Re-imagining Preaching and Leading Worship

Since September 2013, Robert (also known as Bob) Little has been Chairman of the Hertfordshire Fellowship of Baptist Preachers (HFBP), having joined the Fellowship’s predecessor body in the late 1970s. This Fellowship is the current form of an association, dating from at least 1903, which caters for Baptist lay ministers in Hertfordshire. The HFBP aims to advance the Christian faith according to the principles of the Baptist denomination. Its prime functions are the recognition and honing of preaching skills in helping to advance the Christian faith in line with Baptist principles. One of its key activities is to encourage those who feel they may have a gift for preaching and leading worship to test that gift – and, indeed, to test their call to ministry. That call is affirmed through an approval process that involves the recommendation and support of a person’s local church fellowship, along with assessments from the HFBP’s Committee members. Of course, becoming a member of the Fellowship is only the start of a process of continuous professional development (CPD). My path to this voluntary post has been neither straightforward nor predictable but, perhaps, is understandable in hindsight. In this regard, my career path is similar to many – if not most – people’s. I was born in a Baptist Manse in Halesowen – a town that was then in Worcestershire, for a while in ‘Hereford and Worcester’ and is now firmly ensconced in the West Midlands. The Baptist minister in Halesowen at that time was my father, the Rev E Bryn Little MM. He was a Welshman who, after serving as a driver in the Royal Army Service Corps in World War II, trained for the Baptist ministry at Rawdon College, in Leeds. His story is told in the book, ‘The Canvas Chapel’ – available from me via The Endless Bookcase, if you’re interested. When I was four years old, I moved with my father (Bryn) and mother (Muriel) to Kings Langley, in Hertfordshire, when Bryn became the Baptist minister there. Life in a Baptist Manse was almost all I knew in my formative years. I was broadly supportive – but no more – of church life, having known little else. The next nudge towards a more active interest in the Christian religion and talking (preaching) about it came when I gained a place at University College, Cardiff (part of the University of Wales), to read economics. Unfortunately (or not, as it turned out), I waited until the offer of the place at Cardiff was confirmed before looking for accommodation in the city. By that time, all the student accommodation had been ‘taken’ and things looked bleak for me. Then my father remembered an old college colleague of his – the Rev Trevor Thorn – who was then the Baptist minister at Albany Road Baptist Church, Cardiff. Trevor’s advice was to try the South Wales Baptist College (SWBC), in Richmond Road, Cardiff, because, sometimes, it had ‘spare’ rooms in its student hostel once all the students who were studying theology had been catered for. This proved to be the case and I went to live there – in ‘Room 5’ – in the student hostel. Thinking that I ought to repay the kindness of my hosts (in offering me a place to stay) by attending ‘College Prayers’ each weekday, from 7am to 7.30am, I became a fairly regular, if sleepy, attender – at the expense of an extra half hour or so in bed. At that time, one of the new students – Janet Davies, from Llanelli – decided that the life of a Baptist minister was not for her and so she left the college. This posed a problem for the College Principal, the Rev Dr Dafydd G Davies. Many Baptist churches up and down the South Wales valleys relied on students from the SWBC to conduct services for them on Sundays – and Mr Davies had planned each student’s preaching activities for the forthcoming term. Consequently, with Janet’s departure, he was one preacher short. The first thing I knew of this issue was when I had a visit to my study/bedroom, one morning, from my next-door neighbour, John Farringdon. John, a gentle giant at six feet four inches (193cm) tall and some 26 stones (165 kilos) in weight and who was formerly an apprentice electrician from Abercarn before responding to the call to the Baptist ministry, said bluntly and with all the persuasive physical presence and forcefulness of his 26 stones, “We’ve seen you coming to College Prayers and we think you ought to go preaching ‘for the College’.” In the circumstances, I felt it would be ungracious to refuse so, the next Sunday – 28th October 1973 – found me catching a bus from Cardiff to go ‘up the valleys’ to Hendreforgan (a village between Tonyrefail and Gifach Goch) in the Rhondda Valley. The Baptist church there worshipped through the medium of Welsh and, thankfully, my command of the Welsh language was just enough for me to conduct most of the service via Welsh – although preaching in Welsh was beyond me. There were 11 people in the congregation and, appropriately for a first sermon I thought, I preached on Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 [for those who’re interested, the main headings of the sermon were: Genesis is a book of beginnings; a book of failures, and a book of hope]. I returned to Cardiff, pleased that things had gone smoothly enough. On the following Monday, the College received a report about me from the church – and, apparently, it was sufficiently positive for me to be asked to conduct two services (morning and evening) the next Sunday (at English Baptist Chapel, Abercarn). I agreed. This time, the services were to be wholly in English (a language with which I felt more ‘at home’) and, in conducting them, I became the third generation of my family to conduct services in that chapel, after my father (Bryn) and my grandfather (William Little). Again, things went well and the church asked me to return to conduct some further services – which I did. For the three years in which I lived at the SWBC while I completed my degree in economics, I found myself increasingly engaged on Sundays, conducting services in chapels around the South Wales valleys – mostly preaching on behalf of the College but, sometimes, preaching on behalf of the college tutors who found themselves ‘double booked’ or who were otherwise unable to fulfil a preaching commitment. Indeed, I soon found myself preaching on most Sundays during term time. However, this seeming popularity was put into a context when I conducted the services at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Blaenavon. After the evening service, the church secretary said to me, “Thank you so much for coming to us. We’ve had a great day, today. If ever you’re in the area and would like to take a service for us, please let me know.” Before I could bask too much in this praise for my teenaged preaching style and content, he continued, with commendable childlike candour, “Well, you see, it’s difficult to get anybody to preach these days.” My inflated ego quickly returned to normal. When my time in Cardiff was coming to an end, the SWBC asked me to consider joining the College as a theological student but the experience I’d had of seeing a Baptist minister’s life at very close hand had convinced me that it was not the life for me. Nonetheless, having ‘cut my preaching teeth’ in the chapels in the South Wales valleys, I felt that I should continue to develop my ‘worship-leading/preaching skills’, so I embarked on the Baptist Union of Great Britain’s Diploma in Religious Knowledge – via the distance learning option. At the same time, hoping to pursue a career as an opera singer, I came to the London area to study singing at the Royal College of Music, with Edgar Evans who had recently retired after 40 years as a principal tenor with the Royal Opera. His story is told in the book, ‘Edgar Evans – Extempore’ – available via The Endless Bookcase, if you’re interested. I completed the Diploma in Religious Knowledge in two years rather than the three years allotted for study – much to the disapproval of my allotted tutor, the Rev Noel Pepper, who kept sending me messages, which I ignored, asking me to take more time over submitting my completed assignments because they were arriving too quickly and he didn’t have time to mark them. I was officially ‘recognised’ by the Baptist Union of Great Britain at the Union’s Annual Assembly in London in the spring of 1979. By then, I’d been a member of the HFBP for some two years – having joined the Fellowship on leaving Cardiff for the London area. Importantly, the odd, convoluted career path described here has been travelled while the rest of my life has been going on in parallel. To date, this life path has embraced, among other things: a couple of (full-time) professional careers, latterly as a writer and publicist; a continuing career as a semi-professional singer in the classical tradition; some serious dalliance with playing cricket (my great sporting love), a soupçon of radio (but also some television) broadcasting and, of course, married and family life. I have never been – nor did I ever want to be – a ‘professional Christian’, earning my living as a member of the clergy. However, the various opportunities I’ve been given have meant that I’ve developed, unintentionally, into something of a dedicated ‘semi-professional’ in church terms with a keen interest in theology. Over the years since 1973, so far, I’ve conducted over 1,200 services in nearly 90 churches of various denominations around the country – and in one or two other places as well.