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.
A street party (Wikimedia) -Click images to enlarge
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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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.
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?
A new house
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.
See also:
I have struggled to find much that I can recommend on the gift of prophet in the church today, there is certainly a good deal of nonsense out there. So instead of some links, here’s a video of Alan Hirsch speaking about the fivefold APEST gifts (including the prophetic gift). Have a listen, see what you think. It’s short, less than five minutes.
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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.
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)
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.
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.
People shopping (Click images to enlarge)
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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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 (Click images to enlarge)
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 too. 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.
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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.
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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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.
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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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).
October 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
View from my hospital trolley
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.
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.
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.
Moon and Venus again
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!
Chimney repair
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.
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.
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.
A newish Moon
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’.
Stratton Meadows
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.
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.
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 7th 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.
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).
Gayna, Donna and Ken
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.
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.
Conservatory
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!
Colworth badge
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.
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.
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.
Cleaning the guinea pig run
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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!
Whirlybirds
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!
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.
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.
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.
US Embassy in Japan, 1931
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.
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 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.
As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.
Ted and Mike
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.
At Churnside
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.
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.
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It might have been William who requested and obtained the title ‘Royal Nurseries’ This was a forerunner of the later ‘By Appointment to’ designation denoting high status businesses (1800s).
September 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
Al and Phil at Stonehouse
Small Group got started again after the summer break. This is a discussion group, part of CBC but run by my friends Al and Chris Booth. I’m not part of CBC but I am part of the Small Group and that suits me just fine.
I did a short canal walk with Phil and Al, both friends from the Small Group. The weather was a bit mixed but we enjoyed the walk with coffee and a light lunch at the half way point at Ebley Mill.
The Lion Trail
Donna and I walked around the centre of Cheltenham as she wanted to do the Lion walk. Some of those lions are amazing!
We visited Blenheim Palace, in part to look at the flower show that was on, and in part to explore aspects of the palace that we’d not seen before. We took a good look around the Winston Churchill exhibition (Churchill was born in the palace and spent a lot of time here, it was one of his favourite places).
But we also explored the parkland around the house, a wide expanse and very beautiful too as you can see from the photo.
Donna ran a 10 km race at Westonbirt School; she was among the final finishers, but she did it. With a large field of experienced club runners, she did really well and deserves plenty of kudos for all the training and effort she put in!
The start date for our heat pump installation slipped to 6th January, so we’ll have to manage without central heating until half way through January. We still have the gas fire in the lounge, of course, and we have several convector heaters too.
Kingfisher
A bonus this month was that I got a photo of the kingfisher perching on the barbed wire outside Cirencester’s outdoor swimming pool. Although it’s a little fuzzy, it’s the best image I’ve obtained of the kingfisher so far.
Sadly, it was no longer possible to keep Erin alive any longer and I buried her in a carefully recorded spot in the garden (one of her favourite summer sleeping spots).
Chastleton
We visited Chastleton House, partly because we wanted to see the house and grounds, but particularly as we wanted to look at the amazing plaster ceilings for which the old house is so famous. We were not disappointed! The photo shows the largest of these extraordinary ceilings.
Narrow escape
Shortly before Christmas a huge lime tree fell across the Gloucester Road between Cirencester and Stratton, demolishing a section of the Cotswold wall on the west side of the road, taking out a big chunk of the hedge on the east side, and almost crushing a passing car. The driver must have had a very narrow escape.
Walking in Cirencester Park near Barton Farm, I passed this medieval dovecote, the oldest building still standing in Cirencester apparently. What a delightful and wonderful old structure!
I had a really good phone chat with my friend Jim who lives near St Neots. His daughter Bethany has completed training as a nurse, following in her mum’s footsteps.
During a heavy storm on 23rd, we had leaks through the dining area rooflights, but a local builder, Trevor Rowlands, was exceptionally helpful and covered up the rooflights with waterproof sheeting, weighing it down with heavy timber and brick which worked well as a temporary fix.
Elephants!
Donna and I walked into Cirencester park to look at the elephants. There’s been a whole herd of a hundred of them in London, but three are currently on loan to the park.
We drove to York to spend some time with Debbie, Beth and their families. As always, it was great to see everyone and exchange presents, now a long-standing tradition. There was the annual Nativity play in Thorganby, Sara was Mary this year.
In Broadstone
And, of course, we also drove down to Broadstone to see Donna’s parents and meet Paul and Vanessa with more presents to exchange.
Wedding
And on 28th, Ele and Jonathan tied the knot in grand style, so December was a really busy month one way and another. Three long journeys for us, but all of them well worth the time and effort.
World events:OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company, was founded; and SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 rocket, the first reusable rocket to successfully enter orbital space and return.
On holiday in Gran Canaria, we drove up into the central mountains on 1st December; the scenery was amazing. We were surprised to get a view of Mount Teide about 120 km across the sea on Tenerife.
I finally made the move from Windows to Ubuntu on 13th December. No more Windows licence fees, no more expensive software, everything I need in one free installation – the operating system, office suite, image editing, everything, all at zero cost. I was well pleased. Then, a few days later we had a heavy snowfall.
Snow!
We set off in the snow to drive to York, but most of the way the roads were completely clear of snow.
The 5th Cornerstone Directors’ Meeting was held on 7th November. It wasn’t clear if Paul wanted to have directors or not, our advice and suggestions seem to cut across his own plans, but he’s in difficulties and could do with help and advice. We decided he needs to be clear about his wishes.
We drove down to Broadstone to Visit Donna’s Mum and Dad just before New Year’s Eve and Paul and Justine who were also there at the time. It was good to see Paul again, he’s always been one of my favourite people.
An extra Unilever Portal page was needed for Colworth, so I was working on that, but also I’d been tasked with managing the spreadsheets involved with the costs of Colworth mobile phone calls and that was proving much more difficult. Not only was I unfamiliar with Microsoft Excel, but the systems for charging departments were not easy either.
I’d been travelling down to visit Mum and Dad, often on a Friday, and not long before Mum’s Hospital admission Dad had asked me to pray with them. I think he knew Mum had little time left. I knelt down between them as they sat in the front sitting room at Churnside and each held one of my hands and we prayed together, I think for safety, blessing, peace and Jesus’ guidance. Then I left to drive home, and that was the last time I saw my Mum while her mind was still active.
Shortly afterwards, Mum had a couple of major strokes and was in Cheltenham General Hospital on 30th December, though she seemed to be no longer conscious or aware. The photo shows the hospital with Cleeve Hill in the background. Dad was of course distressed by this and the entire family rallied round. Donna and I made our way down to join them all. The hospital was very helpful, finding a room we could all rest in and even stay overnight to be with Mum and Dad as much as possible.
World events: Scientists announced the creation of mice with small numbers of human neurons to model neurological disorders; and an extra second was added (23:59:60) to resynchronise calendar time to atomic clock time, last required in 1998.
We had a WebForum meeting in Amsterdam. The photo shows Phil Briggs (Briggsy) reading a newspaper on the plane, probably from Cambridge Airport to Rotterdam. We’d have completed the journey by train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. Pete Keeley also came with us on this trip. My initial development of a temporary WebForum for Unilever Research sites was going to be replaced with a much improved version to be developed for us by INFO NL, a software developer in Amsterdam. INFO NL demonstrated their web site development software and we discussed early mock-ups of the appearance and functionality we would require.
Data Science’s Christmas Party.
Donna and I both worked for Colworth’s Data Sciences group. I was in the Knowledge Systems Group (KSG) while she was in Statistics. Data Sciences held a Christmas Party each year and anyone working there in 2000 will recognise the people in the photo.
This was a difficult month for all of us as Judy became weaker and weaker and was unable to do anything for herself. She was stuck in bed and quite unable to get downstairs, even with considerable help. The exceptions were when Tony, Faith, Paul and Jenny visited for a meeting. Judy protested that we should continue meeting downstairs no matter what, so Tony and Paul carried her down in the wheelchair for the meetings and back up afterwards.
Reading through my journal entries during the last week or two of December reminds me of many details I’d forgotten. Judy tried to hide her pain, not only from me, Debbie and Beth, but also from Dr Boyles and the nurses. But once we understood this Dr Boyles was able to keep her comfortable without knocking her out entirely – a good outcome.
Our friend, Bev Foster agreed to take the coming funeral service at the crematorium when the time came, and Judy was pleased about that. On 26th Judy woke me several times to say she needed the loo, but it was far too late every time. This provoked a decision to insert a catheter. Judy died at two minutes past midnight on 28th December with my Mum and Dad, me, Debbie and Beth all gathered around the bed. In the end she just stopped breathing. I phoned the on-call GP who certified the death, and then called Britten’s Undertakers to collect the body. None of us felt like sleeping, so we watched the newest Wallace and Gromit film, A Close Shave, which Judy would have absolutely loved. we were in bed by 02:00 and slept like logs until the morning.
On 29th I drove into Clevedon to register the death and later began phoning round to make arrangements for the funeral and everything that needed to be put in place. It all came together quite easily and very satisfactorily.
World events: NASA’s Galileo Probe entered Jupiter’s atmosphere; and the Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris, officially ending the Bosnian War,
Debbie had a major role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Backwell School on 15th December.
Beth and Judy
We spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day with Judy’s parents in Charlton Kings, then on 27th we visited Cirencester to see my Mum and Dad. We tried to ring the changes a bit, sometimes spending Christmas in Cirencester, sometimes in Cheltenham, but rarely at home in Yatton. Before leaving for Cheltenham, on 23rd December we’d spotted goldcrests and bluetits in our back garden in Yatton. Hungry birds in the winter often appear in gardens where food may be more available.
World events:Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France met 40 metres beneath the English Channel seabed; and Slobodan Milošević was elected President of Serbia in the first round of voting.
Judy made and decorated a cake for her Mum and Dad’s 40th wedding anniversary and we drove up on the day to give it to them.
Around this time (I’m not sure exactly when) it was clear my gibberellin localisation work was not going anywhere, and Long Ashton management decided I’d be better employed helping with the electron microscopy lab supporting Richard Pring who needed an assistant. My extensive background in light and fluorescence microscopy made me a promising candidate and I was happy and relieved to take on the role. We had a Philips 505 scanning electron microsope (SEM) with a cryo attachment for work with frozen samples, and a Hitachi transmission electron microscope (TEM). Staff from other departments at Long Ashton, and visiting workers would often need microscopy work done and would either want help and advice with using the instruments or perhaps need someone to do the work on their behalf. So it was an interesting job socially as well as technically.
Debbie and Beth remained at school in Yatton and we were living at 80 Stowey Road.
World events: The first Unabomber victim, Hugh Scrutton, died in Sacramento; and the naturalist, Dian Fossey, was found murdered in Rwanda.
I couldn’t find anything for December 1980. This photo is believed to date to 1980 based on its position in Judy’s photo albums, it looks like a dull but warm day in summertime. There’s a for sale sign in the garden which is puzzling because we moved house in August 1985 and Beth looks far too young. In summer 1980 she would have been two. Perhaps the sign was for Mike and Mary Low’s house next door at the end of the terrace. I’m pretty certain they moved some years before we did.
As with all the shops in Cirencester, John Jefferies and Son’s would have been busy leading up to Christmas with customers buying gift vouchers, pots of Hyacinths forced for Christmas flowering, and Christmas wreaths for front doors, and of course, the essential bare-rooted Christmas trees in a range of sizes, also local people ordering Interflora deliveries to far-flung friends and relatives.
Judy and I were busy collecting suitable things to put in Debbie and Beth’s tights to hang up on Christmas Eve. We didn’t pretend that Father Christmas was real, we explained that it was all a bit of fun, and it was mums and dads who filled the children’s socks; but we also told the girls that some of their friends might think he was real and they shouldn’t disappoint them as that was OK too.
I remember being about three or four myself and walking along the footpath between Queen Anne’s Road and St Mary’s Road with Dad and my younger sister Cindy. I said to Dad, ‘Father Christmas isn’t real, is he Daddy?’ Dad just put his finger to his lips and said, ‘Shh, we’ll talk about it later’, and we did. It didn’t occur to me to ask, ‘So… who eats the mince pies and the carrot, and drinks the sherry, then?’
Debbie turned 9 months old and by now we were well settled in our home in Rectory Drive, Yatton. We bought a twin tub washing machine that could be rolled out from under the kitchen worktop (it made washing nappies far easier), and our old cooker, fridge and double bed came with us from the flat in Bristol.
On the swings
We were in Cirencester visiting my Mum and Dad on the day after Boxing Day (27th December). Probably we had been in Cheltenham on Christmas Day with Judy’s parents, perhaps splitting Boxing Day between the two families.
I have no photos for December 1975, but the two shots here in Cirencester’s Abbey Grounds were filed by Judy in one of her photo albums around that time. But, as Debbie pointed out to me, they must be a few years later than 1975.
World events: Wreck of HMHS Britannic (sunk by a German mine in 1916) was discovered by Jacques Cousteau; and six people kidnapped delegates of an OPEC conference in Vienna.
Judy began her temporary work at a Bristol department store during the Christmas/New Year rush when they needed additional help. The photo shows Broadmead as it was in 2005, the two large buildings near the top were Jones’s (left) and Lewis’s (centre) in 1970.
By this time we were well settled in our bedsit in Linden Road and saving as much as possible so we’d be able to buy some furniture once we moved to an unfurnished flat. We would need quite a lot, dining table and chairs, a sofa, easy chairs, a cooker, fridge, washing machine, kitchen stools, a TV and something to stand it on, the more we thought it through the more it seemed to add up. Most of it would have to be second-hand.
At work I was looking into the possibility of starting on a higher degree. It seemed possible I could do an MSc by research and write it up as a thesis; and one of the most promising lines would be pollination of a fruit tree other than apples which were already well-covered by Ray Williams and his team. One early contender seemed to be plum. My boss, Ken Stott was beginning to reduce his willow and poplar work in favour of helping with the pollination studies and it seemed we were going to buy an ultraviolet fluorescence microscope similar to the one being used to track apple pollen tubes growing in compatible and incompatible apple flowers. That would be perfect.
World events: The U.N. General Assembly supported the isolation of South Africa over its apartheid policies; and Paul McCartney sued to dissolve The Beatles legal partnership in the UK.
The 6th Form went carol singing around the town. Judy and I shared a hymn book (the photo shows a similar version) so we could both keep one hand warm in a pocket. Judy put her school hymn book in my right jacket pocket and I held mine in my right hand so we could both see the words in the lamplight.
At the end of the event we all made our way home, but Judy forgot to recover her hymn book. I found it, of course, immediately after setting off for home (as soon as I put my hands in my pockets). I ran after her to hand it back but in the distance saw her disappear through the front door of her parent’s home at 69 Chesterton Drive. I walked on down and rang the doorbell. Her Dad answered the door, I explained that I was returning Judy’s Hymnbook, he thanked me, and I headed home. This was my introduction to Judy’s Dad; I already knew he was in the Police and had been a sergeant in Filton but was now newly promoted to Inspector, he seemed approachable and very matter-of-fact.
World events: The Glasnost Meeting in Moscow became the first spontaneous political demonstration in Russia; and Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 performed the first controlled rendezvous in Earth orbit.
December saw the end of my first term in Class 2B at Cirencester Grammar School. Mum and Dad would have been preparing for Christmas, the cake was probably baked by now and it would have been undergoing regular drenching from below with sweet sherry (aided and abetted by numerous holes created by one of Mum’s knitting needles. Dad would have selected a well-balanced Christmas tree. Bonfire night had long since come and gone, the end of the school term would come next, and then it would be Christmas followed by New Year and then in January the second term in my second year at the Grammar School.
World events: A Soviet satellite containing the dogs Pcholka and Mushka, other animals, and plants was launched into orbit. Due to a malfunction, it burned up during re-entry; and Peter Pan was presented as a two-hour special on NBC in the United States. Rather than being presented live, it was shown on videotape, allowing repeats.
I was in the third year at Querns School (my junior school). I was excited as I was seven-years-old and Christmas was getting close. Christmas was always fun, a decorated tree, presents from parents and grandparents, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, sausages wrapped in bacon, a holiday from school. And, if you were lucky … snow!
The tree in the image was decorated in typical 1955 style. Tinsel hanging down like icicles, coloured balls, and early designs of electric lights, small but not tiny like today’s LEDs, often with moulded coloured glass in shapes of Father Christmas, reindeer, little pine trees, lanterns. And the presents stacked below – what would be inside those paper wrappers?! So exciting!
Approaching 2½-years-old, Christmas must have been a huge surprise for me. I would not have retained many memories of the previous Christmas, and my understanding of all sorts of things would have improved dramatically as well. Christmas 1948 would have effectively passed me by, but Christmas 1950 would have been a revelation; presents to unwrap, the sound of tearing paper, the stickiness of sellotape, the smells of fruit cake, sherry, and the sounds of Christmas carols outside the front door must have been really striking! A tree with lights on it, tinsel, shiny balls hanging on the tree with miniature reflections. All the adults chatting and laughing would have seemed very different from their usual serious calmness.
World events: Isaac Asimov published his science fiction short story collection I, Robot; and Richard Nixon took office as a U.S. Senator from California.
December was a busy month. In addition to writing and receiving many letters and cards to and from family, friends, and of course Lilias, Mike watched some ENSA shows, and also films. Meanwhile he was taking part in an amateur Christmas play. He had a collision with an Indian army truck on 3rd and also was able to drive an Austin 10 Staff Car.
He went to communion on Sunday 9th and heard a service broadcast by the BBC from Cirencester Parish Church! He was picking up some local words in the Marathi language spoken in the Mumbai area, gadi sounds like ‘garry’ and was the word for a lorry, pani gadi sounded like ‘parny garry’, pani meaning water, and pani gadi was a boat (literally a water lorry).
By 18th December they were rehearsing their Christmas play ‘Round the Bend’ right through from beginning to end and everything was coming together. He had a chance to examine an American B-24 Liberator bomber with his friend Paddy. Christmas dinner was served by the CO and other officers. On 30th December he went swimming at Juhu Beach with Paddy, noting in his diary ‘water lovely and warm’.
World events: The United States Senate approved the entry of the USA into the United Nations by a vote of 65–7; and twenty-one nations ratified the articles creating the World Bank.
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.
The top floor of John Jefferies & Son’s shop and office in the Market Place was entirely occupied by the Landscape Design Department. It was the domain of my Uncle John, born in 1907. I remember it in the 1960s as a large, open space filled with beautifully drawn plans of proposed gardens, some pinned on drawing boards, and many more rolled up and stored in cardboard tubes. John, and his assistant Desmond Walker, did the survey and design work, while a team of practical workers converted the designs into real gardens. Each site had to be cleared, the hard landscaping done first (building walls, laying paving, fitting gates, constructing rockeries), then trees, shrubs and herbaceous borders planted, lawns seeded and so forth.
From 1939 until 1945 or later, this work would have stopped. John joined the army as an officer and was away from home for a number of years. World War II was an unavoidable interruption for British businesses of all kinds. The armed forces required a great number of men and women, and inessential things like building gardens had to wait.
John was thirty-two-years-old in 1939 so he’d have done some garden design work before the war began, perhaps enough to become competent but not an expert. I remember helping him build a rockery somewhere south of Cirencester, probably in the Blunsdon/Highworth area north-east of Swindon from what I recall. This was much later, perhaps during a summer holiday while I was a Sixth Form student. I had thought for a time that I might consider the Landscape Architecture course at Pitville Pump Room in Cheltenham, but in the end studied Horticulture at the University of Bath instead. I remember the care and precision with which Uncle John manouevred large blocks of Costwold stone so that they aligned just so with their neighbours to give the impression of being part of an underlying natural outcrop. The angle of repose had to be just right.
I also remember that at one point his left wrist got trapped between a stone we were moving and one that was already in place. His watch glass was shattered though he was unhurt.
World events: British forces in North Africa began their first major offensive, attacking Italian forces at Sidi Barrani, Egypt; and Plutonium was first synthesised in the laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
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.
This time we’ll take a look at an aspect of the town rather than my family history. This is Barton Mill in the 1930s according to the OldCiren Facebook group where I found a copy of this photo. The mill burned down in 1926 and I had assumed it was never replaced, although the mill pound still exists in 2025.
The same view today
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 (December 1935): The German Lebensborn program in support of Nazi eugenics was founded by Heinrich Himmler. (December 1930): All adult Turkish women were given the right to vote in elections.
In 1900, Watermoor was a recently but rapidly growing industrial area. It included the Cirencester Arm of the Thames & Severn Canal ending at Cirencester Wharf, Watermoor Railway Station, and an ironworks with its blast furnace, noted for its ability to cast large iron structures without cracks forming on cooling. Famously, the huge gear wheel for the rotating stage at the London Palladium was cast here. I wonder how they moved it to London?
The photo shows Watermoor Church in astonishingly open countryside. In the photo, the road ahead points the way north to Cirencester, becoming Cricklade Street at or near the junction with Lewis Lane and Querns Lane. In the other direction, it rejoined the old Roman route of Ermin Street heading towards Cricklade, Blunsdon near Swindon, and on to Marlborough. In this view Ermin Street would be a few tens of metres out of sight to the right
This time we’ll take a look at William John Jefferies, born in Cirencester 0n 8th June 1844 and my great-great-Uncle William. He married his wife Frances in 1894 and died in 1929 at the age of 84.
William had a huge role in building and expanding the family business he inherited from his father, John Jefferies. He was a real entrepreneur, someone with considerable drive, determination, and focus. He was a businessman through and through and he developed what was already a locally respected nursery business into a nationwide and even internationally renowned company. I suspect it might have been William who requested and obtained the title ‘Royal Nurseries’ This was a forerunner of the later ‘By Appointment to’ designation denoting high status businesses approved by and supplying royalty. It may also have been William who built the Warehouse (now flats) on what was then Tower Street Nursery and much later became the Forum Garden Centre. And it was likely William who developed the Garden Design Department and was behind the company’s presence at both local and national flower shows.
William built two houses in the Avenue. They were a semi-detached pair, he and Frances (Fanny) lived in the left half and his sister Julia in the right half. There was an interconnecting door between the two homes. On William’s death, Fanny moved in with her sister-in-law Julia. The houses still exist, William’s half is now The Avenue Surgery, part of Cirencester Medical Practice, the right hand property remains a private residence.
As William and Frances (Fanny) had no children, he took on his nephew, Edward Arthur Jefferies as his main assistant in running the company and Edward (often known as ‘The Governor’ or just Guv) continued managing the company on his Uncle William’s death.
Family connections
Parents – (John and Alice Jefferies [nee Freeth])Jefferies)
Born – 8th June 1844
Died – 1929
Married, 1894 – Frances (Fanny)
Siblings – John Edwin (1845), Alice Mary (1847), Edward (1849), Julia Anne (1851), Henrietta (1854), Agnes Henrietta (1855)
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Journeys of Heart and Mind 
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