This is my first blog for a very long time.
Last month, July 2015, I was away for a couple of days, staying in Telford when I received a text message to say that my cousin’s husband David Williams was very ill in hospital following a severe bleed in the brain. Sadly, David passed away on the Wednesday evening of July 22nd.
David was not only married to my cousin Eunice, but was a colleague in the ministry of the Apostolic Church UK, he being ordained as a pastor in 1991 and myself later in 2000.
His death has been an enormous shock to us all (family and the Church Fellowship) and I have put together the following which is my own personal tribute to Pastor David Williams. His funeral service/ thanksgiving service in Inverness was a precious occasion as we remembered him, with many attending from near and far. I had the privilege of reading the Scripture which was Psalm 46. A further thanksgiving service was also held in Hereford a little over a week later which again was well attended, showing how much this man of God and family man was loved.
This is my Tribute:
My personal tribute to a genuinely humble Man of God.
My first contact with David Williams was sometime in the early to mid 1970’s when a group of us from the Church I then attended in the village of Madley, Herefordshire began to join with a group that were meeting in a farmhouse after Church on a Sunday evening in Preston-on-Wye. It was incredible then how many of us used to gather together from many of the Herefordshire villages, with Apostolic, Baptist and Methodist backgrounds. We used to sing songs from the then well used ‘Youth Praise’. Around the same time missions were held in the Preston-on-Wye village hall which we all attended and many lives were impacted by the gospel. David was one of the ‘Methodists’ who were a part of the group, along with his brother Phillip and sister Gillian.
As a result strong connections were made between the Churches, in particular the Apostolic Church in Madley and the Baptist Church in Preston-on-Wye. Out of this came an even stronger connection for inevitably when young people come together, romance is often in the air. And one of these romances which eventually happened was when David began to date my cousin Eunice Greenow.
My how different he looked then! I remember his bushy hair, his big Vauxhall car, his humour and generally his very warm nature and character. But besides his relationship with Eunice, David also became a very good friend to many others as well and I being one of them.
The romance blossomed until in 1975 David and Eunice married and he became a part of the family. (Incidentally a few years later, my youngest sister Sarah, also married one of the men we met through this connection, Wilf Prosser).
Although David had been brought up in the Methodist Church, he was one of the circuit preachers and a few times I went along with him to some of the services, he soon came into the Apostolic Church in Hereford. Once they had married David and Eunice lived in the city and what took place in the farmhouse in the 70’s on a Sunday evening began to be replicated in Hereford as David and Eunice began to open up their home to the youth in the Apostolic Churches in Hereford and Madley, some Sunday evenings we would be crammed into their long living room having fun and fellowship together. I guess at times we would easily have been over 20.
David and Eunice have three children, Gwyneth, Hayley and Jonathan and Elaine and myself used to occasionally baby sit for them before we got married in 1983.
In the spring of 1986 some decisions were made in regards to the Hereford Apostolic Church and its leadership and as a result three of us as young men who were already elders were called to relocate into Hereford (Myself and my older brother Ian from Leominster, David Porter my brother in law from Madley) and at the same time two of the young men in Hereford were called into elder ship, Robin Pryse and David Williams. I remember very well that Sunday morning as Pastor Philip Cawthorne took the service, he looked across at the five of us – aged from 26 – 32 (Me the youngest and David Williams the eldest) and then he challenged the Church to dare to believe that sitting in the row being installed as 5 elders in Hereford were 1 each of the five ascension ministries! Well today, David Williams was recognised as a Prophet in the Body of Christ, Robin is recognised as a Teacher in the Body of Christ and myself recognised as a Pastor – 60% is pretty good!
In 1991, following the removal of Pastor Jim Hodge as the Hereford pastor, David was called from within the Hereford assembly by the Council of the Church to be the Pastor. A few months later I was called to serve alongside David as the leading elder. I can honestly say that I really appreciated and felt honoured to be able to serve alongside David for the few years before he was eventually relocated to Lydden, Kent.
Again, I can honestly say we were not only cousins-in-law, but we were extremely good friends, we were able to work really well together as colleagues and always had a close relationship of friendship, loyalty and trust. In fact during the time we worked together in Hereford I felt like our relationship was similar to that of Paul and Timothy in the Scripture.
Even when David and Eunice moved away from Hereford, and eventually Elaine and myself, the relationship, friendship and comradeship continued.
David truly was a genuine, humble, man of God who had a true servant nature. He came from a humble background and even though God took this country boy and called him to be a prophet within our fellowship, and gifted him with an amazing preaching ability and servant / shepherd heart his humility always shone through.
We had lots of conversation together, in particular when we were together at the Annual AMC or Staff Conference, we would share our hearts with each other, seek to encourage one another and I knew that without any shadow of doubt I could trust this man with my life. I will miss picking him up from Luton airport.
I can only re-echo what is evidently the feelings across our whole Apostolic Fellowship and across the family and scope of David’s friends the enormous shock at his passing, the tremendous loss that is and will continue to be felt. My continued love and sympathy go out from my broken heart to the broken hearts of Eunice, Gwyneth, Hayley, Jonathan and their families. Reminding us and them that God knows, he never makes a mistake. One day we will fully understand but for now we just have to learn to trust him.
Not many may know this but David and Eunice used to sing together! If my memory serves me right, one of the songs was ‘trusting as the moments fly, trusting as the days go by, trusting Him whate’re befall, trusting Jesus, that is all.’ I can recall and hear them now in my mind, singing about the wonderful Saviour that they loved, trusted and served together in Hereford, Lydden, Neath, Penygroes, Inverness, in their family near and far. David has gone on before us, he is enjoying the presence of Jesus, I’m pretty sure that even if he could come back he wouldn’t want to – in the words of the Scripture that was on the leaflet for his service of thanksgiving ‘For me to live is Christ, to die is gain’. He lived for Jesus, he died for Jesus, he now lives with Jesus.
There is a sense in which words fail me, my heart is full yet I can’t get out all I want to say. I thank God for David, for all he has impressed in me and all the many ways he encouraged me, for his friendship and loyalty. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. I’m going to miss you big time.
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