Colin Urquhart, apostolic leader with a healing ministry
at 80; his legacy lives on in his many
books (Colin Urquhart, 1940-2021
Colin Urquhart, who passed away on 13 September aged 81, impacted a generation of Christians, introducing them to a bold, charismatic faith and the pursuit of an intimate, obedient relationship with Jesus.
His first book, ‘When the Spirit Comes’, written in 1974, describes how God transformed his Anglican church, St Hugh’s in Luton.
Times of genuine revival followed when he left a secure parish to start a travelling ministry with a small team of supporters.
Colin describes the movement’s beginnings in ‘Faith for the Future’ (1982).
Over the course of several evenings, “it seems that Jesus walks into the room.
Immediately, people start falling on their knees. next they are lying prostrate … one person after another is crying out to the Lord for His mercy … in those brief hours the lord had shown more to us about our hearts than all our weeks of searching had revealed”.
Colin and his wife Caroline also modelled community living in households; a large ministry base in Sussex, the Hyde, was shared by several families.
A permanent base, Roffey Place in Horsham, was paid for miraculously and became a Bible college, although the emphasis was as much on the practical aspect of serving as spiritual study and experience. I had the privilege of spending two terms there in 1991-2.
While there, i wrote a commissioned book, ‘the Coming revival’, which portrayed life at the college interwoven with Colin’s teaching. I was also there for the 1992 birth of Kingdom Faith Church, which was launched with three weeks of nightly meetings.
Colin, who said his testimony was “God continually asking me to do things I couldn’t possibly do” also began Faith Camp, an annual tent meeting in Peterborough, which gathered around 5,000 Christians to powerful worship and teaching.
Colin passed the leadership of the church to his son, Clive, when he officially retired from full-time ministry, but continued to preach, teach the college students and mentor other leaders.
Melanie Symonds
David Yonggi Cho, pastor of the world’s largest church
boy who gave the five loaves and two
fish. I simply held on to the dreams that
the Lord gave me” (David Yonggi Cho,
1936-2021)
The founder of the world’s largest megachurch, David Yonggi Cho, died on 14 September aged 85. Known affectionately as “God’s general,” Yonggi Cho converted from Buddhism as a young man to become a Pentecostal who saw miracles, including the raising from the dead of his own son.
Yonggi Cho started Yoido Full Gospel Church, affiliated with Assemblies of God in Seoul in 1958 with just five worshippers. By the 1990s, it had over 800,000 members. It still has around 480,000 members, with 400 pastors and evangelists in South Korea and 500 missionaries abroad.
Many churches across the world adopted his ‘cell groups’ model for discipling believers.
Retiring in 2008, Yonggi Cho’s last years were blighted by a tax scandal connected to his wayward elder son, but he said his conscience was clear before God.
Cho attributed the success of his ministry to the power of prayer and would discipline himself to pray for three to five hours per day.
Andrew Halloway
Greg Haslam, pastor of Westminster Chapel
with his wife Ruth
Pastor and author Greg Haslam died on 20 august at the age of 68.
He served as senior minister of Westminster Chapel from 2002 to 2016, succeeding RT Kendall. Prior to this, he led a church in Winchester
for 21 years. a popular speaker at national Christian conferences, Haslam became a Christian aged 14 after hearing Billy Graham preach.
He retired from ministry after being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s five years ago, and his wife became his full-time carer.
Their son Andrew paid tribute to his father’s “rare combination of careful and logical preaching, enlivened by a living reliance on the Holy Spirit”.
Andrew Halloway