About Noel 1)

In my last post I mentioned Noel Vose who became a great friend and mentor.  His story in my life is entangled with several happenings. In 1980 the Baptist Union Council selected four 'young ministers' to be delegates to the Baptist World Congress meetings in Toronto, 1980. 20,000 delegates, representing 30 million Baptists from across the world held their main meetings in the Maple Leaf Gardens, home to the famous hockey team. As my first experience of the BWA it was utterly overwhelming.

Delegates stayed in hotels throughout the city, and each day began with prayer in the hotel with fellow guests.  On my own, I quickly made friendships, some of which lasted for years.  Each day, we then travelled to the Maple Leaf Gardens for morning Bible Study, after which sessions detailed the wide ranging work of the BWA departments and commissions.  I was involved with the Commission on Doctrine which met later in the afternoons and was to turn out to be a significant dimension of future ministry in writing and ecumenical dialogue. Of course, at the beginning I had no idea of what lay ahead.

In the evenings there were major worship and preaching sessions with a wide range of speakers.  At one of them an Australian preached.  I was sitting far away in the stalls with thousands around me.  A large screen showed gave his headshot so I had some idea what he looked like.  I remember vividly how he illustrated sin by the way delegates continued to take flash photos even though they had been instructed not to!  Though there was a noticeable drop in the number of flashes still they happened. 'You see, you just cannot stop doing it" he challenged.  He said much else of substance.  I noted his name Noel Vose in my bulky congress notes.

A few months later, back in St. Andrew's Street Baptist Church, Cambridge, I was leading our evening Sunday service. It was a dark, miserable evening. Congregations in the morning service were small but in the evenings only a smattering of people met in the building holding 900. I know some people felt its death was nigh. At the very back a solitary stranger appeared. When the service was over I shook his hand and realized that a few weeks earlier I had witnessed him at a distance in the Maple Leaf Gardens.  Noel was studying at Tyndale House and thought he would try a local church.   

I couldn't believe it. Neither could he!  We arranged to give him a meal that week and quite extraordinarily we began such a warm, deep friendship that from that point on he became one of those special people that the Lord gives us.  He was truly the best kind of gift God could give.  I have often wondered how he might have gone to another church on that dismal night.  But no.  God was in it!