David’s calling to serve the church has been lifelong. Now, aged 92, he is celebrating 60 years as a Licensed Lay Minister, taking services and preaching in churches in the Diocese of Oxford.
After some years away in his home Worcestershire, David returned to Oxford to work as a solicitor in the city, and joined St Ebbe’s Church. He was asked to help out in the villages of Besselsleigh and Dry Sandford, where he found himself the Rector’s driver, bellringer, organist, and general factotum, as well as service leader!
He said: “I became committed to Jesus Christ as a student in the university and felt called to serve the church to which I belonged.”
After some years David was asked to be part of the staff of St Ebbe’s, where he found himself preaching not to a handful, but to a full church of some 400 mostly students. Once there, he learned the churchwarden’s mantra at the start of the service, which was ‘if you’re sitting comfortably, you are probably taking too much room’.
Later David moved to St Andrew’s where he joined a team of three other readers, later to become renamed as Licensed Lay Ministers. Alongside this, he helped out in country parishes round the diocese where there was only one minister serving in a number of churches, and he was asked to take services where otherwise there might have been no one to lead.
He added: “You get to know and value the congregations and I find it very rewarding.”
As well as serving his church community from the front of the church, David was also a member of General Synod for some 20 years, during which the legislation for the ordination of women to the priesthood was passed, and the new forms of service were authorised. He has been admitted as a member of the Order of St Frideswide for his dedication. Added to this, he has been a leader of a home group for more than 50 years.
Read more about lay ministry in the Diocese of Oxford.