Alun’s Testimony

I had the privilege of being brought up in a Christian home where the Bible was read and loved. I was taken to an evangelical Church where I heard the gospel on a regular basis. However, like so many in my favoured position, I imagined that being in those circumstances I was a Christian. It was not until I was fifteen years of age that I began to consider my soul’s destiny.

Faithful leaders of our Young People’s Fellowship were used of God to show me that despite all my advantages I needed to come to Christ for salvation. I was caused to see that my own supposed self-righteousness only aggravated my state as a sinner. I trusted myself to the Saviour asking for his forgiveness.

My growth in grace was slow but sure, the Lord being merciful to me. Two years in the Royal Air Force were testing times, but God brought me through.

Called to Dudley

Called to the ministry in my late teens, I trained for three years in Theological College. I was then appointed to a Church in Rossendale, Lancashire, UK and remained there for seven years. Then I was called to Finaghy Baptist Church in Belfast where again I remained for seven years.

By this time I was married to my wife Margaret and we had four children. Despite the political and military upheaval in Northern Ireland we found them to be golden years spiritually for us.

When a call came from Dudley, my prompt response was to say that I did not believe it was for us. But God had other ideas. Four months later, when visiting in a Belfast hospital, the only four people I spoke to in the ward were all Christians. I wondered if there was a comparable situation in England, and being English I felt may be my place was back “home.” I contacted the Dudley Church – this was four months later – and suggested perhaps I had been mistaken, and that it was of God after all. They said that no progress had been made in the months that had passed, and that I should preach there again.

Subsequent to this I was called and accepted. We were at the Dudley Church for 29 years and praise God for all his goodness to us. Most of the sermons on this website were preached from the Priory Road pulpit and are produced in the humble hope that God, in his mercy, may make them a means of grace to some.