Jim Morris’s Testimony

I was born in 1946 in my Nan’s home in East Acton, West London – a house that backed onto Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Dad worked for a wholesale newspaper distributor in the Edgeware Road and Mum had worked for a time at the United Dairies at Park Royal. I think that’s how we got our flat in East Acton situated above a United Dairies Shop.

Childhood memories

Church didn’t figure much in our family life. Social gatherings tended to be at the Old Oak Social Club – I can still recall the smell of stale beer as you entered the place. But it was a place where we spent many happy hours. Dad was also a part- time entertainer and comedian so we would often go on theatre outings to see local shows.

I was the oldest of three children – Christine, my sister, then John my younger brother. For many years holidays consisted of an exciting train journey to Caister Holiday Camp in Norfolk. I think we went there seven years on the trot! Those post war days were happy and carefree for many of us, with none of the dangers children face today. We played football in the streets and scoured old sites – we cycled for miles without protective helmets and stayed out for hours. Wormwood Scrubs, behind the prison was a huge grassed area leading up to the Western mainline track out of Paddington. Perhaps that’s where I got my first love of steam trains from – sitting on the embankment watching the various holiday trains thundering past on their way to the holiday haunts of the South West.

My first school was Old Oak Junior Mixed and that’s where I first met David Burl, who, a good few years later, would witness to me about the Lord. On passing the eleven plus my mum insisted on sending me to a school with a grammar stream. After being rejected by two schools in the area ( including Clement Danes) I ended up going to a school in Wandsworth – an hour’s journey away on the London Tube! From the age of eleven I often made the journey unaccompanied – something that would be unthinkable today!

Ambitions in Journalism

In my later teens I suffered from panic attacks, largely brought on by claustrophobia. I left school hoping to break into newspapers as a journalist. Dad set me up with a number of interviews – including one I remember at the News of the World – but there were no openings. I realise now that God had other plans for my life. It was about this time that my old school friend from East Acton, David Burl, came back into my life. He had settled for a comprehensive school and had attended Christopher Wren School. During that time he had become a ‘born again’ Christian and was eager to share his experience of Jesus with me. It was 1963, the Beatles were topping the music charts and I was just seventeen. Although I had no reason to be worried, I felt insecure and the panic attacks still bugged me. The natural way Dave talked to me about his Lord made me want to find out more about this ‘personal God’. I attended the Perivale Mission Church in Middlesex and there I met real people who had found a living faith in Jesus. The church was led by a charismatic pastor – the Rev Dennis Paterson – a man who was to become my spiritual mentor and a real ‘father in Christ’.

Through regular contact with this lively fellowship I began to seek God more earnestly and in the August of 1963 I realised I needed God’s forgiveness and that Jesus had died on the cross for me. My initial prayer was about as basic as you can get. I simply prayed, “God, if you’re there, please come into my heart and life!” I couldn’t have put it into theological terms but I know that there and then God answered my simple prayer – I had taken my first step of faith! From that time on God came into my life – He even dealt with the panic attacks for now I had an inner security and peace in the Lord Jesus who had promised to be with me always.

Love Blossoms!

In the same year (1963) that I gave my heart to Jesus I also surrendered my heart to a beautiful 16 year old girl called Janet, who herself had become a Christian a few years earlier. She was attending the Perivale Mission Church but also, along with Dave, was part of a recently formed Friday night youth group in Chiswick called the Grange Fellowship.

This was run by a young couple, Martin and Grace Gouldthorpe, and it became a hub for young people looking for answers to life’s challenges. In later years Janet and I realised that we were some of the fortunate few from among all those youngsters who still had two parents living together. Thanks to Martin’s God-given ability to explain and teach biblical principles, along with Grace’s bubbly personality and musical talent, we were both helped and discipled in those early days to a very high standard.

Grace has a reputation for being a bit of a matchmaker and one evening, sensing Janet and I were attracted to one another, invited us both to what we thought would be a large gathering at their Chiswick home. When we arrived various people made excuses and we were left to spend the rest of the evening alone! It had been a set-up!! But I have to say never have I been more pleased to be stitched up! From that day love blossomed that by God’s grace has lasted from 1963 to the present day. The Grange Fellowship, along with Sunday worship at Perivale, became important times in the week. As the Grange Fellowship grew it pushed the confines of Grace and Martin’s home to the limit with every square inch of floor space taken up by youngsters. Many is the time I listened to Martin’s talks from under the grand piano in their lounge! Both Janet and I just praise the Lord for His goodness. As young and naïve Christians the loving advice and care we received stood us in good stead for the years ahead. We shall always be grateful to Grace and Martin for their hospitality and their love for us.

We were soon being challenged by the Lord to serve Him and we began leading the Bible Class in Perivale, sharing with and teaching young teenagers. About 18 months later God challenged me about serving him in a full- time capacity. After much prayer I joined the work of the Come Back to God Campaign, a missionary society in Great Britain. Janet and I were married by Pastor Dennis Paterson at Uxbridge Road Tabernacle on the 24th September 1966. At this time too we were attending the Campaign’s teaching School, Adelaide College. It was there I learned that, even as a minister, I could still use the natural talents God had given me, including the gift of humour, which I inherited from my dear old Dad, and which has been invaluable in my Christian walk over the years.

By 1970 I felt a real call to serve the Lord in small churches. At the age of 23 years Janet had to face the challenge of becoming a ‘pastor’s wife’, moving home and giving birth to our first child, Craig. Craig was born in March of that year and within days we had moved to Reading, Berkshire to take up our first pastorate at the Underwood Mission Free Church. It was there that I was ordained as a minister of the Gospel in 1973 and in that same year our daughter, Lynne came along. The small fellowship was very gentle with us and we spent five happy years getting to know the ropes of pastoral work. From there we took over the pastoral care of the Perivale Mission Church for an interim period of two and a half years as Pastor Dennis had been released by the church to develop the work of the Campaign. It was a diffcult couple of years for a young couple with two children.We had three different homes during that time, even spending nine months living with Brian and Marian Morris (two more Grangers) and their two children at Chiswick. Eight Morrises in the same house – bedlam! Not really, we are so grateful to Brian and Marian for their hospitality and patience!

Since then we have had extended pastoral opportunities to work in Rochdale in Lancashire (9 years) alongside our friend and fellow Grange Fellowship member – Pastor Ben Belsham and then 15 years in charge of the Fordham Congregational Church in Cambridgeshire. It was a heart attack in September 2000 that set the wheels in motion for the latest move which has brought us to the green and pleasant pastures of Dorset, and a small but growing Congregational Church in the heart of Thomas Hardy country – Bere Regis. As I look back I see that along the way I have made many mistakes and messed up more than once. But God has been so faithful, gently picking up the shattered pieces of my sometimes selfish actions and re-moulding them according to His will and purpose. As a family He has kept His Hand upon us and seen us through some severe times of testing.

Entering the twilight zone!

In latter years we have both had health challenges and continue to do so. Janet has faced the trauma of two hip replacements and a gall bladder removal. And, although I like to think of myself as being still active, the legacy of the heart attack nine years ago has left me with an irregular heartbeat. I am currently (August 2009) recovering from surgery to fit a pacemaker/defibrillator – which is basically a pacing device for the heart with built in jump leads as I have a slight risk of cardiac arrest! But in all these challenges we have been able to turn to God’s Word time and time again and shared our emotions with Him in prayer – and every time His love and faithfulness have blown us away!

Now, with our Senior Citizen bus passes firmly under our belts, we continue to actively serve the Lord in the Chapel here in Bere Regis and reach out to the wider village community. Forty six years ago I thought I knew where I was going and what I was going to do with my life. But God, in His love and mercy, had other plans – He forgave my sin and brought me to Christ and set my life on a different and much better path. And I praise Him and give Him all the glory.

One of my favourite scriptures is John 15, where Jesus reminds us that we need to be in a permanent relationship with Him as the True Vine. That way our lives can be fruitful. One phrase I recall most mornings as I arise to a new day are those words of the Saviour which simply say, “Without Me you can do nothing”. My aim in life continues to be to involve the Lord in every part of my life.

I hope that whoever reads this will be challenged as I was, all those many years ago, to stop trying to do everything in your own strength and hand over your life to the Lord Jesus Christ.