'As a child I grew up in church where
people were expected to get active. If you were old enough
to teach Sunday School you taught Sunday School. That took
you on into youth work and evangelism and into full-time youth
leadership.’
He made his first commitment as a child.
`There came a time when it became real for me, I am pleased to say.
I found that you have to make a commitment to the Lord and understand it
all for yourself, working through the concerns and doubts and
questions.’
`I think that like a lot of childhood
conversions I came back to it later and faced up to its challenges. A
sort of second level of decision, a deeper level.’
By his early teens he had moved South to
live in Wallington on the London-Surrey border. There began
his most formative years, going to Wallington Boys School and from there
into work in local government., first in Epsom and then in Brixton.
With his family he belonged to a small AoG fellowship in Wallington.
`From a small church of 40-50 people there
were half a dozen men who went into full-time ministry while I was
there. We were a small youth group but we had expectations
of doing something for God. Jesus was coming soon and we had
to get out there and do some stuff. That was the kind of
atmosphere we grew up in.’’
Here again service was an important part
of his Christian life.
`Rather than having youth meetings that
were put on for us, it was more a question of turning young people into
a fighting force to go out and work for the Lord.’
At the age of nineteen he moved back up
North to Mansfield to become a youth worker. During a visit to Dublin to
do some door-to-door and street evangelism he met Shirley and they began
long-distance courting. She eventually moved to Mansfield to work as
assistant matron in a residential home attached to the church.
They got married when Phil was invited to become pastor of an AoG church
in Folkestone.
`Under the viaduct,’ he recalls. `We had
an Austin Eight as the wedding car.’
It was a small and struggling church, only
just financially independent. One of the projects Phil took
on was to unite with another AoG church in the town. In all
this a bit of tent-making was needed to support the ministry.
`So I studied at Christ Church College in
Canterbury, did a degree and started teaching. And while I
was studying I also did some piano teaching, having taken a couple of
diplomas with the London College of Music. A lot of plate spinning.’
Although having been brought up in the
rather isolationist world of the AoG as it was then, it was while at
Folkestone that he became seriously aware of the value of other
denominations within the Christian community.
`I got involved in playing for a local
free church choir known as the Celebration Choir. All the people were
from different denominations. So we were meeting a lot of people from
different fellowships. We got involved with the Council of
Churches in Folkestone and we did some really good things together.’
The move to Weston came in 1990. Although
not a great ecumenist to begin with, over the past 15 years since coming
to the town Phil has increasingly valued the contacts and opportunity
for working with other ministers and denominations.
`Although it sounds as though it just
happens, there are certain convictions that get hold of you and you
begin to realise this is very important. It is vital that we
value one another, and that we become the one that Jesus wants us to be.
That the world needs to see the church as one, and working together, not
necessarily agreeing on everything but at least working together. There
is much we can learn from one another and benefit from one another’s
fellowship.’
During that time the Churches Together in
Weston super Mare has gone from being practically dead to the thriving
interdenominational community it now is. Phil is its
immediate past chairman.
`I think it is true that God has only one
agenda, so he does not have one plan for one group of churches contrary
to another group of churches. He has a plan for the town. It
is for all of us. If anything is getting in the way, whether
it’s a structure or piece of paper, lets do something about it so we
really are together.’
He believes the structure is there to
enable people to get involved.
`But you get people involved by personal
relations. That is what we have found more than anything
else. However you structure it, if you can’t hold out hands
to one another it won’t happen. It’s the personal involvement that makes
the difference.’
There is a danger that if we look at one
another and think that a person’s churchmanship or theology or way of
doing things is different to mine, we say we could never have any
involvement with that person. But then when we start talking
to them and getting to know them we discover that there is something
valuable that we need to get to know.
2005 Brian
Kellock.
