Celebrating 58 years of marriage

On Tuesday Caroline and I celebrated 58 years of marriage. As I have discovered, about 7% of marriages reach 50 years. The 58^th wedding anniversary doesn’t have a name associated with it, but it is sometimes symbolized by the maple tree for its qualities of strength, balance, and enduring.

I first met Caroline when she came up to Girton College, Cambridge, in the autumn of 1964 to ‘read’ history. I first set eyes on her at the Robert Hall Society’s freshers’ tea held at St Andrew’s Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon, 4 October. As I wrote in my autobiography, This is my Story: A story of life, faith and ministry, “She stood out not just because she was a woman, but because with her blonde hair she was a beautiful woman. ‘That’s the girl I want to get to know’, I said to myself.” As the term went on, I became increasingly convinced that she was the girl for me! However, Caroline was slow to respond to my love for her. I almost despaired when she went with her parents on a long holiday to Greece, and never sent me a card. Eventually she invited me to visit her in Wrexham, North Wales, where I met her parents, Maelor and Mavis Griffiths. I remember her father grilling me about my theological views, and also asking me what I thought of Sunday newspapers – for most Baptists, including my parents, disapproved of Sunday newspapers. Eventually, in May 1966 Caroline agreed to marry me, and so we became engaged. The following year on Saturday 26 August 1967 we were married in Chester Street Baptist Church, Wrexham.

Since then we have had an amazing life together. After leaving Cambridge, we went to Manchester, where Caroline did a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education at Manchester University, before teaching history for nine months at Bury Grammar School for Girls. Jonathan, our first child, was born on 6 August in 1969. In the meantime I went to Manchester’s Northern Baptist College to train to become a minister, and I began my PhD taking as the theme for my research The lordship of Christ over the world in the Corpus Paulinum (i.e. the letters believed by most people to have been written by the Apostle Paul). After two years, we went to Switzerland where I continued with my research. We stayed for one year at the former International Baptist Theological Seminary in Rüschlikon, a few miles down Lake Zurich. We returned to England for three months during which I had my ‘viva’ for my PhD. Because we had accepted an invitation of the Baptist Missionary Society for me to teach for two years New Testament Studies and New Testament Greek in the medium of French at what became the Protestant Theological Faculty of the National University of Congo/Zaire, we spent our final weeks in the UK preparing for our move to Africa. The Protestant Theological Faculty was based in Kisangani 1,000 miles up the river from Kinshasa, in the very heart of Africa. It was during this time that our second child, Timothy, was born in Nyankunde, a mission hospital 500 miles away from Kisangani – the reason for going there was there was no gynaecologist in Kisangani. Those two years in Africa were two of our most exciting years.

We came back to England in the summer of 1972, and within a few months I accepted the call to be the minister of Altrincham Baptist Church. Altrincham lies to the southwest of Manchester and is the last built-up area before Mancunians encounter the countryside. There we spent thirteen years. The church when I arrived had less than 100 members and had few young people. However, in a way I could never have dreamt of, the church quadrupled in size. At one stage we had some 100 young people at the evening service. As was the case, in Africa, it was a very exciting time. During those years Susannah and Benjamin were born; and Caroline gained a law degree at Manchester Polytechnic.

In 1986 I became the Principal of Spurgeon’s College in South London. The College was facing a crisis which threatened its very future. The number of students was declining and the finances of the College were in a mess. My task was to turn the College around. With the help of my colleagues student numbers dramatically increased, the college finances were sorted out. Within a year or so we had introduced three patterns of training: viz. college-based, church-based, and mission-based. If the truth be told, there were tough times as well as exciting times.  As for Caroline, she became a barrister, specializing in crime, which involved travelling all over London and the South East of England. As a result, I became responsible for meals during the week.

In 1992 I accepted an invitation to become the Senior Minister of Central Baptist Church in Chelmsford, the county town (now a ‘city’) of Essex. It proved to be a tough assignment, for the church was in rapid decline. At one stage we had just over 200 members. However, by the time I left in March 2014 the church had 400 members with another 600 who were part of our church community. Caroline remained at the Bar, but with her move to Chelmsford she began to specialise in family law. In 2000 Caroline was appointed Her Majesty’s Senior Coroner of Essex. With over 7,000 reported ‘suspicious’ deaths and 800 inquests every year, she became the busiest coroner in the UK. At the same time along with Her Majesty’s Coroner for Brighton and Hove, Caroline initiated training for all coroners – and as a result became the first women coroner to be honoured by our late Queen, becoming an ‘Officer of the British Empire’. Her major contribution in the church was her founding Chelmsford contact centre for separated families.

In March 2014 I retired at the age of 70, but Caroline kept working until she was 75. Within less than a year, Caroline and I became members of Chelmsford Cathedral, where we were warmly welcomed by the members of the Cathedral community. For both of us, it has been a time of personal and spiritual growth.

As I look back over our life together, we have so much for which to thank God. We thank God for one another and for our four children, six grandchildren and two step-grandchildren. We thank God for the many friends who have enriched our lives. We thank God too for his amazing love for us seen above all in Jesus. We have so much to celebrate after 58 years of marriage.