Arthur Ward

Arthur Ward – actually, around three quarters of a century ago, when asked my name, I used to render it as I had been taught it – ‘Arthur Norman Atkin Little Sweetheart Ward’.  This caused laughter that I did not then understand.

Family

Christine who is now also retired. 

Jonathan, who now has three degrees, and is working in local government. 

Faith, a graduate, working in research.

What are you roles at Holy Trinity?

I am one of the worshippers, one of the servants – ‘bond-servant’ of Christ?

I usually attend 9.30 & 11.15, & used to attend evening service or meeting when there was one.

I belong to a Fellowship Group, a POD and the Town Centre Pastoral Team.

I have edited the Church magazine with Christine for over 20 years.

General Background? 

My Father was in the Colonial Service and I had a happy childhood in Fiji, with visits to Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand and Australia. The latter part of my schooling was at boarding school in England (with visits ‘home’ to Mauritius and Trinidad).

What’s the first news story you remember hearing?

That would have been the outbreak of WW2, followed by the arrival of 40 000 American troops in our islands which were regarded as ‘militarily pivotal’.  I picked up some of the jargon and questioned my Father about it. 

What job(s) did you do before retirement?

There were some happy years at Oxford (first a degree in English Language and Literature and then the ‘Devonshire Course’) before sailing to Tanganyika on my first assignment in the Colonial Service.  I spent a few interesting years in various places all within a couple of hundred miles of Lake Victoria.  A while after Independence there, I went to the Gambia which has been described as ‘a couple of riverbanks’.  At first, I thought of the West Africans as more aggressive and noisy than the East Africans.  After a time with them, I thought them more lively and outgoing than the Easterners

After being ‘Africanised’ out a couple of times, once on each side of the continent, I first tried to find another administrative job overseas.  This was in 1965-6, by which time there wasn’t much red left on the world map.  The  Colonial Office was having difficulty filling a post in the Yemen.  It involved a mud-brick fort containing the administrator’s quarters and Protectorate office.  The real down side was that the fort got shot up most nights.  I abandoned the CO and worked for the City & Guilds of London Institute for a couple of decades.  On my first day, I was introduced to a girl called Christine who worked at a desk across the room. 

How did you become a Christian?

As my Father’s Colonial Service work hopped about the islands, so family church-going had necessarily hopped up and down the scale of Low Church, High Church, Middle Church – with an element of “Fear the Lord” and an element, one would suppose, of “Who is He then?”

At boarding school (in England), I was presented with a Gideon New Testament.  I read it and underlined much of it, then in November 1964, in my first term at Oxford, Billy Graham preached on two consecutive nights.  I attended both, but went forward at the first.  John 1:12, which I must have read many times before, became crucial.  That was when battle and change began.  A chap down the corridor from me in college was converted in the same term and said that what prompted him was the change he had seen in me.  This remark helped me because I was much more aware of my Spiritual battle, than of any changes or improvements in my own character. 

Much has changed in the last half century or so; the attacks on my soul continue in other contexts, but occasionally revisit some of the old battlefields, these, however are easily recognized.  Somehow, Satan’s activities appear to be discoordinated and opportunist now.  It is abundantly clear that the Holy Spirit is infinitely more powerful and a great deal gentler than Satan. 

Would you recommend Christianity to others? 

Indeed yes and being a member of the Gideons and handing strangers Scripture is a great opener.  In the process of giving someone a Bible or a New Testament, it is so natural to open it and talk about what is in it. 

What brought you to Holy Trinity? 

We intended moving from north London and looking for a house that would give Christine access to an offered job in Guildford, so we looked up what ‘Crockfords’ said of various incumbents, drove from Finchley one Sunday morning to worship at HT, to meet some of the  congregation and to hear Charles Manchester preach.  That would have been in about 1985 – quite recently, really.  Remarkably suddenly, I appear to be ageing.