Life – Journeys of Heart and Mind

Visitors from St Neots

We visited Bourton-on-the-Water which Kevin remembered from previous visits, and walked through the pretty village of Lower Slaughter nearby with its picturesque water mill.

Part 39 – Blast from the past

Kevin and Lariana
Jump to Aug 2025

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Note: Writing these Blast from the past posts every month has been hard work for me, particularly as my efficiency in researching and writing is slowing down as I approach 80-years-old. This has prevented me from writing on other topics that are also important to me. I plan to continue with Blast from the past but they’ll come out less frequently from now on; expect one every six to eight weeks instead of once a month.

November 2025

My grandmother (my Dad’s mum) would have been 146 years old this month! People come and go, history just keeps on going as hours, days, years, centuries and millenia are swallowed up relentlessly. In another 146 years, the year will be 2171 and all of us alive today will be gone – what a thought! Life, though temporary, is truly amazing.

After my discharge from hospital my seizures seemed to be fully controlled and November was symptom free apart from a very slight numbness on 1st. This is good news and life began to return to something much more normal, walking to town and back most days for example. We went to the CBC Quiz Night on 8th and our Small Group were the winners and took home a pot of Daniel’s Romanian honey from Plescuta as the prize. On 11th we had a visit from Cindy, Gavin and his partner Donna and he gave me a copy of his Dram Fools CD. I also had some Season’s Greetings cards printed.

JHM: I posted an amazing photo of a volcano; and considered the effect of fog. World events: There was a powerful earthquake in two provinces of Afghanistan; and the New Glenn rocket booster landed for the first time.

< Oct 2025 – Dec 2025 > (Jump to 2011)

August 2025

We visited The Farmer’s dog with our friends Kevin, Lariana, and her son Ruben from St Neots. They were with us for a few days so we introduced them to Cirencester and visited a number of other places in the area as well.

We visited Bourton-on-the-Water which Kevin remembered from previous visits, and walked through the pretty village of Lower Slaughter nearby with its picturesque water mill. We strolled around Stow-on-the-Wold too.

Our annual family holiday in the Lake District let us explore more of the lovely countryside from a grand old house near Keswick. The photo shows kites flying and on the ground at Maryport on the north-west coast, with the southern coast of Scotland visible across the Solway Firth.

JHM: I wrote about a moving experience; and about how things went pear-shaped. World events: The 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup opened in England; and at the 2025 Russia–United States Summit, US president Donald Trump met Russian president Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska.

< Jul 2025 – Sep 2025 >

February 2025

I continued taking photos of anything and everything that looked interesting to me. I started when I was nine and have no intention of giving up!

The heat pump was working part of the time but the house was not really warm, we were still not fully understanding how to get the best out of it. Jordan (the installation team manager) popped in to take a look and found the hot water and hallway thermostats were incorrectly wired so when hot water was demanded, the house got warm and when the house was cold the water heating came on. Problem solved!

Donna and I went to Cheltenham for a meal at Nandos and to watch A Complete Unknown, the film about Bob Dylan. I love Dylan’s music and the words are often clever, but I’ve never liked his character, and the film reinforced that.

The world political situation seemed to be more broken than I’ve ever seen it. Donald Trump and JD Vance remain serious threats to American democracy, Russia continues to make life hard for Ukraine, but there are growing hints that the alarm is producing some useful changes in European cooperation and spending on defence.

JHM: I wrote about Knightstone Causeway; and my breakfast. World events: Donald Trump announced that the United States would take control of the Gaza Strip in an agreement with Israel; while Ukraine halted the flow of Russian gas following the expiration of a five-year transit deal and became a state party in the International Criminal Court.

< Jan 2025 – Mar 2025 >

February 2024

I was still transcribing Dad’s diaries at this time, to make them potentially available to the entire family as PDFs. I was also busy scanning Judy’s old 35 mm transparencies and delivering some leaflets for the Lib Dems.

We visited Batsford Arboretum, the photo shows a drift of snowdrops and a group of Wollemi pines (Wollemia nobilis) showing signs of more maturity than we’d seen previously.

Peter Scott’s house

We visited Slimbridge on 12th, which we very much enjoyed although it was horrendously busy with so many families with children. I recognised the house built by Sir Peter Scott which I’d seen decades ago with Pete Landless.

JHM: I wrote two articles about the continuing innovation in the war in Ukraine; and causes for concern and hope in the war as well. World events: There was a presidential election in Azerbaijan; and another in Pakistan.

< Jan 2024 – Mar 2024>

February 2021

At the beginning of the month I enjoyed a good walk around Cirencester, returning via The Beeches and Queen Anne’s Road where we lived until I was 11-years-old, and spotting many of the old, familiar places. The Golden Farmer where the sign showed a divided face as a farmer in daytime on the left and a highwayman with a black mask on the right (now Golden Farm Inn). I traced the footpath from our old house at 17 Queen Anne’s Road past the Ayre’s and Mrs French’s bungalow on the right (that was not her surname but her nationality!) and the stub of the path now cut off by the by-pass and on up the hill to the little shop at the top.

The second photo shows flooding in the car park at the back of the Corinium Hotel (used to be Corinium Court). I had my first COVID-19 vaccination on 5th at Cirencester Hospital and new cases were falling quite quickly by this time in Cotswold District.

My new Onyx BOOX reader arrived; I was soon able to get Google Play books and Amazon books opening in the web browser as well as viewing other web sites. It was a grey scale screen of course, but readable at night with a backlight adjustable from bluish through white to orange, so good for reading in an subdued orange when I couldn’t sleep. I soon found it almost indispensable, given that Donna needed more hours of sleep than I did.

World events: COVID-19 pandemic: The number of COVID-19 vaccinations worldwide exceeded 100 million; and The UAE’s uncrewed Hope spacecraft became the first Arabian mission to enter orbit around Mars.

< Jan 2021 – Mar 2021 >

February 2016

I was busy with several life transformation groups (LTGs) in and around St Neots at this time. These are a way of focusing on changing our lives rather than just learning more facts about church through Bible Study. These groups tend to be two or three men or two or three women digging into what it means to be disciples, not growing in knowing stuff, but growing in doing stuff. We would aim to read around 20 to 25 chapters of the Bible during the week, and meet for about 30 minutes.

They worked really well but when we moved to Cirencester they stopped because the friends I’d been working with were now 2½ hours drive away. Keeping them really small makes them quite intimate, but mixing men and women in a group this size can be unhelpful. If a fourth member is added, the aim becomes producing two groups of two within a few weeks rather than staying together as a larger group indefinitely. Sometimes we did CO2 as well or instead (Church of Two). These meetings were briefer (5 minutes per person) but we met daily and included elements called Virkler (listening to the Spirit) and SASHET (exploring our current emotions). We met at home or in a coffee shop, often at Costa (as in the photo), or at Caffe Nero.

There was a lot going on in the Small Group around this time too. Carolyn had a specific word for me, saying that I feed people spiritually, and just like feeding the fish in our conservatory pool, they come up to the surface to take a look. She also said that I was weighed down by something and should let it go and this encouraged me because I’d been feeling for a time that I should leave Small Group and move on with the primary task he’d given me of feeding people spiritually.

John decided to sell the model steam engine built by his father so I helped him get it over to Cheffins auction rooms in Cambridge who suggested offering it in their steam and machinery sale on 16th April.

We spent a few days in the little villlage of Hambledon (near Chichester) and visited RAF Tangmere, Arundel Cathedral, Butser ancient Farm, a National Trust property at Hinton Ampner, and Fishbourne Roman Palace, all of them fascinating to see.

JHM: I wrote about shoals and flocks; and about swimming in harmony. World events: North Korea launched Kwangmyŏngsŏng-4 (a reconnaisance satellite) into space, widely condemned as a long-range ballistic missile test; and Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill signed an Ecumenical Declaration in the first meeting of leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches since their schism in 1054.

< Jan 2016 – Mar 2016 >

February 2011

Heading out early for a walk on 8th February on a foggy morning I was delighted to see a foggy sunrise over a period of time. It was a magical sight, a wonderful combination of the orange glow of returning daylight with the mystery and hidden distance of fog. Wow!

Later in the month we drove over to Moggerhanger Park to see the snowdrops, They were beautiful as always, of course. Scattered through the woodlands in amazing drifts, to be followed later in the season by similar drifts of fragrant bluebells.

JHM: I wrote about an easy prayer turned hard; and about hearing and doing. World events: The First Libyan Civil War began; and a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand.

February 2006

< Jan 2011 – Mar 2011 > (Jump to 1971) (Jump to top)

We had snowdrops flowering that we bought from Anglesey Abbey and planted last year. I set up our new NTL broadband router and Wi-Fi system and got it all working, such a great improvement on the old dial-up networking.

We flew to Florida on 10th, and Earl picked us up from west Palm Airport, and on 12th after settling in at Steph and Earl’s, I astonished Dad by calling him from their back garden for a short chat! On 15th we drove north to Melbourne to visit my cousin Jill and her partner Marcia.

World events: The 2006 Winter Olympics were held in Turin, Italy; and the 2006 al-Askari mosque bombing, the attack on the shrine in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, sparked an escalation of sectarian violence in Iraq resulting in full-scale war.

< Jan 2006 – Mar 2006 >

February 2001

This screenshot from my PC at Unilever shows some interesting features from 25 years ago. The main window with a background image of St Neots Market Square and the clock in the lower left is from Windows NT running on my desktop work PC. There are also two web browser windows open, an early version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. One of these is displaying my personal email service provided by Yahoo! The Web Team page was an Internal Unilever site containing work information for the team I was part of.

The remaining window with a darker green background and the name ‘Oak’ repeated in rows and colmns was a VNC window displaying a virtual desktop from one of our web servers so that we could access it without having to be physically present in the server room. There are two windows open on ‘Oak’, one displaying users and groups on the server, the other a DOS command window being used to manage the ‘Oak’ server.

The combination of local access and remote access all in overlapping windows on my office desktop was incredibly useful and fairly cutting edge at the time.

At home our new bathroom was being installed and I retaxed Alex, our Citroen Xantia, on 9th February. You can see it in the image on the right and view the new tax disc as well.

World events: Ariel Sharon of the Likud party was elected Prime Minister of Israel; and The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touched down on 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

< Jan 2001 – Mar 2001 >

February 1996

I was still serving on the Institute of Arable Crops Research (IACR) cross-site IS/IT development project. The purpose of this was to build a common computing system covering the computing needs of both Rothamsted (RES) and Long Ashton (LARS). Realistically this largely meant closing down the LARS infrastructure and extending Rothamsted’s to cover both sites. The initial steps were to add TCP/IP networking to the LARS PCs, remove the LARS Novell server and replace it with a UNIX networking system. It was a lot of work, a significant upheaval for LARS staff, and all for no reason: at the time we didn’t know that LARS would be closed down in 2003 and the remaining staff moved to Rothamsted or elsewhere.

During February Donna Hudson started coming to some of the meetings with Tony, Faith, Paul and Jenny. And Donna and I talked a lot during the lunch breaks at work. We became more and more fond of one another and by the end of the month Donna had met Debbie and Beth, my three sisters, and Mum and Dad as well. Paz also came into the picture, as Beth invited him to join us for pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and we all got along well together.

World events: Cuban fighter jets shot down two American aircraft; and the first Pokémon game was released in Japan.

< Jan 1996 -Mar 1996 >

February 1991

The LARS Sytem continued to evolve and make our Viglen 286 desktop computers more usable and convenient for staff. I was developing a series of compiled Pascal programs, utilities, and batch files to fill some of the gaps in MS-DOS, for example a command line utility to alert to low disc space that could be called from the DOS prompt and also from a batch file during system startup. Another one was a unit conversion utility which I developed to run from the DOS prompt or from Windows.

We had a moderate fall of snow and some rather cold days, the photo is from 9th February after putting out food for the local birds.

The second image shows a greenfinch checking out peanut seeds that Judy had hung from Berberis branches. These were very popular!

World events: The Provisional IRA launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting; and Saddam Hussein announced the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

< Jan 1991 – Mar 1991 > (Jump to 1971) (Jump to 2011)

February 1986

This little painting was made by my daughter, Beth. I think she has the original, I passed it on after I scanned it. It was almost certainly painted at school as it has been marked B.J. (Beth Jefferies) in the lower right corner. I can only guess the date so it probably doesn’t belong in February 1986 but could be quite a lot earlier. But it deserves to appear in a Blast from the past post somewhere.

So here it is. Oh, and thanks Beth, love from Daddy!

Around the same time I was running a little project at home, writing educational software to run on the Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum computers. These were sold by mail and this little business slip went out with them as well. When the software came to the notice of my brother-in-law, Peter Holme, he saw more potential for professional development and marketing and developed a company, ComputerTutor that eventually got these and other programs into high street outlets like WHSmiths.

Debbie was nearly 11-years-old, and Beth 7¾, both still at school in Yatton.

World events: Pixar was founded by John Lasseter and Steve Jobs; and the Soviet Union launched the Mir space station.

< Jan 1986 – Mar 1986 >

February 1981

Debbie was learning to ride her bike, we’d bought a rather battered old bike in the autumn, I took it apart, resprayed the frame in a metallic blue, put on some new white tyres, and polished up the chrome parts. Reassembled it looked pretty good and we wrapped it up as Debbie’s main Christmas present. By mid-February she was becoming good enough to stay upright most of the time but I still needed to run alongside to guard against major wobbles.

During the month we drove over the Severn Bridge and along the Wye Valley to explore the atmospheric ruins of Tintern Abbey. We had so much more freedom now with our own set of wheels, a Morris Marina we called Excellent Car Jefferies (so-named because the registration number was XCJ 508K). You can see the car on the left in the photo of Debbie on her bike.

World events: Pope John Paul II visited the Philippines; and a powerful earthquake hit Athens.

< Jan 1981 – Mar 1981 >

February 1976

This photo was taken in Cirencester, probably by Mum, but possibly by Judy. It shows my Dad filming by the lake in the Abbey Grounds and I’m guessing it was Feb 1976 though it’s impossible to be sure.

Debbie was 11 months old in February, and it was exciting to think she’d have her first birthday in mid-March. Church life was still a mix of home meetings with Tony and Faith Moulin, and Paul and Jenny Shortman along with some other friends as well as Sunday morning meetings at Horsecatle Chapel.

I was working at Long Ashton Research Station, cycling in and out each day from our house in Yatton. I will never forget on my way into Bristol one lunchtime, a lorry pulled out onto Brunel Way from a slip road near Bower Ashton. The driver didn’t see me and physically pushed me into the next lane. I managed to stay on the bike and move further into the right hand lane which, fortunately, was empty at the time.

World events: The 1976 Winter Olympics began in Innsbruck, Austria; and the Spanish Armed Forces withdraw from Western Sahara.

< Jan 1976 – Mar 1976 >

February 1971

John Jefferies & Son Ltd might have released their 1971 vegetable seeds catalogue around this time. The photo shows one of the pages from it.

Judy’s lab assistant job with Mike Tanner at Bristol University was going well. She soon made friends with a young woman her age who worked for another biochemist in the same lab. It was good to begin to make some friends; I, too, was meeting people at work that I enjoyed spending time with, though we were only on smiling and ‘Good morning’ terms with a few people where we lived.

Our car, ‘Pumpkin’ had some rusty spots, some of them quite serious, but the engine that Dad and I had rebuilt continued to run very nicely, and the gearbox and transmission had given us no trouble. It continued to pass MOT tests with little difficulty.

World events: Rolls-Royce went bankrupt and was nationalised; and Apollo 14 landed on the Moon, getting the programme back on track following the Apollo 13 failure.

< Jan 1971 – Mar 1971 > (Jump to 1951) (Jump to 1991)

February 1966

Judy sent me a valentines card (I sent her one too, of course. The photo shows the contents, in verse and wordy (normal in those days), but the sentiments were heart-felt. Cards have changed since 1966 but falling in love never grows old. We were both still at Cirencester Grammar School where we had met. I was in the Upper Sixth and Judy was still Lower Sixth so we were able to see each other almost every day.

My Irish grandmother turned 68-years-old on 9th, which to me at the time seemed really ancient (though my English grandmother was a good deal older).

World events: The Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon; and the Australian dollar was introduced at a rate of 2 dollars to the pound.

< Jan 1966 – Mar 1966 >

February 1961

I believe this photo was taken in February 1961 in the room we always knew as ‘the back sitting room’. Mum is knitting, Cindy has a pen in her hand so was writing, Chloe the dog and Figum the cat are on the floor enjoying the warmth from the fire. My school photo is on the mantelpiece along with a teacup, and my school cap is on the back of the sofa. That’s quite a lot of information from one very poor quality B&W photo.

We were fortunate to live just along the road from the school. Even when it was cold and wet it was a very short walk. I was in my second year at the Grammar School so Cindy was probably still at Querns Junior Scool at this time.

World events: The United States tested its first Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile; and the USSR launched Venera 1 towards Venus.

< Jan 1961 – Mar 1961 >

February 1956

At this time I was just 7½-years-old, as I write I’m 77½ though the halves don’t mean much any more! I was in the third year at Querns School and we were living in a rented council house at 17 Queen Anne’s Road. I remember Mum and Dad had a series of small, round tobacco tins labelled for various household bills that would fall due at known times in the future – rent, Pearl Life Assurance, electricity, coal, water etc. The man who collected the rent was a Mr World so when he appeared the relevant tin was raided to pay him.

World events: The British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean (missing for five years) appeared in the Soviet Union; and Nikita Khrushchev attacked the veneration of Joseph Stalin, in a speech.

< Jan 1956 – Mar 1956 >

February 1951

The image shows a page from The Radio Times, kept by Dad because it has a useful list of station wavelengths and frequencies. The adverts on the left of the page are interesting, coal was in short supply and the public were being asked to reduce energy usage, and it seems that wives (and never husbands) buy the tooth brushes. As always, click the image to enlarge it.

World events: The United Nations General Assembly declared China to be an aggressor in the Korean War; and the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, limiting Presidents to two terms.

< Jan 1951 – Mar 1951 > (Jump to 1930s) (Jump to 1971)

February 1946

On 6th February Mike and two others set off at 07:30 in an Austin 10 for the Western Ghat mountains inland of Bombay but turned back after four hours as the roads were so bad. There were some radar units up there that they had intended to visit. They arrived back at 17:00 pm, tired after 10 hours driving.

Mike had been expecting to be sent to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), but on 7th learned this would not happen after all.

Lilias had been hoping to go to Belfast to find work, but the family disagreed with this and clearly didn’t want her to go.

On 14th, Mike took a convoy of two Austin trucks to Worli, a peninsula (on the left of the map) that today is within the city limits of Mumbai but in 1946 would have been a country district. From 19th onward there was a revolt by the Royal Indian Navy and the trouble spread so RAF personnel were confined to camp. There was fighting in Bombay and civilian rioting on 21st.

On 26th February Mike heard he was to go to Singapore about a week later.

World events: ENIAC, an early general-purpose electronic computer, was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania; and Juan Perón was elected president of Argentina.

< Jan 1946 – Mar 1946 >

February 1941

There’s not enough information to write something for every month in the 1940s. Mike’s diaries start in January 1943, so for January 1940 to December 1942 I’ll write about things I know, or draw on dated photos and documents. Sometimes I might use a photo or document with a guessed date.

Penicillin was discovered to have anti-bacterial action and was used for the first time to help a patient with a serious facial infection. Unfortunately he died because there was insufficient supply, the infection improved greatly but then worsened when the penicillin ran out. A few months later, another patient’s life was saved and as production ramped up, penicillin saved many lives, at first mainly wounded soldiers during the second world war.

World events: In Libya, Benghazi fell to the British Western Desert Force; and Albert Alexander, a patient at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, England, became the first person treated with penicillin intravenously, he responded well, but there was insufficient of the antibiotic to cure him.

< Jan 1941 – Mar 1941 >

World events (February 1931): Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called for rapid industrialisation, arguing that only strong industrialised countries would win wars, while “weak” nations would be beaten. (February 1936): Radium E (bismuth-210) became the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.

1930-1939

Anything that appears in this section will have some connection with the 1930’s but may extend beyond the decade to follow a meaningful topic more fully.

Last time we took a look at Cirencester’s Carnival and mentioned that the procession passed along Victoria Road. The photograph this time shows the procession passing Churnside (37 Victoria Road). The undated photo was taken from the garage roof of 37 Victoria Road must be late 1930s or early 1940s based on the clothes people are wearing. And the number of young men suggests it was not taken during World War 2, so either just before the war or shortly thereafter.

<< 1930s >> (Jump to 1800s) (Jump to 1951)

1900-1929

As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.

Herbert Cyril Jefferies was my Dad’s Uncle, his father’s younger brother. He was born on 21st October 1880. The photo shows him as a young man, perhaps in his twenties, the family home was 10 Tower Street, just across the street from the Jefferies nursery in the town of Cirencester. At Herbert’s baptism his father, Edward, was described as a seedsman.

Herbert remained a batchelor and was the Proprietor and Managing Director of the the Ross Gazette, a newspaper in Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire.

Family connections:

Parents – (Edward and Mary Elizabeth Jefferies [nee Hedges])
Born – 21st October 1880
Died – 27th August 1944
Siblings – Edward Arthur (1879), Elsie Margaret (1883), Edward (1849), Julia Anne (1851), Henrietta (1854), Agnes Henrietta (1855)
Children – None

Obituary:

THE ROSS GAZETTE 31 AUGUST 1944 (Verbatim)

MR. H. C. JEFFERIES

The many readers of the “Ross Gazette,” will learn with regret of the death of Mr. Herbert C. Jefferies, of Mervyn Lodge, Ashfield, Ross, following an operation which took place at Salisbury on Sunday last. He was a native of Cirencester.

It was in 1910 that Mr. H. C. Jefferies came to Ross. taking over the the printing and stationery business of the late Mr. H. N. Powle, and in 1915 the business was amalgamated with that of the Ross Gazette Ltd., Mr. Jefferies becoming a director of the company. He later became managing editor, a position from which he retired in 1943. Since his retirement Mr. Jefferies had not enjoyed the best of health, but his death came unexpectedly.

Mr. Jefferies was a man of many outstanding qualities, and he always took a keen interest in the social and religious life of the town. For many years he was secretary of the Ross Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society and the majority of the inhabitants of the town and district will remember his talented portrayals of various characters in their yearly performances. Apart from the Operatic Society, Mr. Jefferies was a keen musician, and in this direction was a member of the Ross Orchestral Society, which he also served as honorary secretary.

In the sporting world he played regularly up to recent years for the first eleven of the Ross Cricket Club, and was a liberal supporter of the several Rugby and Association Football clubs in the district; in fact there were few if any, clubs or institutions that did not get his personal or practical support.

Mr. Jefferies was a devout churchman, a member of the parish church choir and Parochial Church Council, a licensed lay reader, and a representative on the Ruri-decanal Conference. During the last war he served with the Royal Flying Corps.

His kindly disposition and generous nature won for him a wide circle of friends, who will all join in a sincere expression of sympathy to his sister and other members of the family.

The funeral takes place at Watermoor Church, Cirencester, at 11 a.m. on Thursday.

An Appreciation (By a friend) – By the death of Mr. Herbert C. Jefferies, managing Editor of the “Ross Gazette,” musician, actor, and churchman, Ross has lost one of its most outstanding personalities of recent years. To those of us who knew him intimately his death will mean a great loss. In sickness he proved himself to be an unfailing friend, while in all walks of life his sole desire was to be of service to all. He was a man who possessed his pet hobbies, but his love of music, his desire to play his part in opera or drama was perhaps his outstanding characteristic. The many roles he played in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas produced by the Ross Operatic and Dramatic Society were the life and soul of many of those productions as all members of that Society will readily admit. On the cricket field he was equally as popular, while his interest in the youth of the town, in so many directions, was a great source of encouragement to all. Then again, there was no more loyal churchman than Herbert Jefferies. His services as a chorister, lay reader, and councillor were at the beck and call of all who needed them. Indeed, one can almost go so far as to say that it was his earnestness in these spheres of his life that led to his ultimate break-down in health. He held very decided opinions on many debatable subjects, but he never allowed these views to interfere with his friendships. Although for just over twelve months he was prevented from continuing his good works through health reasons, his personality and his companionship will be greatly missed. Now that he has passed beyond the veil may he find eternal rest.

World events (February 1921): The Democratic Republic of Georgia was invaded by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (February 1916): The Battle of Verdun began in France. (February 1911): The first official air mail flight was made by Henri Pequet in British India. (February 1906): Pope Pius X published the encyclical Vehementer Nos, denouncing a 1905 French law on Separation of Church and State. (February 1901): U.S. Steel was incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan, the first billion-dollar corporation.

<< 1900-1929 >>

1800-1899

My grandfather, Edward Arthur Jefferies was born in 1879 at 10 Tower Street, Cirencester, his parent’s home. The photo shows him in Watermoor Cottage as a young man playing chess with his younger brother Herbert. Edward is facing the camera.

He married Norah Monger in 1905 and they moved to a newly built home, Churnside 37 Victoria Road, just two streets away from his birthplace at 10 Tower Street. Edward (also known as Ted and sometimes Guv (short for The Governor) worked in the family business with his Uncle William, when William died he took over the management entirely and while his sons were in the armed services during World War 2 he must have struggled to cope.

Family connections:

Parents – Edward Jefferies and Mary Elizabeth Jefferies (née Hedges)
Born – 25th June 1879 (baptised 16th July 1879)
Died – 22nd August 1959
Married – 6th September 1905 to Norah Monger of Maidestone, Kent
Siblings – Herbert Cyril (1880), Elsie Margaret (1883)
Children – John Edward (1907), Richard William (1910), Robert Arthur (1912), Edward James Michael (1926)

Memories of Grandpa – Because he was my grandfather and died shortly after my 11^th birthday, I have personal memories of him so I’ll share a few of those here. I know he was always very fond of me as he had also been of my father. I think he had a very soft spot for babies and young children, and he was always sympathetic, helpful, patient, and wise as well as affectionate. I remember how he used to love sitting and reading to me and my sister Cindy, he would read anything that seemed suitable for whatever age we happened to be at the time. When I was young I loved Noddy books. Enid Blyton had written large numbers of these illustrated, short stories. He would often give me a new one as a birthday or Christmas present. And he would write short stories and illustrate them himself in pen and ink.

I remember playing darts with him at Churnside (37 Victoria Road, Cirencester), his family home where he lived from 1905 until his death in 1959. Sometimes my darts would miss the board altogether and he’d chuckle and exclaim, ‘That was a bad un’. Sometimes one of my darts would hit the board cleanly and stick (That was a good un’!) There was a drinks cabinet at the end of the room (a small extension built of thick concrete as an air raid shelter during World War 2). On top there was always a soda syphon and sometimes Grandpa would make himself a whisky and soda. He also liked an egg nog from time to time (Granny would always make those in the kitchen). He drank the egg nog from an old-fashioned scalloped beer glass, and I was always given a small amount in a miniature glass of the same style.

He had a grey Austin A40 ‘Somerset’ and a chauffeur to drive it and would sometimes take me with him on tours around the Jefferies nurseries. Each nursery had a character all its own, and at each place we’d get out, walk around, inspect things carefully, and then Grandpa would have a conversation with the foreman. We would visit Siddington and Somerford Keynes nurseries in particular with just occasional trips to Tower Street and Watermoor. I don’t recall going to the London Road rose nursery or the tiny Abbey nursery with him. I do remember visits to the Cattle Market on Tetbury Road, just beyond Cirencester Town Station. He would talk with the farmers there, doing deals on wheat, barley and oat seed, and no doubt mustard and other seeds too. I remember sheep and cattle in the many pens at the market.

Another memory is wearing my blue Noddy hat with its brass bell and Grandpa wearing his Big Ears hat (red but no bell). Granny had made them from crepe paper and we’d pretend to be Noddy and Big Ears from the Enid Blyton books.

Once, apparently, Grandpa was at the Cattle Market discussing business with his farmer friends and I was taken up to meet him there (I don’t remember this, but my parents related the story to me years later). I spotted him from a distance and ran up to him shouting, ‘Big Ears! Big Ears!’ The farmers would have chortled at this, but ‘Big Ears’ Grandpa didn’t bat an eyelid, it seems, and I was greeted with the usual grin and a big hug.

On another occasion, arriving back at Churnside, but still sitting in the car with the chauffeur, Grandpa turned around in the front seat and told me to never run with a stick in my mouth. He was unusually serious and opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue to show me a scar, still visible in old age, where he’d fallen over with a stick in his mouth and it had caused what was clearly quite serious damage. I certainly didn’t run with anything in my mouth after seeing Grandpa’s scarred tongue!

No doubt there are many other memories of my Grandpa, but these are the ones that come to mind as I write.

World events (February 1881): Kansas became the first U.S. state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages. (February 1861): The Confederate States of America was formed. (February 1841): The Act of Union (British North America Act, 1840) was proclaimed in Canada. (February 1821): In Mexico, Peace between viceroyalty troops and insurgents was proclaimed in Mexico (the Embrace of Acatempan). (February 1801): William Pitt the Younger resigned as UK Prime Minister.

<< 1800-1899 >> (Jump to top) (Jump to 1930s)

1500-1799

The Abbey – In 1500 Cirencester’s Augustinian Abbey wielded significant power over the town and its citizens. The Abbey’s dissolution under Henry VIII in December 1539 was a very major change, making both land and property available for alternative uses. Some buildings (especially the great Abbey Church, the cloisters and the monk’s cells, accomodation and refectory were considered surplus to requirements and were demolished with the materials sold for alternative use. The fishing pond was retained and can still be seen in the Abbey Grounds park.

The flour mills, bakeries and breweries were retained for use by the town’s inhabitants, most of these facilities being bought by relatively wealthy residents including Richard Basing (a wine merchant). The Crown took around 123 tons of valuable lead from the roof and retained fixtures and fittings from the Abbey church as well as the Abbott’s mansion. By 1541 the Abbey had been completely broken up. Sir Anthony Hungerford and Robert Strange (previously the Abbott’s bailiff) owned and managed much of what remained.

Growing nursery stock – The plant nursery business in Cirencester was founded in 1795 by Richard Gregory, predominantly growing trees initially. In those days, the town was still quite small and compact, its development to the west constrained by the Bathurst Estate and farmland to the east and south, and by the old Abbey lands which included today’s Abbey Grounds park in the town centre and extensive farmland along the Churn Valley on the east and south sides of the town. Some of the nearby villages that are now part of the urban area were still entirely separate in the late 1700s and before. Stratton, Watermoor and Chesterton were all outside the town; Preston and Baunton remain so today.

Gregory’s nursery was successful and amongst other staff he took on a Nursery Manager, John Jefferies from Somerford Keynes. Later, because of a bad debt, Gregory declared himself bankrupt and had to leave the area. John Jefferies was advised to continue running the nursery business, and later took ownership.

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Partying with an evangelist

A street party (Wikimedia)

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When apostles and prophets have done their stuff it’s high time for evangelists to join in. I don’t want to push the idea of a sequence too far; ideally we should be aiming for a situation where all the APEST gifts are operating simultaneously and abundantly, all at the same time. I’ve been using the analogy of building a house where apostles lay foundations and prophets make sure the structure is straight and true, but it should be very clear from Paul’s letters to the Corinthian church that all of the gifts need to work continuously. Unlike a house, when foundations are laid once and the stonework is raised once, for church to function as Jesus intended these are ongoing requirements. It’s not just urgent repair work as in Corinth, but it’s a living process of constant adjustment and calibration.

Following the apostle and prophet articles, the focus this time is on the gift of an evangelist – what it looks like, how it arises, how it affects a person who is expressing it, and how the rest of us can relate to it, support it, and, as an expression of church, benefit from it. Next time we’ll examine the gift of a shepherd in much the same way.

No room for wriggling

We all have this gift to some degree. You cannot be like Jesus without having some level of evangelist about you, so you can’t wriggle out of it completely. Jesus is the origin and source of all the gifts we’re discussing. If you believe him and follow him then Christ is in you. And if the perfect evangelist is in you then you are going to reflect that at some level. You may or may not be evangelical, but you will most certainly be somewhat evangelistic in character and nature.

We need to know how to recognise an evangelist, and that’s really not too difficult, but before I consider that I’d like to clear up a common misconception that can cause some confusion. There’s a (mistaken) understanding among many Christians that evangelists go out and convert people from whatever they currently believe. But that’s not quite right. It’s apostles who are called to go out and start new churches, very much following in Paul’s footsteps. But evangelists have a slightly different role. The Greek word is euangelion (εὐαγγέλιον). It’s a word of two parts εὐ which means ‘good’ hence a eulogy is a good word, and αγγέλιον or angelion meaning ‘messenger’, we get our words ‘angel’ and ‘angelic’ from this same Greek origin. So an evangelist is a ‘bringer of good news’, not only in the narrow sense of someone who preaches the good news but more in the sense that an evangelist is someone who is good news.

Think of an evangelist as first and foremost a ‘people person’. They get their energy from being in the crowd. They love to talk, they smile and laugh a lot, they’re fun to be around, they tend to be party people. Hence this article’s title Partying with an evangelist. Evangelists draw people in – ‘Come and have a drink with us.’Have you tried this amazing dessert?’ ‘Fantastic dog, what breed is it?’ ‘You’re looking really happy, it’s so good to see that’. They like to tell stories and will probably have everyone in stitches, and if you have a story they will want to hear it and will find comfortable ways to draw it out if they can. People gather around evangelists in a very natural way, and before long an evangelist will be telling them about things Jesus did in their lives, or asking them if they’ve ever met him in a meaningful way themselves.

An undemanding and comfortable gift

Where the gift of evangelist is operating, you’ll find a group of people who are both engaging and engaged. That’s why it’s such an important gift for joy, balance, and growth of the church (ekklesia) the called-out community of Jesus in a place. If we could only grasp and use this gift more fully, church would be the popular, local place for everyone to gather (not just believers). As always, Jesus has all of the gifts in a fullness we can never completely express. In part, that’s why the crowds followed him everywhere he went in Judea and Galilee – he was and remains really, really Good News! But I think I’ll leave Jesus as the fullest expression of the APEST gifts for a later article after we’ve worked through shepherd and teacher.

For now it’s enough to grasp that evangelists are about good news, not only in the message they bring but also in who they are (remember, who you are is far more fundamental than what you do).

On the more serious side

But there’s more to be said about the gift of evangelist. This gift to the body is not just about fun and being attractive and welcoming. Evangelistic people have a heart to welcome people, but they know the welcome should have the purpose of bringing people into Christ’s presence. They are passionate about this goal, but they also know they must bridge the huge gap that exists between ekklesia and the prevailing culture of the society beyond (and often it seems beyond the reach of) the church. But they also know that their particular gift can reach across that divide far more easily than the rest of us might think. Because the first step in reaching a person is to become a trusted friend.

The evangelist is propelled forward by a desire to see people come to know and trust Jesus and every opportunity to communicate the truth spurs them on. The evangelist may become impatient with slow processes and tend to be stronger at drawing in new believers than they are at discipling or teaching, those processes are not where their strengths lie.

In conclusion

One of the take-home messages from this article on the gift of evangelist is that we need to lighten up in church life and activity. We need a reputation of being the best and most sought after place and community in town! If this is not the way of things you may be lacking the gift of one or more evangelists. They’re there among you, but perhaps they’re regarded as lightweights, not learned enough, not Bible scholars or great preachers, not serious. Yet one of the reasons ordinary people avoid church is that it seems to be far too serious, dull, boring, a place for serious, dull, boring people. If this is how people see your church (or your small group), maybe you need to find the evangelists and apologise for suppressing them. Instead, invite them to lead a meeting or two, ask them to show you how you, too, could lighten up a bit. And if visitors are among you, for whatever reason, give the evangelists a bit of freedom.

This may not be the easiest of messages to hear, particularly because it is so rarely expressed or understood. Church was never meant to be a dull, hushed and deadly serious endeavour. Party food smells a great deal better and more exciting than the polish on Victorian church pews!

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See and hear with a prophet

Gratitude demands taking hold of whatever is being offered, unwrapping it, and finding out what it is for and how it works. It also involves actually trying it out, taking it for test runs, expressing it, seeing how others react to it.

An empty property

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We considered the gift of an apostle last time, so now we’ll look at the gift of a prophet. And let’s be clear, once again I’m not writing about an individual person here, we’re going to focus on the gift itself – what it looks like, how it arises, how it affects a person who is expressing it, and how the rest of us can relate to it, support it, and, as an expression of church, benefit from it. Next time we’ll take a look at the gift of evangelist in the same way.

Making it real

As with each of the service gifts, let’s begin by reminding ourselves that we all have this gift to some degree. You cannot be like Jesus without having some level of the prophetic. Some will have a high level of this gift, some may have it at a relatively minor level. And in all of us it will exist alongside various mixtures of the other four APEST gifts. But whatever the level – low, medium or high – the source remains the same, it always springs from the nature and heart of Christ himself. He provides all of the gifts as he thinks fit. Make this real for yourself, personally. Jesus has carefully chosen and bestowed these five gifts on you in whatever proportions will enable you to play your part in his ekklesia, his called and appointed community. He is special, but he has made you special too; whatever happens in your life, never forget that.

Remember that a gift requires activity from both the giver and the receiver. A gift that is offered but not taken is no gift at all; it never fulfils it’s purpose. Gratitude demands taking hold of whatever is being offered, unwrapping it, and finding out what it is for and how it works. It also involves actually trying it out, taking it for test runs, expressing it, seeing how others react to it. And to properly receive it you should also hug the giver, tell them how much you love their thoughtful gift and tell them how much you love them, the giver, too. That’s not a big ask when Jesus is the giver!

Seeing and hearing are words we focus on when we think of the gift of a prophet. But these words can easily mislead us as they have to do with eyes and ears whereas the prophetic gift is much more to do with spiritual awareness. Because of this it might help to think in terms of prophets communicating Papa’s thoughts and nature to anyone who will listen. Sometimes that’s about Father’s character, sometimes it’s about his heart or his will, or his purpose. It might sometimes involve a message from him to the church, to a particular person, or to the world in general. Prophecy tends to be declaratory. Because they are in touch with the heart of the Father, prophets are often very sensitive to wrong attitudes; things that he hates will be things the prophet also detests.

A demanding and uncomfortable gift

Prophets are highly sensitive to and outspoken about unjust behaviour, unjust words, unkindness and untruthfulness. They always point up to the Father too, to his character and nature and presence. They declare peace and long to see brothers and sisters living in peace. They want all people to be at peace with the Father in heaven and with one another. Prophets can make people feel uncomfortable, too much truth can be hard to assimilate and difficult to deal with. A prophetic person may seem to be over-demanding, pointing church towards Jesus too firmly, insisting on change right now. A half-hearted prophet is a contradiction in terms, they want to see change and they want it right away, not tomorrow or next week! So where a prophet is at work, and the hearers pay attention, people should be growing more Christlike in their thoughts and actions towards one another, towards Father, and towards the world. And because Jesus is sacrificial in nature, a growing willingness to be sacrificial will grow in and among the community that is church as well.

We should also think about how the gift of prophet fits with the gift of apostle that we considered before. First apostle, then prophet, wrote Paul. We saw previously that Apostle comes first, not in importance but in sequence, so in what sense does the gift of prophet come next? Well, if an apostle has been at work there will be an excellent foundation laid upon which church may be built. And the prophetic gift helps us build straight and true; standing firmly on the foundation already laid. In the early days of church construction it would be easy to come unstuck, a lot of people might be doing the best they can but without the ability to distinguish between what seems good (but might be unhelpful) and what is truly in line with Father’s vision and purpose. Having a prophet or two acting like plumblines and right-angled set-squares reveals where a wall is not quite vertical or a corner not at ninety degrees. And these details will matter as the structure grows in height and complexity, so prophets do indeed come after apostles though both are of equal (though different) importance and value.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?(1 Corinthians 12:27-30)

Notice that the quote from 1 Corinthians above is different from the list in Ephesians 4 that we looked at in the post on apostles. There’s a reason for that and we’ll investigate it later, but the first two items in the list are the same. Apostles first, then prophets. The paragraph below is copied from the previous part of this series. It bears repeating because it is so important.

Our mistake is to think that these are special roles that most of us are not called to. But the truth is subtly different. All of us have all five of these gifts, but to varying degrees. I might be strong in one and you might be strong in another. Most of us are reasonably strong in one or two, few of us are strong in all five. So what does that imply for his locally gathered people, the ekklesia (church) in a particular place. It implies that any gathered group of believers will have all five of the gifts in differing amounts – we will lack nothing! But it’s the togetherness in the church that ensures we lack nothing. We all need to do our bit.

So let’s get on with the process

Think again about the process of building a house, and how all the building skills and trades are required for success. We need apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to build a local expression of church. And all are present wherever people are meeting regularly with Jesus and hearing his call to go and make disciples, baptise them, and teach them to do everything that’s needed for the next generation. All five are present, but sometimes they are not active. And that’s usually because we don’t provide room for them.

Remember that ‘Church’ on Sunday and ‘Small group’ on another day are both fully ekklesia, they are both communities of people called out and following Jesus. All five of these gifts of service should be fully present and working every day in every size of community. If they are not, something is seriously wrong and we need to rethink our paradigms and change our approach. We are all required to carry out Jesus’ orders in the great commission and we will need all five gifts to be active in order to fully hear that commission, let alone carry it out.

If I’m not expressing something of all these gifts, and if I’m not hearing and seeing them all in others, regularly and often, then I’m either in a deficient environment or I’m not paying proper attention. I need to examine and change either my position or my activity (or both). Assuming apostles and prophets are being heard we now have a straight and true structure of living stones standing firmly and safely on a foundation called Jesus the Messiah. It’s ready for use, it’s fit for purpose, but it’s empty inside. In other words it’s fit and ready for the gift of an evangelist, the third in Paul’s list of the five gifts of service. (Eph 4:11-13)

Why are Paul’s two lists of gifts different?

I mentioned earlier that we’d investigate this puzzle. Since apostle and prophet are the first two in both lists, it hasn’t begun to matter yet, but soon it will. It will help to read Ephesians 4 in its entirety to remind yourself of the context in which Paul mentions these five gifts of service.

Evangelist is next in Paul’s list because the empty structure needs to be filled with people. Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians is about the community after it’s been filled with people, it’s more about the gifts needed to keep things on track, an important list for an ekklesia that seems to have been in danger of derailment followed by a serious crash. Paul compiles a different list because there’s a different need, these are gifts for keeping things going and correcting errors. These people needed the apostolic and the prophetic to straighten and strengthen the existing structure. Then they need teaching, they need a bit of a miracle and they need healing and helping and guidance. Paul wrote his letter to them to provide these very things, but he knows that all the resources needed are right there in the spiritual gifts of the Corinthians themselves too, if only they will stop squabbling and pay proper attention to one another.

Perhaps this is why Paul doesn’t mention the gift of evangelist in the Corinthian list. The ekklesia in Corinth doesn’t need filling with more new believers, it needs straightening out first and it needs recalibrating. It never hurts to ask ourselves the same questions, does our church or our small group need straightening out and/or recalibrating?

The photo at the top of this article shows an empty house, here it is again. This is a second-hand house as it happens, not a newly built structure. But that doesn’t matter, you don’t need a brand new build to feel the excitement and hope of moving into a new place and converting it to a home where the family can live and love, work and play, eat and drink, and invite visitors.

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Travelling with an apostle

We use the word ‘see’ in two very different ways – seeing with our eyes, but also seeing with our understanding. Do you see what I mean? And in that latter sense all believers have ‘seen’ Christ. Jesus himself made this clear to his disciples when he commissioned them in Matthew 28:19–20.

People shopping

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I’ve been thinking recently about who I am and what I do and I’ve been writing about those themes here on Journeys of heart and mind as you’ll know if you’ve been reading along.

The articles are not particularly about myself, but more about the principles. And if you’ve been reading the blog for quite a long time you probably also know that I’ve written in the past about the so-called APEST gifts – apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. These are not so much gifts to particular people, they are better described as gifts of people to the church. And in that sense I feel it’s high time I tried to convey more fully to my readers the nature of these gifts and the people who carry them and use them in the work of building and sustaining church life. As the church has aged over the 2000 years since Jesus was leading his disciples around Galilee and Judea, much has changed. Some of the original nature of church has been lost through a process of the encrustation of traditions and the discovery of ‘better’ ways of doing things. The APEST gifts have been one of the greatest of those losses.

We can’t do without these gifts, church doesn’t function well without them, yet most of the people who consider themselves to be part of church don’t understand them, don’t recognise them when they’re active and don’t value them. How can we value something we don’t understand?

So I’m going to attempt a pen portrait of each of these gifts, starting with apostle. And let’s be clear, I’m not proposing to write about an individual person here, I plan to write about the gift itself – what it looks like, how it arises, how it affects a person who is expressing it, and how the rest of us can relate to it, support it, and, as an expression of church, benefit from it. And next time we’ll take a look at the gift of prophet in the same way.

I used the ChatGPT AI to collect and organise some background information before writing this article. You can see the information it provided if you wish.

AI can do some great spadework, but it can’t think or make judgements, and it cannot respond to the Holy Spirit, so now we need to draw our own conclusions. I’ll explain what I think, and why.

First we need to give some thought to the difference, already mentioned, between the thinking, judging and responding to the Spirit that’s unavailable to AI. Also, AI has no experience of what it’s like to be in a church environment. Paul said that the gifts of people to the church involve first apostles, then prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers. (Ephesians 4:11-13)

In particular, let’s consider the idea that an apostle is someone who has seen the risen Christ, been directly commissioned by him and is sent to found and oversee communities. Does this allow for people in our generation to be apostles?

The answer to that, in turn, depends on what we mean by ‘seen the risen Christ’. We use the word ‘see’ in two very different ways – seeing with our eyes, but also seeing with our understanding. Do you see what I mean? And in that latter sense all believers have ‘seen’ Christ. Jesus himself made this clear to his disciples when he commissioned them. We are to do what the original twelve were told to do.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:19–20)

Notice particularly that Jesus says ‘teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you’. The word ‘everything’ here includes going, making disciples, baptising them and teaching them to do everything I commanded you’. This is a down the generations command, we can’t escape, we shouldn’t want to escape, this is Jesus’ command to us, to you, to me.

So are we all apostles? The shocking answer is yes, we should all be prepared to be apostles.

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built upuntil we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13)

Why does Paul say first apostles – most important perhaps? No, we are all important. Think about the process of building a house. First you need the skills and knowledge of foundation makers, then you need bricklayers, next roofers for the roof structure and then tilers to make the roof water tight. Then double-glazing people for the windows and external doors, carpenters to fit internal doors and partitions, kitchen fitters, plumbers, electricians and so on. Which of those are most important? The foundation layers?

No! You need them all to build a house, And in the same way you need apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to build a local expression of church. And all are present wherever people are meeting regularly with Jesus and hearing his call to go and make disciples, baptise them, and teach them to do everything that’s needed for the next generation. All five are present, but sometimes they are not active.

What does an apostle look like?

Don’t expect apostolic people to look different from anyone else; to identify the apostolic person you need to watch what they do and what drives them. Apostles are all-rounders, and for very good reason. Because they are driven to go out they need to have some level of competence at all five of the gifts of service. Until a new community of Jesus followers has been formed the other gifts will not be available, so as the one who goes out and teaches people to follow Jesus, the apostle has to provide a bit of prophecy, evangelism, shepherding and teaching. You can see this clearly in Paul’s life. As you read through Acts, Paul stops in one new town after another, acting in all these ways. But one of the things he is doing is noticing the gifts in other people and encouraging them to start using those gifts for themselves.

One identifying feature of apostolic people is that they go out, start something in one place, then go out again and start somewhere else. They have very itchy feet! And that’s usually because we don’t provide room for them. They build churches, then move on. They’re not interested in making the house cosy and comfortable, they don’t bother with carpets or furniture, the newly built house (or church) has inhabitants who will do all of that. So you could say an apostle is about structure, nor decor. But because good structure is important to them they’ll often come back for visits, to check things are still on track. Paul did that a lot.

Aiding and encouraging apostles

These people need support, sometimes in terms of money or practical help, and definitely in terms of encouragement. It’s good to ask them where they have been, who they’ve been meeting with, and what they plan to do next.

Listening to apostles

They’re here to help you grapple with problems concerning church structure and difficulties that may arise. Apostolic people can be very forthright in pointing out issues a local church may not have noticed, consider how Paul intervened when widows or orphans were not getting the help they needed or when he saw people gossiping or not focusing on things in the right way. Apostles tend to be sensitive to things that are not quite right, sometimes they may seem a little rude or pushy, but hear them out and take what they say seriously.

The photo at the top of this article shows shoppers in Western-super-Mare, here it is again; few of these people are followers of Jesus Christ, most of them are unaware of him or follow other faiths. Many are too busy to talk. What are we doing to reach them or engage them? We need to find effective, apostolic ways to do it – try the links below for some ideas.

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(See indexes on other topics)

This series of articles was sparked by a previous article intended for a chain blog. It might be worth reading it as an intoduction to this series.

Who am I? What do I do?

We have a character and a nature as well as a lifetime of learning and practice based on those things. My behaviour, and your behaviour (what we do) is based on our characters and our experiences (who we are).

A steel girder structure

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We’ve thought now about the foundations of church and we’ve considered things that are often seen as foundational, yet are not. These are important distinctions. This time we’ll start to consider what follows from this.

The most import thing that follows is recognising we are not here to tell one another what to do or how to go about it. I do what he calls me to do, and you do what he calls you to do. There are no hierarchies in church life. We all have a place and a function, but we don’t tell one another what to do, or when, or how. This doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it, encourager is a ministry gift and we’d struggle without it sometimes. But there are no people managers in church life, or rather, there is only one and his name is Jesus.

First I need to explain what I mean by ‘who we are’ on the one hand, and ‘what we do’ on the other. Basically, all people can be defined by who they are and by what they do. But to me, being is fundamental, doing much less so; I believe that’s true for all people because what we do springs ultimately from who we are.

If you want an example, look no further than Donald Trump. He bullies people and nations, he often seems to act or speak before thinking things through, and he’s always looking for ‘a deal’ that will benefit him, or the USA in some way. Why does he behave like this? Because it’s in his nature, and his lived experience is based on his nature as well, so what he does is natural but is also amplified and reinforced by a long life of living that way. Think about Claude Monet, Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Isambard Kingdom Brunel or Charles Dickens; their actions sprang from their personalities and natures; they began with character and their behaviour found its source there.

We’re all fundamentally like that. We have a character and a nature as well as a lifetime of learning and practice based on those things. My behaviour, and yours (what we do) is based on our characters and our experiences (who we are). I might be better than you at creating websites or conducting biological experiments. You will undoubtedly be better than me in other areas of life and ability, our abilities and actions spring from our natures and characters. What we do, and indeed what we can do comes from who we are, supported by much practice.

Who am I and what do I do in church?

Am I defined by what I do or by who I am? What makes me significant in church life? It’s no different than any other aspect of my life. I am defined by who I am.

I’m a child of my Father in heaven, I’m a brother of Jesus, I’ve been filled with his Spirit. I’m much more now than just a biological specimen in an organic body that will eventually fail. This is why I’m significant. If I matter to Papa, and to Jesus, and contain their Holy Spirit, and will live eternally in them and without the necessity of a physical body, what can I add to that by what I do?

So let’s look at the detail; what do I do? I continue for a little while longer in this frail, physical body. I read and study the Bible, I write blog posts that I hope may open up a new world for some of my readers, I care about my daughters and their families, I try to be a blessing and a guide and a help to my friends, to the people I meet as I live my life, I do my best to be kind and helpful to others. Is my significance in any of these things, or even all of it taken together? No, I don’t think it is. I do these things because of the significance I have in Christ. He is my source and my destination. He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end, I can do all things in him (Phil 4:13), and apart from him I can do nothing whatsoever (John 15:5).

Just as in the rest of life I’m defined by who I am, not by what I do. But over the two millennia between Jesus walking this Earth and my doing so, something fundamental has shifted. Jesus always taught that we’re defined by who we are. So did Paul, so did the other apostles. Paul wrote that he was laying foundations and that the only possible foundation is Christ (1 Cor 3:11). None of them said anything about studying the Bible, reading it every day, having clearly defined leaders, meeting in special buildings, or celebrating special days; all of that was invented by people who thought what we do matters and that right activity should be the guiding principle. But the people who had met with Jesus and been deeply changed by those encounters knew better! ‘I’m a son, a daughter, a much-loved child of Papa in Heaven. That’s the only thing that truly matters. That’s who I am, and I’ve been filled with the Spirit for my daily guidance, the Spirit of Christ is in me. Every day the Holy Spirit turns me to point in the right direction, and all I have to do is take a step. Tomorrow he’ll adjust the direction and I’ll take another step. I don’t need more detail than that, I don’t have to plan (though he does), but I just step out daily in faith.

Writing things down can clarify our thinking, it can be helpful and satisfying. That’s what’s happened here for me, I think. I’ve been making a conscious effort over the last few weeks to dig as deep as I can into this topic and try to come up with observations and understanding that will help me (and my readers) stand on the only foundation (Jesus) that is strong enough to provide his people with everything they need to grow and thrive and live in newness and freshness every single day. What we do can never support us in this, the best we can do will never be enough. we’re going to need the best that Jesus offers. Then, and only then, can church function as he intends it to. This, for me, is a statement of faith, I’ll go on standing on the only foundation worth choosing, that is… Jesus and when I finally leave this world, I will still stand on him and continue to draw from his strength and direction.

I don’t want to live my life according to tasks that need to be done (though there are always plenty of those!) I want to live my life out of Who I am in Christ. Isn’t that why John writes that ‘without Christ I can do … nothing’? And also Paul, that ‘I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me’?

I really do feel that this is essential for all my brothers and sisters also, but that it’s somehow been squeezed out of much of the teaching of the churches almost everywhere because doing the right things seems more important and more fundamental; in truth what we do is empty, it’s only as good as our own abilities and strengths and choices. I am not interested in programmes because I know that when I’m walking with Jesus, programmes are unhelpful. I believe, deep down, I’ve been called to recognise the difference between being and doing and share it whenever possible (not necessarily with words but perhaps more by behaviour). And I feel that as believers we are called to community so that we can listen to Jesus and the Spirit together and share what we are hearing and seeing day by day. And for that reason I greatly miss meetings where there are no leaders, and everyone present is waiting to hear what Jesus has to say about things and speak, sing, dance in whatever way will express what he is saying to his gathered body. Without us he is just a head, we are his body turning his thoughts and purposes into action. What future does a headless body have? None at all! No sense of direction, no sense of purpose, and quite unable to grow in the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity (or faithfulness), gentleness, and self control.

So for the next few weeks I plan to continue digging into this stuff as deeply as I can, sticking close to Jesus along the way. I’m going to live in the presence as fully as possible and make notes on anything I hear or see so I can revisit them later. Will you join me in standing on the one, true foundation who is Jesus? We can live this adventure together in him!

I pray for abundant grace and peace to all my readers here on Journeys of Heart and Mind. And I urge you all to pay more attention to who you are, and a whole lot less on your activities. You just need to know that there is someone in charge and that you are part of a team, you don’t need to understand the overall strategy, you do need to let yourself be turned to the right direction and then step out for today. And you need a very simple faith that expects the one in charge to adjust your direction again tomorrow so that you can take one more step. You don’t need to plan, you don’t need to understand, you don’t need to be aware of your role or the big picture.

A question

Ask yourself, ‘Who am I?’ (Don’t ask, ‘What am I doing?’) Also, ask Jesus, ‘Who am I?’ He knows the answer better than you. If you ask him, ‘What should I be doing?’ he’ll say , ‘Don’t worry about that, Papa will make sure you know when the time comes. Meanwhile you are my sister, my brother, we have the same Father. He guides me with a little nudge here and a word there. You know what it’s like when you listen to a piece of music on Spotify or iTunes. You click Start or press the button and nothing happens – until it does! There’s an opening chord, a drumbeat, and the melody begins. And you recognise it instantly and join in singing at the top of your voice. It’s the old, old song of love, joy and peace, patience, kindness, overwelming goodness and faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, the great and familiar song you remember so well from Galatians 5:22-23! You were not being asked to do something difficult or learn something new! You are learning, quite simply, to be obedient.

A dream?

One night a few weeks ago I had a dream, I rarely wake up remembering a dream, but this was an exception. I was living in Cirencester during the Second World War (I’m not that old, but in the dream it was during the war). I was working with a construction crew on a specialised site of some kind, we were building several structures out of steel girders according to a plan we’d been given. We had no idea what they were for. When these objects were finished we had to move them to Stamford in Lincolnshire.

I don’t know how well you know Stamford, but Donna and I had friends there when we lived in St Neots so we know the town well. It’s like a Cotswold town in many ways as it lies on the same band of oolitic limestone that is so familiar here in the Cotswolds. I have no idea how we moved these building-sized steel structures from Cirencester to Stamford! But it didn’t seem to be a problem in the dream.

But when we arrived we found a site already prepared where they were a perfect fit and a team of workers who were expecting them to arrive and knew exactly what to do with them. That was all we needed to know and we just travelled back to Cirencester understanding that there was a designer somewhere who’d done the planning and had made all the necessary arrangements.

Useful? Interesting?

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Community spirit

JDMC study guide

Wrong foundations

He’s the alpha and omega, first and last, top and bottom; the church begins in him and ends in him. He saves us and now supports us but he also commands us; we are complete in him, but without him we are – nothing.

Don’t build here!

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In the last part, we looked at the foundations of church, and the purpose of those foundations. We paid some attention to Paul’s teaching about Christ himself being the only possible and dependable foundation, this time we’ll look at some alternatives that have been tried over the last couple of thousand years, and why they haven’t worked.

Two thousand years ago

It’s worth noting, in passing, that although we don’t have precise dates, it’s now almost exactly 2000 years since Jesus began calling his first disciples from among the families of fishermen along the shores of Galilee. 2028, 2029 and 2030 will likely be 2000 years since he was walking in Galilee or Judea with his twelve closest followers, healing the sick, teaching the crowds, and dining with tax collectors or pharisees. What a thought!

Six months ago I wrote about the apostolic gift and how one of the main tasks and gifts of an apostle is to go out into the world to tell people about Jesus, explain his nature and character, call them to follow him, and show them how to meet together as a church and how to relate to church in other places. It’s a call to create networks of people following Jesus and communicating from group to group within the network. The foundation and the building standing on it are intimately connected; the church is structurally and functionally part of Christ.

Other possible foundations?

Paul tells us Christ is the only possible foundation, so the foundation can’t be anything that’s not a person. it cannot be faith, for example. it can’t be the bible. it can’t be doctrine, or teaching. Jesus himself is the way, the truth and the life, so these are also attributes of the foundation and therefore of church. Yet faith, doctrine and teaching have often been regarded as foundational. Well, they are not.

Nor can we regard praise or worship or prayer as the foundations of church. they are essential parts of what church does, but they don’t sustain us or provide us with any sort of support. No kind of activity can replace Christ, not bible reading or study, not the apostolic gift, not prophecy, not mission, not the work of a shepherd or of a teacher. All of these are useful, indeed I’d say essential, but they are not the foundation of church, merely useful outcomes and practices that will be found to be present wherever church is standing solidly on Christ.

Love, faith, and hope remain, so these are the only plausible candidates. but the greatest of these is love. Of these, only one is a person. We are told ‘God is love’. But Jesus and the father are one. Jesus said, ‘If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father’. so Jesus is the foundation, or Papa is, take your pick. Or the spirit is the foundation because he’s the spirit of Christ. Build on any other foundation at your peril! Anything else is merely shifting sand, not solid, reliable, load-bearing rock.

Think also about the foundation stone, the cornerstone. having laid a foundation first, the corner stone is large, heavy and sets the position and direction of all the other stones or bricks. all of these must sit centrally on the foundation, anything that veers off line will not be supported properly and will fail eventually. The cornerstone marks the position of the corner itself and the direction of two of the sides. It remains visible when the foundations themselves become hidden underground. And the cornerstone may have a carved inscription saying when it was laid and by whom. What are the words on the cornerstone of the church? Probably they would be along the lines of:

This stone was laid at the death and resurrection of Yahshua ha-Mashiach*. It stands upon the corner of the foundation and is the first visible evidence of the church being built from the living stones of his people. It will stand for all time.

*Yahshua ha-Mashiach, usually written Jeshua ha-Mashiach is Hebrew and translates into English as Jesus the Messiah or Jesus Christ or Jesus the Anointed One. The names Yahoshua (Hebrew) or Jeshua (Aramaic) literally mean Yahweh saves or Jehovah saves. Jesus is far more than just the foundation, he’s also the head of the body, head of the church. He’s the alpha and omega, first and last, top and bottom; the church begins in him and ends in him. He saves us and now supports us but he also commands us; we are complete in him, but without him we are – nothing.

Over the two millennia since Jesus’ time in a human body, church has repeatedly turned away from him and attempted to stand on almost anything else. How he must long for us to stop doing that!

Nor is church built on leadership of any kind other than that of Jesus himself. Yes, there have been great leaders in church history, but they have always pointed to Christ first and last; there is no room for emperors or kings, no need for governors or great statesmen.

Truly, as Paul taught, there is only one possible foundation – Jesus the anointed one. The only person who has ever been fully human yet at the same time also fully God.

Please note, I am not suggesting that Bible study or the gift of evangelist or various kinds of leaders are not useful, or unhelpful or wrong; I’m simply arguing that they are not in themselves foundational. If we use these things as foundations, the structure of church will crumble and everything we build will fall. And that is precisely as it ought to be.

Chain blog or a series?

I’m still hoping other writers will join me here in sharing their thoughts on What does Jesus mean to me and how do I respond to him? This is my third contribution and I’m not sure what to do for the best. Perhaps I’ll invite a further batch of possible contributors, perhaps I’ll also spin off my three contributions as a series on the topic Church foundations or something similar. Meanwhile don’t be shy, read the chain blog instructions and just start writing. You’ll help me out enormously! Thanks.

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Becoming like the foundation

In the process of standing on Christ we will see a revelation of who we are, because who we are matters far more than we sometimes think … There are no ifs and buts here. We live because he lives, we love because he first loved us.

Rubble foundation (Wikimedia)

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Rubble foundation (Click images to enlarge)

My previous post was intended to be the first part of a chain blog, but also sparked off this new series. Six months ago I wrote about the apostolic gift and how one of the main giftings of an apostle was to go out into the world to tell people about Jesus, teach them about his nature and character, call them to follow Jesus, and show them how to meet together as a church and how to relate to church in other places. It’s a call to create networks of people following Jesus and communicating from group to group within the network. Paul is one of the finest examples we have of an apostle at work in this way, but the best example of all is, of course, Jesus himself. He travelled much further than Paul to start his building work. He came all the way from sitting beside his Father in heaven, to call, teach and eventually die here on this little planet called Earth. Then he returned in order to send his spirit, his Holy Spirit, back here to be with his followers. The Holy Spirit began working in and through the disciples in Jerusalem, and a little later made himself known to Paul as he was travelling to Damascus. He called Paul as an apostle to go on spreading the message about Jesus further and further around the Mediterranean.

Paul not only took out the message about Jesus, he also understood much about being an apostle and how apostolic people were all called to continue this work. And Paul also understood a lot more about church life and the gifts of prophet, evangelist, shepherd and teacher and how these different giftings worked together. He also understood clearly that the first part of building something involves foundations. A lot of his letters are about this work of church building, guiding people in the difficult work of getting along together, discovering their giftings, and allowing the Holy Spirit to draw them deeper and further in works of service. All of this was important then – but it’s just as important today in the places we live our lives.

I want to look at this process in much more detail. We are not Jesus, we are not even Paul, is this something we dare to attempt? Is there any chance of success for you or me if we’re called to embark on this process? If you are called to reveal people to Christ, then yes, there’s every chance of success, if you are called to some other ministry gift then you’d be barking up the wrong tree! We must all do whatever we are called to do. But there is not one single Christian alive today who has no work to do and no gifting with which to do it. Unfortunately, because of the way we tend to build church today, we rarely think about foundations and it’s not hard to find people who do not feel or act as if they have work to do and the gifting necessary to accomplish it. For such people, church may feel like a social group, a place for study, or a weekly sing-along. But it’s not supposed to be like that. It is supposed to be a building site where something very special is being raised up on an even more special foundation. It should be a place busy with cement mixers, cranes for heavy lifting, and skilled workers well practised at all the necessary skills.

I might come back to the topic of callings and giftings later, but I feel I should address the idea of foundations first, so the rest of this post will be devoted to that topic. So what is a foundation for?

The purpose of foundations

When we talk about foundations, we are talking about digging holes in the ground and filling them with somethig solid and capable of bearing a heavy load without shifting or giving way.

Modern foundations are dug by a powered excavator and filled with freshly mixed concrete. But in Roman times, the trenches were dug by hand and for massive structures like temples and amphitheatres large blocks of stone were placed in the trench to support the structure that would be built on top. For smaller houses and shops, rubble foundations would suffice (like those in the photo). The foundation stones were normally larger than the stones that would be used for the building as it rose above the ground surface. It wasn’t much of an issue if the walls were built of smaller material, but if the foundation layer shifted during or after construction the building might collapse. A foundation needs to be seriously strong, deep and firm – unyielding.

There’s an old hymn that I remember from childhood, it was sometimes used during school assembly, but was also used on Sunday services at church. Here’s the first verse.

The church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is his new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav'n he came and sought her
To be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.

You can hear this grand old hymn sung with all the words on YouTube if you wish:

The first two lines are straight from Paul.

In 1 Corinthians 3:10-11 he tells us clearly that the only foundation is Jesus and in verses 12 to 14 he warns us to use only the best materials if we are called to build. The build quality will be tested by fire. And in verses 16 and 17 he says we ourselves are Yahweh’s Temple, a holy place. Another way to put this is that we ourselves are the church, it’s not a structure of mere bricks, but a structure of living stones – his people. We are bonded together like the stonework of any strong building and we stand together on the strong foundation of Christ himself. Read the whole chapter (it’s quite short), try to apply what Paul is saying to your own life, imagine sitting down with him over a coffee and discussing it.

We are to be built up together in love for we are to be like Jesus who is in turn like the Father. What is the substance of the church? It is love. the Father is love at its source, at its root. Jesus is love sent from heaven and expressed in his life. Read any of the gospels and you’ll find him loving his followers and the crowds who gathered in very real and practical ways. We are to continue his work, building in love, loving one another and loving the other people around us in this world. Nothing else matters more than this!

Another way of saying that we are living stones would be to say we are loving stones. We should be fervent lovers of Papa, of Jesus, of one another, of the worldly people around us, and even fervent lovers of our enemies. That is the only way of sharing Jesus; to be taken seriously we must be like him in every way. I, you, we, must all become accurate impersonators of Jesus. If we have no love, we have…nothing!

Until we begin living this new life we’ve been granted, loving everyone we meet, we’ll remain failed imitators of Christ and church will remain just an inorganic structure – rigid, cold, hard, unyielding and utterly unattractive to people in our communities who need to be loved. So let’s get to it! What are we waiting for?

But remember, it starts with the foundation of a loving Saviour, Jesus himself. Let’s stand on him, feel his love for us individually and together, and share his love for the confused, the unloved and the unlovable. Then, and only then, will we begin to see real growth. This will be growth of our own character, growth of the living stones around us, and growth of the church as others are drawn in by a love they have never previously seen or expected.

Do you see why foundations are so important? We become like the foundation we stand upon. If we don’t stand on Jesus we cannot expect to stand at all. In the process of standing on Christ we will see a revelation of who we are, because who we are matters far more than we sometimes think. If you’re a chip off the block of Jesus you’ll find yourself loving as he loves, building as he builds, dying as he died, yet living eternally as he lives. There are no ifs and buts here. We live because he lives, we love because he first loved us.

Who are you? Who am I? We are little pieces of him – that’s what ‘Christian’ means; it was a derogatory term applied to followers of Christ by the Greek and Roman pagans in the early years of the church. We are ‘little Christs’, no more, no less. This is our future, our inheritance, to be like the Master. Everything else comes out of who I am, who you are.

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A small bleed in my brain

I was admitted to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital (GRH) for six days of investigation including CT and MRI scans. I started off on a trolley in a corner of Acute Medical until they could find space in a ward (2025).

Blast from the past… 38

A photo from my hospital trolley

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October 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)

This was an unusual month during which I suffered a small bleed in my brain (a subarachnoid haemorrhage). The effects were weird and quite sudden, I began having seizures, in my case quite mild symptoms of muscle weakness in my left leg and numbness in parts of my left leg and head; curiously my left arm was not affected. These symptoms lasted for a few minutes and then faded away. This happened three or four times a day to begin with but quickly reduced in frequency.

After nine hours in A&E I was admitted to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital (GRH) for six days of investigation including CT and MRI scans. I started off on a trolley in a corner of Acute Medical until they could find space in a ward. And much of my time was spent in Gallery Wing, Ward 1C. I was interested to see that all the medical and ward staff used their staff badges to log in to any hospital computer to see their own desktop with all the icons and applications they needed to do their work. Efficient and well-thought-out. The computer in the photo is displaying the login screen.

My symptoms were mild and were completely suppressed by low doses of Levetiracetam prescribed by my consultant. And my GP here in Cirencester can see the consultant’s notes as well as her own. I’ve had no seizures at all since 1st November. No surgery was required, but until I have six months clear of seizures, I’m not allowed to drive. There are more details in an article I wrote at the time.

JHM: I wrote about the Starship Programme; and began a series on a constitution for the church. World events: Dame Sarah Mullally was named the first female Archbishop of Canterbury; and The 2025 Syrian parliamentary election was held, the first since the fall of the Assad regime in 2024.

< Sep 2025 – Nov 2025 > (Jump to 2011)

July 2025 (6 months before publishing)

From 4th to 7th we took Donna’s Mum, Isobel, for a short holiday at a Warners Hotel near Hereford. We visited Great Malvern and struggled to get the wheelchair up and down some of the very steep footpaths in the town.

The Small Group I meet with on Tuesday evenings gave me an opportunity to work through part of JDMC with them. This was encouraging and successful enough that Al suggested we work through some more of it next week.

In our back garden I added some more turf to a path I’m rerouting. We visited our neighbour George who’s in hospital in Dursley.

JHM: I wrote about the apostolic gift; and about the complex water flows in Cirencester. World events: The International Court of Justice ruled that countries can sue each other over historical emissions of greenhouse gases and the effects of climate change; and clashes erupted in southern Syria between armed Druze and Bedouin groups.

< Jun 2025 – Aug 2025 >

January 2025 (1 year before)

I walked out in the evening twilight and took this photo near the footbridge from The Beeches to Cricklade Road opposite Aldi. In the south-western sky you can see a waxing crescent Moon and the planet Venus near the top of the image. You may need to click the image to enlarge it to see Venus.

Here they are again the following evening (3rd January) seen from Stratton north of Cirencester, see how far the Moon has moved along its orbit in just a little under 24 hours!

The builders came to fix our leaking chimney, it was good to have that job done. In the bad old days when I was young the builders would have nonchalantly walked over the roof as if it was at ground level. But these days scaffolding is a must as the safety standards have been changed. It costs a little more, but it reduces the risks considerably.

JHM: I wrote about Knightstone Causeway; and my breakfast. World events: Bulgaria and Romania removed their EU land border controls having joined the Schengen Area; while Ukraine halted the flow of Russian gas following the expiration of a five-year transit deal and became a state party in the International Criminal Court.

< Dec 2024 – Feb 2025 >

January 2024 (2 years)

After a great deal of effort and trying several different ways, I was finally able to get the Paul Young videos live on YouTube from the House2House meetings CDs. I then wrote to my friends, the Dales, who hold the copyright to the recorded sessions from the meetings back in 2008.

Having got that task done I was then able to group them into a playlist and anyone can now watch them online. The video titles are Grace, Tradition and Soul; together they explain how Paul came to write The Shack, how he came to understand the grace of God working in people’s lives including his own, and the shame-based fear so many people face in our Western culture and just how crippling it can be. Paul wrote the book for his children and its amazing success as a book in 2007 and as a film in 2017 has changed the trajectories of so many lives ever since. The book remains available as a paperback and an ebook from Google Play, Amazon, and others, and the film is still available to view on YouTube, Amazon and elsewhere (here’s the trailer). The three talks Paul Young gave at the House2House conference must have been one of the first times he spoke about it publicly to a large audience, and they’re still well worth watching.

Two of them have been seen by the Small Group that I meet with most weeks, we really should try to see the third one too in the coming year.

JHM: I asked ‘What is the greatest priority‘; and wrote about very large mach diamonds. World events: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates became BRICS members; and a U.S.-led coalition launched airstrikes at Houthi militant locations in Yemen.

< Dec 2023 – Feb 2024>

January 2021 (5 years)

This was the view from our window on 24th January! A relatively heavy fall of snow and still coming down when I took the photo.

Earlier in the month, on 15th, I was able to get a lovely photo of the crescent Moon, just a day or two after New Moon. The sun had recently set below and to the right of this image. There was still enough light in the sky to prevent the sunlit side of the Moon from flaring and there’s enough contrast to just see the nightime part of the Moon, sometimes poetically described as ‘the old Moon in the New Moon’s arms’.

The later part of the month was wet and the River Churn broke its banks and flooded fields and meadows in low lying areas. the final image for this month shows Stratton meadows inundated. The village of Stratton is on the higher ground beyond the flooded area. This land, now used to graze cattle in the summer was used to grow willow rods 150 years ago. They would have been harvested in the autumn and bound into bundles for local basket making businesses.

World events: Supporters of US President Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol; and the global death toll from COVID-19 passed 2 million.

< Dec 2020 – Feb 2021 >

January 2016 (10 years)

We had daffodils in flower by the end of January, surprisingly early and evidence that global warming was already beginning to have practical effects. The photo shows a row of them along the roadside in St Neots. We welcome them in springtime, but in January I’m not sure they are quite as welcome, though very lovely.

One of my friends from the coffee shop Bible study group, Kevin, was suicidal, I took him to A&E at the hospital in Huntingdon and stayed with him until he could be seen. It seemed a wise and necessary precaution.

We had Peter and Dadka staying with us as they were unable to afford anywhere of their own. They were both from Slovakia. Peter received a message on 9th to say that his parents had been involved in a road accident and his father had died in the collision. He flew back home to be with the family for a week or two and help make the necessary arrangements. This must have been a terrible shock for him.

On 30th I enjoyed a coffee and a great chat with a friend, David Pacini.

World events: The IAEA announced that Iran has adequately dismantled its nuclear weapons program, allowing the UN to lift sanctions; and the WHO announced an outbreak of the Zika virus.

< Dec 2015 – Feb 2016 >

January 2011 (15 years)

In the garden the snowdrops were in flower and our rhubarb was beginning to grow with buds bursting and the first, crinkled leaves beginning to unfold. We bought a new HP LaserJet colour printer to replace our old Samsung laser printer.

I was involved in several different meetings at this time. There was the Open Door Small Group once a week on Tuesdays, I was meeting with the coffee shop crew at least once a week and quite separately with Jim, Sean and Kevin on Thursday evenings. On Thursday mornings I met with Roger and Ruth at their home in Offord d’Arcy. With the coffee shop group we discussed ideas around not going to church because we are the church, and how our focus should be to plant Jesus, plant disciples, and plant the gospel.

On 7^th we had a sixth Cornerstone Meeting, not just directors this time, but staff as well. Paul has written off the setup costs of £81k and planned to run on a break-even basis in future. He also thought he might move to fried food and reduced prices. Paul declared that there would be no directors from now on, just a management team. Some of us foresaw problems, mainly because Paul wanted things all his own way and some of his ideas were somewhat controversial; but he was putting up all the money, and if he didn’t want ideas and thoughts from others, that was, of course, his choice to make.

JHM: I wrote about heartwarming news from Egypt; and about an Israeli company making progress with electric vehicles. World events: Estonia officially adopted the Euro, becoming the 17th Eurozone country; and the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring began.

< Dec 2010 – Feb 2011 > (Jump to 1971) (Jump to top)

January 2006 (20 years)

Following Mum’s death at Cheltenham General Hospital on 1st January, Dad was pretty busy getting the news out to friends and relatives and making initial arrangements for the funeral. I worked up an initial draft for the service sheet, and I discussed it with Dad and my three sisters before revising it.

Debbie sent me a scan of her unborn baby, and I felt sad that Mum would not see the birth of two great-grandchildren (Beth was also expecting a baby, probably a little before her sister, Debbie).

Towards the end of the month, we enjoyed visiting the National Trust’s Anglesey Abbey with our friends Ken and Gayna. It was a lovely, sunny day and the gardens at Anglesey are always a delight at any time of the year.

World events: A panicking crowd during the Stoning of the Devil ritual on the last day of the Hajj in Saudi Arabia, killed at least 362 pilgrims; and NASA launched the first interplanetary spacecraft to Pluto, New Horizons.

< Dec 2005 – Feb 2006 >

January 2001 (25 years)

I began redecorating the stairs, hall, and landing. I fitted an electrical box with wiring for an extractor fan in the bathroom, repaired the plasterwork where necessary, and painted emulsion on the walls and gloss on the woodwork. It was quite a long job, but we got it completed in the end.

We decided to buy a conservatory, our garden was large enough to take one and it would extend our living space quite a bit. Also, we thought it would fit well against the long brick wall of the kitchen, airing cupboard and the old laundry room and we could easily replace the dining room window with a small bi-fold opening using the existing lintel; so just a matter of cutting through the lower brickwork, making good, a bit of plastering and decorating.

We began visiting conservatory suppliers to look at what they had to offer and get some idea of price. The one in the photo was the sort of shape and size we thought might work well for us.

A further improvement at home was the removal of the very old bathroon suite and its replacement with a new bath, shower, loo and sink in white to replace the worn out avocado bath, loo and sink. Times had moved on with bathroom colours!

And finally at Unilever Research Colworth, we all received brand new security badges which opened gates and doors automatically for all the areas each member of staff had access to.

World events: Greece became the 12th country to join the Eurozone; and Apple launched iTunes, software that acted as both a media player and a media library.

< Dec 2000 – Feb 2001 >

February 1996 (30 years)

on 1st January Beth, Paul, Jenny and I went to see Apollo 13 at the cinema in Weston-super-Mare. It seems a strange thing to have done just after losing Judy, but at the time it seemed to make perfect sense. Debbie, would, I think have been preparing to go back to study for her teaching qualification at Newport in south Wales. I certainly enjoyed watching the film.

I returned to work at Long Ashton on 3rd and started to pick up the threads that had been temporarily abandoned, or taken over by Pete Moody or Mike Truman while I’d been away. Peter Shewry invited me to join the Computing Strategy Review Meeting, and I continued developing the Microscopy web pages in the evenings at home.

Judy’s funeral was on 5th January and the day did not begin well. I woke up in the morning to the sound of dripping water and found it coming through the top of the bedroom doorframe. An emergency plumber came out and soon got things sorted for me. When the house was built, the overflow pipe was never connected so instead of a pipe dripping outside the house, the system was dripping inside! That lost me two hours at the start of a rather busy day, but everything else went well.

About 160 turned up which was astonishing, Judy was much loved not only by the extended family but by her pupils and colleagues at Cotham Grammar School, and many LARS staff had come along too. Bev was great, he said all the right things and was appreciated by everyone, I think. But only around 80 to 90 came to the buffet afterwards at Horsecastle chapel, so we had far too much food and donated what was left to the Horsecastle youth groups.

Rachael and Neil witnessed a horrendous event on their way back to Rugby later that day. A man jumped from a motorway bridge just as Rachael was approaching it. She had managed to swerve and miss him, but two cars behind her were unable to avoid him and caught him full on. Neil and another man had made their way back to the area of the incident and saw what happened.

World events: Serious fighting broke out on 9th January between Russian soldiers and rebel fighters in Chechnya; and France undertook its last nuclear weapons test.

< Dec 1995 – Feb 1996 >

January 1991 (35 years)

We visited Nana and Grandad (Judy’s parents) at their home at 14 Belland Drive, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham. The photo shows Nana, Beth and Debbie playing a game on the dining table, perhaps one of Beth’s Christmas presents.

On 13th we were back at home in Yatton, Debbie and Beth were out in the cold cleaning out the guinea pig run. When it was particularly cold we used to bring the guinea pigs into the house for protection, but they were quite good at managing cold days, the three of them would huddle together to keep warm.

World events: The US Congress authorised the use of force to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait; and in South Africa, Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi agreed to end the violence between the ANC and Inkatha.

< Dec 1990 – Feb 1991 > (Jump to 1971) (Jump to 2011)

January 1986 (40 years)

I was busy at LARS constructing a user-friendly menu system for the EDAX X-ray microanalysis software on the scanning electron microscope (SEM). I also produced a series of step-by-step instructions for using the SEM. The instrument in the photo is similar to the one we had at Long Ashton, but with a different X-ray microanalysis system.

Debbie and Beth remained at school in Yatton and we were living at 80 Stowey Road.

World events: Spain and Portugal joined the European Community; while the United Kingdom and France announced plans to construct the Channel Tunnel.

< Dec 1985 – Jan 1986 >

January 1981 (45 years)

I couldn’t find anything for January 1981. Debbie would have been five-years-old, turning six in March. Beth was two and would become three in May.

John Jefferies and Son would have been clearing surplus stock from the shop in the January sales but would also have been starting to consider how best to dispose of the business since the four brothers were approaching or beyond retiring age. My cousin, Tim, was young enough to carry on for some time but it was far too much for one person to manage. My Dad would be able to help out a lot but for relatively few years. The options would have been to shrink the business very considerably by selling off much of the land, or finding a buyer to continue it as a going concern. I suspect a decision was made to sell and hope to keep Tim employed by the new owners. There would have been no great urgency at this stage, but the clock was certainly ticking and something would need to be done.

World events: Greece joined the European Economic Community; and Iran released the remaining 52 American hostages, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President, ending the Iran hostage crisis.

< Dec 1980 – Feb 1981 >

January 1976 (50 years)

The photo is from February 1976 as I could find nothing for January. It shows Cindy with Gavin and Rebecca walking towards the front door at Churnside.

Debbie was 10 months old in January and we were regularly meeting our friends Tony and Faith for prayer and to explore ways to go deeper in our knowledge and experience of meeting and living non-denominationally. Others were beginning to join us too, but just in ones and twos at this stage. Judy and I were still regularly at Horsecastle Chapel on Sundays too. There was a certain tension about this as the Horsecastle elders worried that we might come off the rails meeting without oversight with all these other odd people (from their point of view).

World events: The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights entered into force; and full diplomatic relations were established between Bangladesh and Pakistan 5 years after the Bangladesh Liberation War.

< Dec 1975 – Feb 1976 >

January 1971 (55 years)

Judy’s temporary Christmas job at a Bristol department store came to an end once the January sales finished. She began her new job as a lab assistant in the Woodland Road Biochemistry Lab at Bristol University. I think the photo shows the same building in 2008, though I can’t be certain. She worked for Dr Mike Tanner who was doing research on a human erythrocyte membrane protein. They used out of date donated blood from Bristol Royal Infirmary, prepared erythrocyte ghosts (empty cell membranes) and extracted the proteins. I think they were studying Protein D as it was then called, and assembling amino acid sequences. It involved a lot of acrylamide gel chromatography although the lab was the proud owner of an early amino acid sequencer that could analyse short peptides automatically. The short sequences had to be manually matched and assembled into longer sequence maps.

Our bed-sit was cramped and very basic, but it was home. We still had our first car, ‘Pumpkin’, a Ford 100E sidevalve engine with a 3-speed gearbox. In the mornings I’d drive to the top of Park Street and drop Judy off near the Wills Building, then drive to Long Ashton. I forget what the evening arrangement was, probably I parked on Woodland Road and we drove from there to the bed-sit at 59 Linden Road. We were saving money now and starting to look at the possibility of an unfurnished flat and we might have made the move later in the year.

World events: In the Ibrox disaster, 66 people died and over 200 were injured in Glasgow during a spectator crush at a football match; and the Aswan High Dam was officially opened in Egypt.

< Dec 1970 – Feb 1971 > (Jump to 1951) (Jump to 1991)

January 1966 (60 years)

The Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard, one of the local newpapers in the area, published a story on 7th January about The Corals, a local pop group who hired Cirencester’s Corn Hall on New Year’s Eve to attempt a world record of playing popular music without repeating a tune. They played for 11½ hours so did indeed smash the previous record of 10 hours.

What was not reported (because nobody knew) was that the drummer, Colin Flooks, would later become world famous as Cozy Powell, playing with bands like Black Sabbath as well as with Brian May and other famous performers. Colin was in my class (1B) when we started at Cirencester Grammar School in 1959.

World events: Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India and was sworn in on January 24; and the Radio Caroline ship Mi Amigo ran aground on the beach at Frinton-on-Sea.

< Nov 1965 – Feb 1966 >

January 1961 (65 years)

I was studying a range of subjects in Class 2B, including Latin for a second year. The photo shows the cover of one of my exercise books. We began in years 1 and 2 with a wide range of subjects, but these changed after the second year, I was not doing well with Latin so discontinued it at the end of the summer term in 1962.

World events: Monetary reform in the Soviet Union devalued the Ruble, 10 old Rubles equalling 1 new Ruble; and a Soviet submarine (the S-80) sank in the Barents Sea, killing all 68 crew.

< Dec 1960 – Feb 1961 >

January 1956 (70 years)

The third year of my time at Querns School continued into its second term. Christmas and New year were already done and we were starting to look forward to Easter, and beyond it the long summer holiday.

I was in the third year at Querns School (my junior school). I was excited as I was seven-years-old now and feeling much more confident with school work, the environment and my fellow pupils. But it was still good to go home at the end of the school day to eat a meal with Mum, Dad and Cindy (we called it tea, dinner was the midday meal). Sometimes before bedtime we’d have a cup of hot chocolate or Ovaltine as a bit of a treat. If you had something to eat in the evening it would be supper. Perhaps if we’d been out all day we might have fish and chips in newspaper. Now that was a treat!

Fridays were special because they were followed by Saturday and Sunday when there was no school at all. All day to play in the garden with Linda and Graham Watts from next door, or walk to the little shop near the Golden Farmer pub to buy bacon or a loaf of bread for Mum and perhaps some sweets. Mr and Mrs Watts had a TV and often we’d go round to watch Whirlybirds or The Lone Ranger. Click on the link, choose an episode, and watch!

World events: The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ended in Sudan after 57 years; and Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser vowed to reconquer Palestine.

< Dec 1955 – Feb 1956 >

January 1951 (75 years)

The Korean War was in full swing, and I remember Dad getting his RAF kitbag out of the loft and going away to Kent for a week or two to train on the latest Radar systems. I don’t know when this happened, of course or even if it was in 1951. The Korean War ran from June 1950 to July 1953 and it seems to me that Dad’s absence for training was before Cindy was born in October 1951. It makes sense that if they were going to retrain people they’d have done it early during the war.

World events: The UK announced abandonment of the Tanganyika groundnut scheme; and in West Germany, Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

< Dec1950 – Feb 1951 > (Jump to 1930s) (Jump to 1971)

January 1946 (80 years)

In January, Dad was receiving tobacco from Lilias as well as from Bob and Betty (Mike’s brother and sister-in-law). His Uncle Herbert (his Father’s brother) had left him a £50 legacy in his will. He had a bad dream about Lilias on 3rd/4th.

On 7th he had a second flight in the Avro Anson and photographed the runways from the air. By 10th he was worried because he’d had no recent letters from Lilias, a letter came on 11th to say she’d been ill. He had a further hour in the Anson and this time was given a chance to try the controls (he would have so loved that!) On 16th he heard that his friends Joe and Dorothy were engaged to be married. He watched quite a few films during January as well. Mike also took photos of the Anson, a Stirling, and his garry (lorry).

World events: The first meeting of the United Nations was held, at Methodist Central Hall Westminster in London; and Project Diana bounced radar waves off the Moon, measuring the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon, and proving that communication is possible between Earth and outer space.

< Dec 1945 – Feb 1946 >

January 1941 (85 years)

Mike would have been 15 and still at school, possibly at Cirencester Grammar School or perhaps already at Rendcomb College just north of Cirencester. His older brothers were all serving with British forces in the Second World War. His father was managing the family business (John Jefferies & Son Ltd) on his own with help from some paid staff, but even these would have been in short supply due to the need for fighting men. It must have been a difficult time.

World events: Australian and British troops defeated Italian forces at the Battle of Bardia in Libya; and the US ambassador to Japan, reported to Washington a rumour overheard at a diplomatic reception, concerning a planned surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

< Dec 1940 – Feb 1941 >

1930-1939 (95 to 86 years ago)

Anything that appears in this section will have some connection with the 1930’s but may extend beyond the decade to follow a meaningful topic more fully.

Cirencester Carnival Queen 1939
(Wlts& Glos)

Cirencester traditionally had a town carnival every August. These petered out and were discontinued, I think in the 1970s. The photo shows the Carnival Queen and her attendants in the 1939 Carnival.

The Carnival procession made its way through the Market Place and along Dyer Street and then Victoria Road to a field at Watermoor where there would be tents, amusements and fairground rides.

This photo taken 95 years later in December 2025 is seen from the same angle. I thought there’d have been no mill here in the 1930s, but the photo was made from a footbridge that’s still there and is in daily use as part of Riverside Walk. There is no mill here today, though, so there’s a fuller story to discover if and when anyone has the time and inclination to dig a bit deeper.

World events (January 1931): The cyclotron was invented (used to accelerate sub-atomic particles to study nuclear physics). (January 1936): Radium E (bismuth-210) became the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.

<< 1930s >> (Jump to 1800s) (Jump to 1951)

1900-1929 (125 to 96 years ago)

As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.

Mike (my father) was born on 4th June 1926. The photo shows him with his father, my grandpa, Ted. The album holding this photo probably belonged to Mike’s older brother, Dick and this page is clearly marked 1927. The trees in the photo are leafless, so we can date the photo to wintertime which would put Mike at around 18 months old.

The second photo was on the same page so is also from 1927. It might have been a warm day in October, perhaps, and was taken in the back garden of Churnside, 37 Victoria Road.

World events (January 1921): The first recorded public performance of the illusion of “sawing a woman in half” was given at the Finsbury Park Empire variety theatre in London. (January 1916): WWI: Paris was bombed by German zeppelins. (January 1911): Robert Falcon Scott‘s British Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole arrived in the Antarctic and established a base camp at Cape Evans on Ross Island. (January 1906): HMS Dreadnought was launched, sparking a naval race between Britain and Germany. (January 1901): Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

<< 1900-1929 >>

1800-1899 (226 to 127 years ago)

This month I thought I’d provide a pen picture of Alice Freeth (later Jefferies) who married John Jefferies . Alice was born in 1810 in the village of Minety and baptised on 5th August 1810, her parents were Robert and Elizabeth Freeth. I do have some photos of her, but can’t find them right at this moment. I’ll add one later as and when.

Family connections

Parents – Robert and Elizabeth Freeth of Minety
Born – July/August 1810 (baptised 12th Aug 1810)
Died – 29th December 1893
Married, around 1842 or 1843) – John Jefferies of Somerford Keynes
Siblings – Unknown
Children – William John (1844), John Edwin (1845), Alice Mary (1847), Edward (1849), Julia Anne (1851), Henrietta (1854), Agnes Henrietta (1855)

John and Alice moved to Cirencester, perhaps when John took over the Gregory Nursery business or maybe before that while he was still employed by Richard Gregory. In any case, the census for 1881 records them as living at Minerva Villa in Cirencester. Although we don’t have a marriage date, Alice and John’s first child was born in June 1844 so it’s likely they married in 1842 or 1843 when Alice was in her early thirties and John about 30. Henrietta died as an infant aged just one month, so that would have been a time of great difficulty and sadness for them both.

World events (January 1881): Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company. (January 1861): The first steam-powered merry-go-round was in use in Bolton. (January 1841): David Livingstone left Britain for Africa. (January 1821): Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen discovered Peter I Island in Antarctica. (January 1801): The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was created and the Irish Parliament abolished.

<< 1800-1899 >> (Jump to top) (Jump to 1930s)

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Useful? Interesting?

Index for the chain blog

What does Jesus mean to me and how do I respond to him?

< Instructions >

Index of all contributions

What does Jesus mean to me and how do I respond to him? – Chris Jefferies

< Instructions >

Part 39 – Blast from the past

November 2025

August 2025

February 2025

February 2024

February 2021

February 2016

February 2011

February 2006

February 2001

February 1996

February 1991

February 1986

February 1981

February 1976

February 1971

February 1966

February 1961

February 1956

February 1951

February 1946

February 1941

1930-1939

1500-1799

Useful? Interesting?

No room for wriggling

An undemanding and comfortable gift

On the more serious side

In conclusion

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Making it real

A demanding and uncomfortable gift

So let’s get on with the process

Why are Paul’s two lists of gifts different?

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

What does an apostle look like?

Aiding and encouraging apostles

Listening to apostles

See also:

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Useful? Interesting?

How can we be more obedient?

Who am I and what do I do in church?

A question

A dream?

See also:

Useful? Interesting?

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Two thousand years ago

Other possible foundations?

Chain blog or a series?

See also:

Useful? Interesting?

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The purpose of foundations

See also:

Useful? Interesting?

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Blast from the past… 38

October 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)

July 2025 (6 months before publishing)

January 2025 (1 year before)

January 2024 (2 years)

January 2021 (5 years)

January 2016 (10 years)

January 2011 (15 years)

January 2006 (20 years)

January 2001 (25 years)

February 1996 (30 years)

January 1991 (35 years)

January 1986 (40 years)

January 1981 (45 years)

January 1976 (50 years)

January 1971 (55 years)

January 1966 (60 years)

January 1961 (65 years)