Ministry Team
Rev'd Simon Jones - Team Leader
Simon Jones grew up in Leicester, studied at Manchester University and worked for seven years as a financial journalist in London. After training at London Bible College, he pastored Peckham Park Road Baptist Church for seven years before launching and editing Christianity Magazine. In 1998 he joined BMS World Mission as its co-ordinator for London and the South East.
The author of many books, including Building a Better Body: The Good Church Guide, Discovering Galatians, and Discovering the New Testament, Simon listens to copious quantities of contemporary music, reads voraciously, watches films and enjoys cooking and body boarding.
Linda has recently joined the Mission Care Team as Leadership and Development Manager. Previously she worked as Human Resources Manager at Pecan, an employment and regeneration charity established by Peckham churches at the end of the 1980s to respond to the desperately high levels of unemployment and poverty in the area. She and Simon met in Harrow when she was a dispensing optician. Linda enjoys taking Simon on long walks and round National Trust properties and gardens. They have two daughters, Charlie and Olivia and two grandchildren.
Contact Simon. Read Simon's blog here.
Rev'd Brian Reed - Pastoral Care
Brian Reed joined the team in 2002 with over thirty years of pastoral experience in independent evangelical churches since training at London Bible College in the late 60’s. During their ministry he and Kathy have established a community day centre, a town-wide evangelistic mission in Tunbridge Wells and a counselling service. He came to us from his post as Dr. R.T. Kendall’s assistant at Westminster Chapel where he served from 1994 until 2002 when Dr. Kendall retired. His training in counselling with London University, and more recent further training at Spurgeons College is used extensively in his pastoral work.
Though he shares in the full work of the ministry team he is particularly responsible for pastoral care and home groups. He is particularly involved in Thursday Break, our Sunday afternoon service (Sunday Break), Dad's Pop-in and Holiday at Home (our summer work with the over 55s).
Until recently Kathy worked as a counsellor and creative arts therapist and is now retired. Brian and Kathy have three grown children and three grandchildren.
Contact Brian.
Glenis Ruston - Christian Education
Glenis Ruston is the church schools worker although that only covers part of what she does. She visits schools on behalf of the church and in association with an organisation called Spinnaker Trust who work in 80 primary schools across South London. The work involves visiting 2 schools fortnightly to lead assembly and take RE lessons and another 3 schools a couple of times a term to take assemblies. We sometimes have contact with other school groups who come to visit the building or in one case hold their Christmas concert with us. She co-ordinates the Spinnaker work in Bromley, looking after the team, finding new workers, linking with schools and churches and also organises and runs training for the whole Spinnaker team.
Wearing another hat she's an associate educator with Hope UK a Christian drug education charity. This means that she's available to visit groups of adults or children and run drug education sessions using games, quizzes, activities and discussion as away of giving information and encouraging people to think about the subject. With young people in particular we want to work on the whole area of life skills so that they are able to make wise decisions about their lives. As far as church is concerned she helps organise and lead family times and services, runs the child protection policy and does anything else that seems to fit!
Contact Glenis.
Liz Johnstone - Minister in Training
Liz is currently training part-time at Spurgeon’s College to be a Baptist minister and hopes to complete these studies in 2014. She comes from a teaching background having been in secondary education for 10 years. She is married to Phil and they have three children.
Liz is also a school governor and spare time is spent with the family, swimming and knitting.
Contact Liz.
