I started to preach about six months after I was converted, in response to a challenge by a man who spoke at a prayer meeting. Subsequently, the Lord led me into an appreciation of the doctrines of grace, and this greatly affected me. The main influences in my early Christian life were the ministry of Pastor Peter Turpin, then the minister of Stapleford Baptist Church, Nottingham, and Pastor Peter Hulland of Stanton Lees Chapel, Derbyshire. Under God I owe these two gracious men a great debt.

I married my wife, Joy, in 1981 and we have been seeking to serve the Lord together ever since. We first met at Stanton Lees, and were members at Stapleford Baptist church and Castlefields Chapel, Derby, before moving to Lincolnshire to support God's work in that needy county. First, we became members at Ebenezer Chapel, Quadring before moving to Bethel, Billinghay in 1995. We have two children - Matthew (21) who is currently living in Barnsley, and Miriam (16), who was largely responsible for setting up this website. Both were converted early in 2002, and I had the tremendous joy of baptising them at Billinghay in February 2003. 

During recent years, I have felt an increasing impetus to serve the Lord in a full time pastoral capacity, and attended the Saturday lectures of the London Reformed Baptist Seminary, based at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. In September 2002, we responded to an advertisement placed in the Evangelical Times by Dawlish Baptist Church, which modestly described itself as a small, struggling, independent evangelical church. This wording appealed to us as a cry from the heart, which we could not possibly ignore.

So, after working in the railway industry for 35 years, I took early retirement in August 2003 in order to respond to the invitation to become pastor at Dawlish. We have had our problems, not the least of which were difficulties with the sale of our house in Lincolnshire, owing to a subsidence problem which developed following the long dry Summer of 2003. However our house sale finally completed on Friday 23 July 2004, and we subsequently bought a house in Dawlish. Having done some repairs and decorating work, we moved in in December 2004.

The Lord has been teaching us lessons of patience and of walking by faith. We are so glad that He kept us from knowing how long it would be before we had a house of our own. We would probably have been panic-stricken. But He has led us along step by step, and we have proved that "all things work together for good to those who love God, who are the called according to His purpose." We greatly appreciate the prayer support of all God's people over these last months.  

Pastor and Family

Send me an email, I'd love to hear from you

stephenford()323@hotmail.com

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