Speaking the word in Thamesmead

Jonathan Macy was the speaker at today's Men's Breakfast at St James.

Jonathan is vicar of the Church of the Cross in the Thamesmead Team Ministry in south-east London, serving in one of the biggest parishes in the diocese, with a population of over 50,000 people, serving the Thamesmead estate, built from the mid 1960s on marshland on the south bank of the Thames, north east of Woolwich.

Thamesmead

Jonathan grew up in an atheistic family but through the persistent loving witness of some mates he became a Christian at the age of 20. Almost immediately he sensed he was being called by God into full time Christian ministry, but there was a big problem.

All his life he had lived with a severe stammer. As a twenty year old there were occasions where he could hardly talk at all, so how could it be possible for him to take on a job that involved speaking to individuals, to groups and to whole congregations?

Jonathan Macy

He was about to embark upon a long journey. He began work as a cleaner in a care home. He ended up as the manager of fifteen care homes.

He married and had two children, and he was selected for ordination, trained for the ministry, served as a curate in Plumstead and took on the job 'no one else wanted' in Thamesmead - but Thamesmead has been a blessing to him and he has been a blessing to them.

He still has the stammer but he is a kind of living embodiment of the verse 'I can do all things through him who gives me strength.'

It was God who called him and then God enabled him to do the thing that seemed at one point almost impossible - to speak in public - about the good news of God's love. And if people in Thamesmead had all kinds of struggles in their own lives, and sometimes wondered if God could use them in their weakness, they had a pastor who (1) knew what that was like; and (2) could testify how God had used (and equipped) him. Wonderful.