Acocks Green - Birmingham

Twenty three years ago George Canty, the 99 year old pastor who featured on this page recently, pioneer the church in Acocks Green. In the years that followed the church underwent a period of decline and by the time that Jamys Carter and his wife, Dr. Emma Carter, arrived at the church five years ago there was only a handful of people there.

During the time that Jamys has been the pastor there has been a transformation both numerically and spiritually. The clear impression that I had of the fellowship was that of a large church that was small at the moment. The DNA of growth is already in the church which now covers a wide spectrum of age ranges.

Marilyn and I immensely enjoyed our time there. All the ingredients for continued development are already in place and we wish this church well.

Aldershot

It was a pleasure to speak at the opening of the extension of the church building in Aldershot. Also participating in the service was David Campbell, Regional Leader for the area, and present a number of Elim ministers in the locality who joined with the local congregation and invited guests for this service of celebration

Mike and Sylvia Keeping have done a wonderful job since taking over the pastorate in Aldershot and, as he paid tribute to the work of others in bringing the church to this point, tribute was also paid to him for the leadership and personal sacrifice that had been involved in reaching this stage in the churches development. Mike is a bi-vocational minister whose secular role involves working on the building of Britain's latest aircraft carrier.

Alex Tee - celebrating his life

A memorial service to commemorate the life and ministry of Alex Tee was attended by hundreds of people at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Manchester.

Alexander Tee had been an Elim minister for an astonishing 58 years. During that period he had planted numerous churches around the UK, been national Youth Director (when I was in my teens), President of the Movement and apart from pastoring several key churches had served on Elim's Executive Council for a total of twelve years.

Tribute was paid to Winifred Tee who had served with him throughout his ministry and to Margaret and Sharon his two daughters. The service was convened by his son-in-law Paul Hallam, senior minister of LCC and the preacher was Malcolm Hathaway, pastor of our Southport Church where Alex had lived in retirement. I brought a tribute on behalf of the Movement. A more in depth account of this special service will be published in a future edition of Direction.

Irish Ordination Service

Each year I preach at the ordination service for those pastors in the province who have successfully completed their 'minister in training' period. On this occasion the venue was the newly refurbished Hillsborough Elim church which was packed to capacity for this special event.

Featured in the photo, top row, are David Campbell and Simon Foster (NLT members) and Eric McComb the Irish Superintendent. On the bottom row are the ordinands together with their partners. Left to right Richard Preston, Geoffrey Moore, Jonathan McKee, John Fitzimmons and David Galvin. All present wished these ministers well on their continued ministry in Ireland.

Teen Challenge

One of the highlights of my month was without doubt my visit to the Teen Challenge HQ outside Swansea and to spend time with its Executive Director, and Elim Minister, Jay Fallon

Jay and Fiona Fallon are passionate about caring for and discipling young people who have suffered by involvement with addictive and controlling substances - most especially illegal drugs.

I was not surprised by the extent of their work but I was hugely impressed by the way that the facilities have been maintained to the very highest standards of build quality and equipment. Jay believes this to be central to the culture of personal affirmation of all who attend there.

During my visit I toured both the women's and men's separate residences, a market garden and a factory unit - the latter two which provided the skills training that is part of the program.

A focal point would have been witnessing a seminar conducted by Fiona for police officers at which a number of the residents gave clear testimony of the change in their life-style subsequent to their encounter with Christ via the ministry of the centre,

I cannot commend too highly the work that Jay, Fiona and their team around the UK are doing.

Paris

This was my fourth visit to the remarkable L'Evidence church in the centre of Paris pastored by Francois Forschel. I say remarkable because there are up to two thousand people worshipping in the church every Sunday in multiple and parallel services that cater for French, African, Russian, Portuguese and Romanian people.

I was invited to speak at a youth service on the Saturday evening that was followed by ministry at three services on the following day. The first was the French Service, the second to a French-speaking African congregation and finally to six hundred Romanian Pentecostals who gathered in the evening.