The Rev Jonathan Edwards was confirmed as the next General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB) at the end of April, receiving overwhelming support from the delegates gathered for the Baptist Assembly where the announcement was made.
The General Secretary is the highest representative of the Baptist Union in the UK, and Rev Edwards will take over in September from Rev Coffey, who is stepping down to fully focus on his position as the President of the Baptist World Alliance.Christian Today was able to speak with Rev Edwards and hear some of his thoughts on his new calling from God.
CT: Tell us a little bit about your own background as a Baptist: were you always a Christian, were you always a Baptist?
JE: I was born into a committed Christian family. I was brought up in a Christian home with Baptist parents and from my earliest days I was being moulded by a very large loving Christian church in Essex. It is extraordinary to look back on it but in my teens I was attending church 6 times every Sunday. I was part of the Boys Brigade, we had Bible class at 10 o’clock, then at 11 o’clock we had the morning service, then I played the piano for the primary Sunday school at 3, we had a youth Bible study at 4:30 and then evening service and youth squash at 8. Isn’t that incredible? That has to have an effect doesn’t it? It was such a great place to be.
For me in terms of personal faith, the death of a friend of mine at 16 had a very profound impact that suddenly I recognised I had to do something about the faith I had learned about, and things started coming into focus.
I went off to university to study law. I was studying at St John’s College Oxford with Tony Blair. I found it extremely interesting but realised I couldn’t give my life to the law. And so I became open to suggestions from people that I should investigate ministry, which I duly did and started training for ministry in 1976.If I was writing the script I wouldn’t have written it this way but God is writing the script and it seems to be that I seem called to do this work and that’s fine.
The Rev Jonathan Edwards, new General Secretary of the BUGB
So I went back to Oxford and did three years of training for ministry and got an Oxford degree. When I came out of Oxford I was 23 and I felt that was too young to go straight into ministry and I felt I needed to open some more windows and see a bit more of the world. So I went to India with Church Mission Society, or Church Missionary Society as it was known back then, and had 2 years working in development and working with an outcast community.
In ‘83 I came to my first pastorate in this country on a new housing estate in Suffolk in Bury St Edmonds. I had 8 fantastic years there in a great church, a growing church, a very happy place to be, I married my wife while I was there. And then I did seven years as senior minister in a large Baptist church in Orpington in Kent and there I was called to be the General Superintendent of the South-West in 1998. I have been in the post, 8 years down in the South-West, having oversight of 100 churches and about 90 ministers.
