Re-imagining Preaching and Leading Worship

About Robert Little

Since September 2013 Robert (also known as Bob) Little has been Chairman of the Hertfordshire Fellowship of Baptist Preachers (HFBP) having joined the Fellowships 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 persons local church fellowship along with assessments from the HFBPs 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 peoples. 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 youre 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. Trevors 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 students preaching activities for the forthcoming term. Consequently with Janets 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 Weve 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 whore 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. Weve had a great day today. If ever youre 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 its 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 Id had of seeing a Baptist ministers 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 Britains 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 youre 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 didnt have time to mark them. I was officially recognised by the Baptist Union of Great Britain at the Unions Annual Assembly in London in the spring of 1979. By then Id 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 Ive been given have meant that Ive 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 Ive conducted over 1200 services in nearly 90 churches of various denominations around the country and in one or two other places as well.