Remembering Ted

It was with great sadness that the congregation learnt of the recent death of the Revd. Ted Roberts, vicar of St James and St Anne's, in the 80s.

Ted led a remarkable life of service to the Gospel.

A service of thanksgiving for his life will be held at St James on Saturday 26th September at 11.30am.

Here is Adrian's Greenwood's account of Ted's life:

Ted was born in south-east London in November 1928, the younger brother to his sister, Pat. Their mother was a Roman Catholic from Middlesbrough. Their father was a proud cockney of Jewish heritage, who operated street betting schemes on the edge of legality and spent most of the 1930s out of work. They lived on the borders of Peckham and Nunhead where their grandfather ran a succession of pubs, including The Nun’s Head and one in Bird in the Bush Road.  The household was very poor, but their parents wanted Pat and Ted ‘to do better’. Ted attended primary School in Peckham but did not enjoy it, partly because of the poverty and partly because the standards instilled by his mother did not seem to gel with the surrounding culture.

The war years were spent as a child evacuee in various parts of the country (Devon, Sussex and south Wales) living with a range of families, who displayed differing levels of kindness and hospitality. He passed the 11plus and thus enrolled with Brockley County School, although it was evacuated en masse at various times. Following an unfortunate choice of subjects , he left school at the end of the first year of the 6^th form. He often wondered what emotional and psychological legacy this very uncertain, unsettled and anxious time left with him in later years. It certainly made him resilient and perhaps contributed to his reputation for charm (as a survival technique).

He entered the advertising industry, joining the firm, which was later to become Oglivy and Mather. He was conscripted for National Service in December 1946 and served in England with the Royal Artillery. He clearly enjoyed this time and was almost promoted to officer class. On discharge in autumn 1948, his commanding officer described him in glowing terms ... ‘a remarkable young man who, provided he maintains his present progress, should have an excellent future in any walk of life.’  He returned to the advertising firm, where he met and fell in love with a young artist, also on the staff.  Ted and Audrey were married in August 1951, aged 22.

In preparing for their wedding in church, they became friends with the churchwarden, Jack Wallace, a battle scarred infantry captain who had become a Christian. Jack challenged them both that becoming a Christian was more than an assent to doctrine – it involved a total commitment of one’s life to Christ, with the result that one’s whole life was changed. In 1952, Jack invited them to attend a residential weekend where they both decided to commit their lives to Christ. They both served as counsellors at the Billy Graham crusade meetings in Haringay in 1954.

By then, Ted had already felt called to the ministry and started training at Oak Hill, while Audrey lived alone during term time in their home in north London. (There were no such thing as married quarters in College in those days and ordinands were expected to live a celibate lifestyle). He was ordained in 1956. 

His first curacy, which he did not enjoy, was in suburban Edgware. Their eldest daughter Jane was born here. The second curacy was in the mining town of Bedworth, Coventry with Will Maggs. It was here that he formed what was to be a life-long friendship with Snowy & Sybil Davoll and Simon was born.

In December 1961, Ted was appointed Vicar of St James the Less, Bethnal Green and St. Mark’s Church, Victoria Park, a position he was to hold for 17 years.   During this time, three further children were born – Kate, Peter and Liz (not bad for a couple who had initially been told that they couldn’t have any). Tragedy struck in 1971, when Kate was knocked down by a car outside the Vicarage and suffered multiple injuries, some of which she lives with today.

During the 1960s, as the influence of John Stott spread throughout evangelical circles, Ted became increasingly struck by the reality that the Church of England had rarely become established amongst working class communities of England’s cities and Urban Priority Areas and by the conviction that evangelicals needed to rediscover what Jesus meant when He said that ‘the Kingdom of God has come near’ (Mark 1:15) and He had come to bring ‘Good News to the poor’. (Luke 4:18). 

They joined a group of clergy couples led by David & Grace Sheppard at the Mayflower Centre in Canning Town, which also included John and Angela Pearce and Mike & Veronica Whinney. Ted and David were also strongly influenced by a Baptist layman called Roger Dowley, who lived in Bow (and then Walworth) and the founders of the Frontier Youth Trust (FYT), amongst others. 

From these prayers, studies and discussions came a number of initiatives including the Evangelical Coalition for Urban Mission (ECUM) and the Evangelical Urban Training Project (now UNLOCK). Much of the fruit of this is to be found in the Faith in the City report of 1985.

In addition, Ted forged two projects in Bethnal Green, both of which have stood the test of time. The first involved the demolition and re-development of the church plant at St. Mark’s Victoria Park to provide a new church building and hall, plus 32 flats of rented housing, owned and managed by Victoria Park Housing Association, all as described in his short book Housing & Ministry.

The second project was the selection, training, ordination and placement of local, working men all in the context of the two parishes – the so-called ‘Docker Priests’, although, in fact, only one of them was a docker by trade. 

In this project Ted was greatly supported by the visionary leadership of Bishops David Sheppard (of Woolwich) and Trevor Huddleston (of Stepney). Ted wrote about this project in his book ‘Partners and Ministers’.  These men were but four of the 17 curates Ted was responsible for in his career, including the first married couple to be ordained deacon together on the same day (Anita and Colin Smith).

Having served as Area Dean, Ted left Bethnal Green in 1978 to be a Residentiary Canon at Bradford Cathedral, where he was also served as Director of Social Responsibility for the Diocese. This was a short and unfortunately unhappy spell. He left after just 4 years, spending time as Acting Warden of Scargill House, before returning to London as Vicar of St James and St Anne Bermondsey, where he was reunited with Snowy & Sybil Davoll. There he began a long-term programme of refurbishment and re-ordering of St James Church, which continues to this day and, much more excitingly, a second attempt to launch an Ordained Local Ministry Scheme, following on from the clear recommendations in Faith in the City. 

This time he was supported Bishops Ronnie Bowlby and Peter Hall and also Peter Maurice of Rotherhithe, subsequently Bishop of Taunton. The strategy adopted was to undertake a pioneer scheme in Bermondsey, culminating in an unprecedented ordination service in St James Church on 11^th December 1988, with Snowy as one of the candidates. 10 years later, Bill Garlick, a painter and decorator and Stan Catton, a London Transport bus mechanic, were ordained as OLMs, licensed to St James.

Ted had already agreed to leave Bermondsey to begin working full time on establishing the Ordained Local Ministry training scheme in Southwark as the Bishop’s Advisor for Urban Ministry, when a second tragedy struck the family in August 1990 – Peter, having suffered from depression for much of his teens and 20s took his own life, aged 26.  Peter’s life is commemorated in the communion tables and lecterns at St James Church, which he designed and helped to manufacture.

The OLM Scheme, initially called the Local Non Stipendiary Ministry scheme, was launched in Southwark Diocese in 1992, with Stephen Lyon as the first Principal and made a huge impact before it was decided to close it in the mid 2000s. More can be read in ‘Ordained Local Ministry’ by Malcolm Torry and Jeffrey Heskins, published by Canterbury Press in 2006.

Ted and Audrey retired to Ipswich in the mid 1990s, to a bungalow which they had been able to buy with the generous loan of two friends. Here they both enjoyed an active life, with Ted much in demand for his services especially St. Margaret’s Ipswich. Having survived both prostate cancer and a quadruple bypass operation, I think he felt that he would never leave Ipswich, but in 2013, they were able to sell up, re-pay the loan and move to Morden College in Blackheath, almost back to where life had started. 

Ted was unwell with various ailments from almost the moment that they arrived, and spent quite a bit of time in the on-site hospital wing. But he entered fully into the life of the College when he could and became much loved in a very short space of time. With kidneys and heart failing, he spent his last 7 months in the sick bay at Cullum Welch Court, where Audrey could visit him each day and his daughters were close by. Simon was able to visit him from Australia just before Christmas 2014. He died in peace on 28 June 2015.

Ted Roberts was an exceptional and warm human being and a faithful and inspirational minister of the Good News of Jesus Christ, who lived out that life-changing commitment to Christ in deprived urban/inner city areas for the whole of his life, despite many set-backs. 

He did much to build up and motivate the members of the churches entrusted to his care and others with whom he engaged. He was charming and witty, yet possessed of clear vision, analytical thinking and steely determination to tackle some big issues that many others have considered and drawn back from.