported at the Bible society Meeting that since 1812, 27,000 copies of th scriptures had been Distributed in Saffron Walden and the villages around it.
Later in the 19th century our church with Abbey Lane established with missioners, Union Mission Chapels at Wimbish and Debden. Now both houses
In the late 19th century our Church, Abbey Lane, the Methodists, and all our church plants, became members of the Bishop’s Stortford and District Free Church Council which stretched from Sawston to Epping and Ware to Dunmow.
After the 1st World War into the 1990s these Walden Free churches and church plants, formed the Saffron Walden and District Free Church Council which later merged with the Council of Churches into Churches Together in Saffron Walden. Just as the Methodists and Congregationalists had their own local circuits, we were part of the North West Baptist Church Fellowship into the 1970’s with the Stortford and Harlow Churches.
As Baptists we have certain responsibilities in which those who are not Baptists are unlikely to support us
In the 18th and 19th centuries we worked in partnership with St Andrews Street Baptist Church, Cambridge, and with the Cogwheel Trust based there in the 20th century.
We also helped establish Potter Street Baptist Church Harlow both with people and money when the New town was built in the 1950’s. Eric Swan served some year assisting the Boys Brigade at Bishop’s Stortford Methodist Church.
Through the BMS WORLD MISSION We have supported since 1806 through a series of missionary secretaries
Our first pastor Joseph Gwennap personally was a supporter of the new Baptist Missionary Society founded in 1793 whose Treasurer was Andrew Fuller, who is part of the East Anglian network of the Fuller family, as was our Founderess Elizabeth Fuller.
But it was our second pastor Matthew walker who first developed interest here in the work of the BMS. Our third pastor Josiah Wilkinson really got behind this. When Josiah was 26 and in his third year at Walden, news arrived of the disastrous fire at the Mission Press at Serampore in India, and like many of his colleagues Josiah rallied his people in support and the offering raised £25 pound-0 shillings and 9 pence, which in today’s value would be £1350, to help William Carey to rebuild.
By 1820 regular annual collections were in operation and Josiah was soliciting donations from local Quaker ,and Free Church friends especially for education and translations purposes. The Golden Jubilee of the BMS was celebrated here in 1843. When William Carey’s nephew Eustace Carey came to speak here That year they raised here £60 that year [ about £6000 in today’s values ] including the sale of jubilee medals . As the treasurer added up the figures wrong by £1 when we checked that in 1975 we sent them the difference, but not the interest.
During the period 1874 - 1881 our BMS Gifts averaged £28, a year. [ £1020 today and today we give about £5200 ] This may have been an annual collection on a particular Sunday. In those days the weekly offering was £2 a week. Gifts were also made at this time for mission work in Essex, France and Ireland.
In 1884 our first Missionary Council was formed [ The Mission Committee ] with Miss Starling as Secretary and Mr A Viney as Treasurer. He went eventually to live in Johannesburg in South Africa on account of his banking business activities. He maintained a link with Saffron Walden as witnessed by the Viney Prize awarded in Edwardian times in the Sunday School for those with perfect attendances which he funded.
In October 1890 Cottage prayer meetings were arranged and some members addressed them on missionary themes while other members spent time in tract distribution in the locality From about 1904 the Sunday school were supporting a boy apprentice in the printing trade in the Congo then a Belgium colony. [ now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and formerly Zaire ]
Miss Starling was replaced as Mission Secretary by the Rev John Sage who after 40 years in the Baptist Ministry, the last few years at Ashdon, had retired to Walden and become a Deacon.
In 1906 our Church was supporting Pastor Saillou’s Mission in France.
Robert Winter Catt , the local Prudential Assurance Agent took over from Rev Sage. Robert who was Superintendent of Sewards End Mission and Church Treasurer, in 1914 became th last Pastor of the Hill street Baptist Church,
Robert was replaced by Henry Hart, and he by Miss Trew, and she by Mrs J Cowell who lived at Roos Farm which brings us into the 1930’s
During the 1920’s and 1930’s children in the Sunday school and the Senior Christian Endeavour [ teenagers upwards ] use to perform concerts , shows, plays, and demonstrations to raise money for the BMS.
In 1942 in preparation of celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the BMS Mrs Ethel Saville created the Carey Cloth, embroidering on a table cloth the initials and surnames of the Minister, Church Secretary, Church Treasurer, Organist, Deacons and as many Members of the Church and Congregation as were willing to part with one shilling. In all 189 subscribers Mrs Thirza Gray the first wife of the Minister collected the money which went towards the Church’s 150 guineas target for the Special Appeal Fund, and this was in the middle of World War Two.
Ethel herself was well committed to mission and service walking out to Sewards End many Sundays to play the harmonium and teach the children there, and later she played for weddings, and funerals and other social events; along with services in Sheltered Homes and Residential Homes, and accompanied the team that took leadership of services at the Hospital. Ethel was also a committed serving member and vice president of our weekly Women’s Own and her sister Hilda was wife to the Church Treasurer Ernest Newton manager of the local PO Sorting Office, and they moved to Kirby Cross , on the coast north of Clacton where they started the Baptist Fellowship in their bungalow.
Ethel and Sam her husband ran a shop in town and retired to a house at 15 Gibson Gardens, which after his death Ethel bequeathed upon her death to the Retired Baptist Ministers Housing Society and so became the home of Rev John and Mrs Elaine Webb for many years and continued to be used for hospitality, and where prior to 1997 the visiting Salvation Army cadets from their training college in London lodged when here to conduct their annual door to door collection of the town assisted by young people from the Churches, ours included. Later the monthly meetings of the Men’s Discussion Group met there.
Now it is the home of Rev. Tony and Jean Mason who are heading up new Mission support activities.
During the war years Miss Edith Cornell. A clerk at Adams’s and Land, the Church’s solicitors, served faithfully as Missionary Secretary. Annual deputation visits by missionaries became our tradition.
A regular girls sewing group, and rummage sales helped raise funds for the BMS. The offerings of the Sunday Afternoon Sunday School used to raise between £30 and £50 for BMS, and the children taught to support mission.
We used to enjoy the visits of Dr Nancy Bywaters or her mother, both of whom had served in China, and live locally.
The indomitable Miss Nellie Marsh, one of the teachers, a spinster who had lost her sweet heart during the First World War and could love no one else as much, gave her life to teaching children and encouraging mission support amongst them and served as Sunday School Mission Treasurer. She circulated a quarterly leaflet from the BMS each copy in black ink on shaded paper with a “black and white “ illustration, using to the full the limited resources depicted a person in the national dress of each particular country and told us about that country and the work of our missionaries there. Later we were introduced to the BMS Magazines for children and teenagers, “Wonderlands” & “Quest”.
In 1950 Miss Heather Reed, also a solicitors clerk, of the same firm at 15 became Church Missionary Secretary for the next 15 years. Under her leadership a Girls Auxillary of the BMS met weekly from 1952 to the early 1960’s. This group helped in various fund raising activities and serving churches across the district. They also save “3d off next purchase” labels from soap packets for the BMS. This probably enabled someone to get soap free for sending to missionaries.
In the 1953 coronation Carnival Procession the Church entered a Missionary Theme Float as this coincided with the 160th anniversary of the BMS. Chris Wiseman represented William Carey. Later carnival float had similar themes except the one John Maddams organised one year with the help of Doris and Alfred Coston which depicted Christians in various trades and professions emphasising the diversity of skills God needs in the work of His kingdom. Associated with this some of the Young People Fellowship gave out tracts amongst the crowds.
Things changed sharply in the Sunday school in 1958 when the Church Organist, local Baker and Pastry cook, Elias Anthony resigned from years of service as Sunday School Secretary. Then we discovered that the Sunday school was bankrupt, and he had been funding it personally for years. Now the children’s offering had to be used to fund the Sunday school for another decade before the Church accepted responsibility for paying. At first we gave a couple of pound a month to BMS and depicted our progress on a picture chart. During the period 1958 to 1965 little was done to foster the BMS in the school.
In 1961 Heather formed a Missionary Council with the aim of linking up with other parts of the Church family - and so there were representatives of the Deacons, the Women’s Own and the Scouts but these all came from the same family, Arthur, Ivy and Richard Coote, with John Maddams representing the Sunday School in the role of Sunday Bible Club leader for the older children. In the late 1950’s we collected jam jars and stored them in the Church Cycle Shed to be picked up by the Robertson’s Jam Company who paid so much for them and this money went to the Baptist Union Home Work Fund, later renamed Baptist Home Mission. Started before the War people had been encouraged to give 6d a month and Mrs Daisy Turnbull, mother of Jack, Angus and Mary, was Home Work Fund Secretary for many years until Deacon Aubrey Copping the Borough Council Rating Officer took it on.
For two years 1954 - 1956 John Maddams, who had come to the Church first to be dedicated aged about 6 months in 1939 by his ex- Sunday School teacher, choir member Mum, Alice, and had been in the Sunday School since he was 5, and supporting mission since he was 9, began at the age of 15 the Charity Collecting Centre at his family’s home at 15 Pleasant Valley.
This early recycling agency collected for sale in aid of charities, metals, metal foil, used stamps, old and foreign coins, newspapers, rags, and collected comics and magazines for the local hospital for patients to read. He also ran a petition to stop the deliberate spreading of myxmatosis amongst rabbits to cull them.
Following his conversion to Jesus Christ in September 1954, John began a Scripture Union branch amongst his cousins’ children. In 1955 that was moved to the Baptist Sunday school where John was an assistant teacher. Out of this developed in 1956 the Ministry of religious Propaganda and Evangelical Journalism, later renamed the Ministry of Christian Literature which in 1958 began sending Christian literature overseas, in conjunction with the Missionaries Literature Association of the Baptist Men’s Movement.
Later still when they were also sending film-strips, cassettes and videos it was renamed Ministry of Christian Communication and from AD2000 has been known as Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] and up to 2011 has reached out to over 55,000 people. Of whom 20,600 have been outside the UK scattered across over 170 countries.
Through this ministry inspired by God the Holy Spirit , in which he was associated by other young people of our Church and the Methodist Church many copies of “Bible speaks to Britain”
“Sunday Companion and “Christian Herald “ were delivered to the residents of the Almshouses. Hatherley , and the Hospitals but from 1958 many magazines were sent overseas. Some in parcels as with tracts, scriptures and books. Some regularly to specific Christian workers.
Many addresses changed hands. In one way and another contacts were established in 114 countries from Denmark to Canada, the Falkland Islands. Bolivia, Ceylon [ Sri Lanka ]. Especially there with Stephen Welagedera and Matale Baptist Church, and with South Africa, Zaire, Nigeria and France. Co-ordination of suppliers in the USA, Australia. Canada, India and the UK with distributors elsewhere helped distribute much. The bulk of this work was then handed over to others better able to conduct and finance it but the work continued on in new ways. Many members of the congregation had helped with this work.
In 1965 Heather Reed resigned after 15 years service and John Maddams was invited to take on the role in the light of his overseas work with the Ministry of Christian Literature. He accepted on condition that the Church appointed a representative Missionary Council to link all church organisations in support of mission and this was established in May 1965.
Historically we have missioned and may mission
Through our own group, family, congregation and community, to partners, children, relatives, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, enemies.
Through our Sunday Club, Youth work, BB, Lunch Club,
Songs of Praise Services, use of premises for the community [ eg MIND ] and the ministry of every member.
Also from our Church, the Youth Hostel [ recently closed ] began, the Day Centre was formed, [ on our premises at first] and Hill House became flats we had members serving on it’s original committee and did a lot of fund raising for it.
As Partners in Churches Together helping other churches in their projects, and supporting
5th Saffron Walden Free Church Scouts, .VBS, SWAT, Common Ground Youth outreach, The Salvation Army, Boys Brigade, Girls Brigade, SWYPE Youth club,
Through the Eastern Baptist Association including it’s Church of the Year Appeal and Essex Baptist Prayer Fellowship
Through the Baptist Union of GBNI
BU Home Mission
West Ham Central Mission
Spurgeon’s Homes now Spurgeon's Child care
The Baptist Colleges
Retired Baptist Retirement Homes Association
----The Baptist Bungalows and 15 Gibson Gardens
The BU Corporation Building Fund
Through Baptist Men’s Movement initiatives
Mission Literature Association sending magazines to missionaries
Operation Agri, providing seeds, rabbits, equipment, chicks, microscopes
Tools with a Mission, several times we have collected tools
BMM Housing Association through which Hill House Saffron Walden was made into 17 flats . The BMM HA was later sold to the English Churches Housing Association.
Through the European Baptist Federation
Around 1905 assisting the Southern Ireland Mission and Baptist Mission in France
or through the support of Bert Clark from our Sewards End Mission who went to serve in 1946 in the ruins of Berlin in Germany with the Salvation Army and sent German New Testaments
or supporting Eurolit in the 1970’s providing mini-libraries to pastors in Eastern Europe
or supporting Ian Jones teaching in Poland
or our twinning with
Bromma BC in Sweden in 1974
Recklinghausen BC, in Germany in the 1980’s ,
Dobrich BC in Bulgaria, in the 1990’s
Through the Baptist World Alliance and BWA Relief Fund.
We have sent delegates to congresses and we have also funded people from other countries to attend.
Through the BMS WORLD MISSION
We have supported since 1806 through a series of missionary secretaries
In 1965 we set up Missionary Council. Later called the Missionary Committee that operated to 1997 which helped us to increase income and raise new funds for particular projects and support our missionaries, or former members of our church serving as missionaries from our church in China, India, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Brazil, Congo, and Ethiopia.
The committee also established Home Mission Sunday, College Sunday, Bible Sunday, and used harvest to raise money for Operation Agri. ,
The Committee also encouraged support for The Handmaiden missions that helped the BMS
The Bible Society, Scripture Gift Mission, The Leprosy Mission,
The Christian Optical Service, collecting spectacles for recycling
Mission Aviation Fellowship. TEAR Fund. and the Hospital Equipment Enterprise
Eventually the Church agreed to the principle of giving an agreed percentage of General Fund income in equal amounts to BU Home Mission and BMS World Mission. (now about £5000 each)
The Committee also helped organise Wants Boxes of clothing, knitted goods, exercise books, pens, drawing materials, bandages, packet soups, safety pins, etc to send to specific missionaries.
For about 20 years we have operated a Missionary Prayer Group At First at Little Walden supporting work in Congo and later at Doug and Betty Thorton’s praying for our Link missionaries and those who went out from our church. And we currently meet from 10am - 11am or longer, on the 1st Monday in the month at Doug and Betty’s home to support MECO in Iraq, ARAB VISION, our BMS Link missionaries in Thailand, Sisters of Cambodia, and other needs raised on the BMS Web site or from Lighthouse Ministry [ MCCPF ] and our TEAM last year to Brazil and the fund raising for that and before that for Andrew Heinrich’s trek for Action Aid in Africa, 2 projects our church got behind and we will be praying for Denise Vincent’s Sponsored trek in China..
We have supported mission since 1965 through our Annual Christmas Charity providing help for about 120 missions and charities including some new local charities.
In 1980 we helped reorganise the local Bible Society Committee with5 of the office held by Baptists.
We have helped market Traid Craft and Fair Trade products
Over the years we have helped fund raise, or donated from Church funds, or recruit subscribers for
Stort Valley Schools Trust at one stage for several years we were giving £700 - £800 for this
Stort Valley Friends of Gideons.
Christian Aid though supporting Christian Aid Week, Hunger lunches and other ways
International Help to Refugee Children including receive children from abroad on holidays
Mercy Ships
Operation Mobilisation
EURO Evangelism
Action Aid for Africa including supporting Andrew Heinrich’s Massai Trek
Sponsorships by members of our congregation.
Christian Solidarity
Open Doors Mission
Torch Trust for the Blind
Christian Witness to Israel
Fellowship of Faith for Moslems
The Barnabas Fund.
Afar Aid
Afrinspire including tree planting working in Uganda etc
SU / CSSM
YWAM
Christian Enquiry Agency
Mike Turner has organised several collections of clothing for Whitechapel Mission and before he came we did so through the Council of Churches.
Boys Brigade have raised a lot of money as part of their Awards Scheme and at Camp with an Annual Camp Appeal for many overseas projects.
We have encouraged people to give second hand books and Bibles to BOOK AID
and held a Book Fair to provide books for overseas via the Ranfurley Library Scheme.
We have collected food for the Salvation Army Food Bank and Books and Toys for deprived children at Christmas.
And with other churches and schools in the town supported the Samaritans Purse - shoe boxes collections.
Some have helped provide holidays for children from Belorus
Some of our congregation have served as volunteers working for OXFAM SHOPS
Our former Women’s Own 1938 - 1997 used to knit garments and blanket squares for BMS Missionaries to use and for Wendy Spark to take to Ethiopia.
In 2002 3 members ran a Christian Presence on the Common at Car Boot Sales dispensing on request freely Christian books, Bibles, Testaments, Gospels, magazines, cassettes, videos and conversing with people .
Malcolm Brown led a VBS visit to Bulgaria
For some years we have through Glenys Goodwin been collecting postcards to send to her sister Heather Yule and her husband David a former officer of our BB for MAF who sell them to collectors to provide fuel for their aircraft
Members of our Small Groups some years ago were given from Church funds £100 per group for new mission initiatives some locally and some abroad.
Part of our Church’s mission was to provide NT’s for boys in BB in 1983 and since to provide GNB Bibles for children in Sunday Club.
In recent years some members of the congregation have helped Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] projects
including through Christian Resource Ministries via Scotland to Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya, South Africa and India.
Including
1.new local language Bibles presented to 15 pastors in Northern Mozambique each with congregations of 25 - 40 with no hope of buying Bibles in an area being resettled after the Civil War.
2.100 Bibles to replace those lost in a tropical storm that battered many villages destroying homes.
3.Bibles for Malawian pastors gathered together for a 2 week intensive training course
4.Bibles given to a Church in Kenya
5 Bible given to orphans at the hostel / school for which we have also provided pictures, and maps, and £500 worth of storm damage repairs.
They wish to give a Bible to each Junior, and with limited means to do so, as they go on to Secondary school
This year to supply 16 would cost £120 and they have another 46 children to provide for at £7.50 per copy.
Some members of the Victoria Avenue / Goddard Way group have assisted in the setting up of a new church 5 years ago in a village called Mangoase near a Port called Bawjaise on the Gold coast area of Ghana with 100 people living in a few huts and nothing else no water supply, no shop, no market, no postal service.
One young man from there was at college with Robbie Amusu who Lighthouse Prayer Ministry has been in touch with for several years a young businessman and lay evangelist
The 2 of them visited the village in at Christmas 2004 and prayed and planned a week mission for the following Easter 2005 using a team of students from Winneba University who held open air gatherings and house to house visiting and they had to take in a lorry load of bottled water as there is no mains supply
That year some of us put up money for the team based at a house at Bawjaise to buy land at Mangoase to set up a farm which enables the pastor there now to be largely self supporting and share with poorer neighbours
We also funded the materials for a bore hole to be dug by local labourers.
At Christmas 2005 we helped fund another mission at which there were 31 converts, for one of whom was cripple we provided a wheel chair
This group constructed their own place of worship, a wooden shelter with a thatched roof
At Easter 2006 the converts were baptised and for 2007 a young man Fred Anim new out of Bible College at Kumasi came as pastor for a year most of which time he was ill
We helped pay his stipend and an experienced member of the team Francis Mensah who managed the farm became Lay Pastor from 2008 - 2011 and then went as a missionary to Seirra Leone.
The congregation has now grown to over 80 and in 2011 the number of pillars were increased and God enabled us at Saffron Walden to supply them an oil fired generator and some 30 new hymnals
Some second hand ones, 80, we sent by sea in February-March 2011, finally reached the people they were intended for, in July 2012 having been stored in a post office as they did not know who to give them to, after Francis Mensah moved. The Church has now been taken into care of the Disciples of Christ Church at Bawjaise.
Robert made several journeys by motorbike in 2011 and led at Easter a team in a weeks mission then at Bawjaise Market though it was a bit washed out by a lot of rain. Due to all his exertions Robbie now aged 32, was taken ill and had to return to his home village in the Volta area for nearly a year but is in circulation again. He has been used to introduce the Bible personally to several top Executives to Companies in Ghana..
Further Bible Distribution.
In 2008 we supplied 27 second hand GNB and NIV Bibles to a Christian Community on an Island on Lake Mweru in Northern Zambia including some from a UK School that was replacing them with another version. In 2011 another 14 were supplied.
In Jan 2010 some of us with other people locally gave second hand and unused university text books and manuals to a collection sent by Book Aid to two Zimbabwean Universities
In Sept 2010 we had a request from a Nigerian student group at Ibadan University for 160 Bibles. We could not send them but sent copies of SOON and VIA through which individual students could access Bible study courses [ with the text] and free New Testament. We heard no more
In January 2011 we had requests for 360 Bibles from Nigeria who had accessed our web site
162 for a student group at Ibadan University to use in evangelism a different address.
200 for Faith Baptist Church Ibadan who claimed they could get them from a local bookshop at £1 each if we send £200. We prayed the LORD to supply a cheque for £220 to send them £200 and pay the fee. He provided what was needed .
We were later enabled to send to another Church, a Pentecostal Church, and since then supplied 240 to another group, Glory Baptist Church . During 2012, we sent further Bibles to Nigeria making 1,400 in all. Plus 10 to Malawi, 3 to replace Bibles lost by pastors in floods this year and to 1 whose house burnt down and to 6 pastors in Northern Malawi who had no Bible at all These 10 were local language editions. We have also supplied 58 to Zambia in the Bemba language for use on the island on Lake Mweru, and they need 300 English Bibles there now and we have funding for 72 of them. They cost £5 each.
We sent arranged with WEC and they afreed to send copies of SOON to all these contacts . The needs go on. More Christians but all so poor the cannot afford to buy Bibles
Through the Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] since 1954 various members of the church and congregation and our youth organisations have
Posted Gospels to specific receivers to distribute in Czechoslovakia and Cuba for the OPEN DOORS MINISTRY
Posted outreach material in French to France for France Evangelistic Mission.
Posted pioneer outreach material to Turkey for Friends of Turkey which over the years led thousands to take up Bible study courses and led to the formation of several churches.,
Some of us have sent regularly SOON and BIENTOT quarterly evangelistic papers to people in various African countries who have requested them,
Three Members of the congregation have marked Bible Study course papers arising from that
One member used to transcribe books in Large Hand Print for the Torch Trust for the Blind Library.
In the 1980’s outreach material was sent to 5000 young people in over 100 countries age 8 - 18 who were members of the LOOK AND LEARN PEN PAL CLUB. Since them we have made many contacts using 4 overseas Pen pal agencies, [ of which worldwide there are over 500]
Cassette recordings of our services have been send to various people around the English speaking world
Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] has in the past 2 years provided 6 cassette / CD players for use by trained teams in remote parts of 6 countries in front line pioneer evangelism.
Lighthouse Prayer Ministry [ MCCPF ] by God’s enabling since 1954 has reached over 62,000 people, including over 22,400 overseas, across over 170 countries, using over 286,000 items of resources, and apart from running costs dispensed over £45,000 in small grants through a number of small team projects and a small group of people and since 2003 has distributed outreach literature to around 17,000 homes in the town and 44 villages in and around Uttlesford District linked to our own and several other websites,
To God be the glory for enabling this. We pray that the Lord the Holy Spirit has thus been able yo minister to people not otherwise reached, as our web side seems to suggest. We hope to continue this in 2012.as the Lord enables. .
In 2011 the Lord enabled us through new friends and appeals through the Bulletin of the Project 31:8.Group set up by Tony and Jean Mason and other friends to fund the freight and transport costs from Ipswich in Suffolk England to Nchelenge in Northern Zambia of a large consignment of training equipment from Tool With A Mission to enable the community there to set up a Community Vocational Training Centre staffed by volunteers led by Pastor Chanda Jackson who is a Church Elder and an evangelist who God has used greatly in 2011 and earlier on the island on Lake Mweru in leading hundreds to Christ. We are also by the help of various friends to fund the education there of 10 Aids Orphans.
God gave the BMS a millionaire in the 19th century, at least a very rich man, that enabled BMS Congo mission to build a string of mission stations along the River Congo that became the bases through which hundreds of thousands of people became Christians and many were healed at a hospital and a string of clinics, and educated at a string of schools.
GOD CAN DO IT WHEN HE WANTS TO AND WHEN HE IS ASKED
indeed he has brought into our congregation in recent years some people with high bracket jobs and incomes who are using their wealth for His work here and from here.
Simon Mattholie does not think we should send second hand resources abroad Well I don’t share that view because I know from 50 years experience how useful second hand material has been but there are opportunities out there for new ministries and churches who need new resources
Bibles and Hymnals especially, to meet this need will take hundreds and thousands of pounds, and we as a Church with a falling income cannot do anything. Maybe we can’t but we know a person who can
Jesus Christ can change the impossibility into possibility if we ask
Simon Mattholie himself in 2011 left Walden to become Director of Rural Ministries serving some 60 churches across UK to engage in more Church planting.
WHY SHOULD WE ENGAGE IN MISSION ?
FIRSTLY A BIBLICAL FOUNDATION FOR MISSION
Our authority comes from the Bible as the Word of God
1.The Manifesto of Jesus Christ Luke 4 v 18 - 19
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and provide recovery of sight for the blind,
He has sent me to release the oppressed, [ the persecuted ]
He has sent me to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour “
2.Christ’s Promise and Warning in Acts 1 verse 8
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea [ Southern Israel] and Samaria, [ the Northern Tribes ] and to the ends of the Earth."
Jerusalem your home town, Saffron Walden or your village
Judea your country, England or the UK
Samaria, your neighbouring country or enemies, Ireland, France and Germany, or simply Europe as UK has fought most of Europe and evangelized it over the centuries.
and the uttermost parts of the world.
and Jesus implied that we would be witnesses for Him whether we chose to or not, for good or ill and the world would judge Him according to how we behaved.
,
3. The Great Commission MATTHEW 28 v 18-20
18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
and MARK 16 v 15 He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned
4 The Testimony of St Paul in 1 Corinthians 9 v 19 - 24, Paul writes
19Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.
20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.
To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.
21To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law.
22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak.
I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some
So that is the limit of our mission by all things to all men by all possible means to save some.
So there may be no limit to what we may do in mission that some may be saved,
Galatians 6 verse 10 As we have therefore opportunity let us do good unto all men, especially to those who are of the household of faith.
In September 2011 we hosted an exhibition “MISSION CONTINUED” of Baptist life and witness in Saffron Walden over 300 years 1711 – 2011 visited by over 120 adults and over 100 school children when we displayed many documents and artifacts and around 2000 of our large photo collection over 28 stands including the first one focused on the development of the English Bible from the OT Hebrew Bible to the text edition of the Standard English Version published in 2007. A lot of Brochures were handed out and the Saffron Walden Historical Society published a 5 page article under the same title as the Exhibition.
Since writing this the Church has set up Saffron Walden Besom Group to help people in need in practical ways locally, and through Lighthouse Ministry help including clothing was sent to orphans in Ethiopia and more Bibles to prisoners in Zambia.
We have established through the Project Group support, on-line and by other means for Open Doors Ministry and Christian Solidarity Worldwide for prisoners and persecuted Christians and plan another regular prayer meeting for this work.
The Church established in 2011 - 2012 a working team to redecorate the church premises using offenders doing community service work. Some 12 were involved and some said they wished they had been given longer sentences as they had never experienced the hospitality the Church has shown them with free meals and personal friendship.
Terry Burgess has now been appointed to serve as Church Mission Secretary
Our Youth Pastor has resigned to take up full time work evangelism in small groups in several secondary schools in the district with the Stort Valley Schools Trust,
One young student member of the congregation has been working as part of a support team in the UK raising money to help establish a mobile dental and medical unit in Uganda, and another daughter of one of our members is pioneering work in the North of England reaching the immigrant community.
At Christmas we raised over £700 to he[p provide new children's play equipment at nearby Carver Barracks where there are about 280 soldiers families living on base and some of the Mum's have organised a project to provide a play park, cost £100,000 .
At Christmas too we raised over £1000 for the Whitechapel Methodist Mission at our Carol service
The Congregation including the BB Juniors put together for the Samaritan Purse Christmas Child project over 170 shoe boxes of good things, toys, books, writing materials as part of a town wide project including other churches schools and youth groups organised by our Tracy Todman
Peter and Dawn Wagstaff have organised events to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis Research with Peter doing sponsored swims of the English Channel and Denise Vincent did a walk along some of the Great Wall in China to raise sponsorship money for MacMillan Cancer Care Nurses.
We have our Church Website www.sw-bc.org with downloads of some of the sermons on it, and the Church has a Facebook Page, and quite a lot of our folk of all ages communicate on Facebook, or by Twitter, or by Text - all means of mission in the course of our every day life.
There are probably too, much else being done by members of our Church Congregation that I don't know about.
The Church is seeking a new Minister to lead us in our ongoing mission.
So Mission continues, Where next LORD ?
?What READER are you doing to engage in Mission?
What more is the LORD calling you to do ?
One series of sermons we will have in 2012 will be following the Christianity Explored Course . We are encouraged to find out more about it on www.christianityexplored.org
PS January 2019 In the past few years LHPM extended the distribution of VIA Magazine to having reached every Parish in Uttlesford once, and new homes as they become occupied and in all the villages on both roads from Walden to Trumpington, to Horseheath, Linton, parts of Haverhill, about 10 other localities outside our district. We have supplied a total since 2011 of 15,156 Bibles to Nigeria, with 300 more requested, and provided the mission in Malawi with a new Canoe, a new 2 man tent, a new Projector and a new screen, and 17 bikes for pastors and a new solar powered CD Player to Global Recordings Network UK for use in remote places each year for 12 years and equipment to Saffron Walden Street Pastors and a new coffee machine for The Garden Room Day Centre Saffron Walden, .
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access:- www.rejesus.co.uk
Don’t be afraid you are deeply loved by God. Be at peace. Take heart and be strong”
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