When Chris drove me back to Hildenbrough station on Saturday, I never dreamed that this was our last meeting on earth. We’d had our usual mix of serious debate, music and family fun; not for the first time, he had kindly put right one of my hymns in draft.
When he travelled north for their holiday two weeks later, after a typically energetic youth teaching venture (Woolhampton 2), he little thought he would never return to his Penshurst home.
But after the morning service at Buxton on Sunday August 12, their car was hit head on. Chris (39) was killed outright; Helen seriously injured, but now being marvellously patched up by Sheffield surgeons. David (9) and Jonathan (7) were spared physical damage but, like their Mum, remain in need of prayer.
The prayer of faith, mingled with grief and Christian assurance, has been much in evidence not only in their church of St. John’s, Tunbridge Wells, but in many other places where the Haywards have served.
Whether leading music at St. Andrew the Great Church, Cambridge, sharing pastoral ministry with other congregations, teaching Hebrew and Greek at Oak Hill Theological College, leading workshops for Christian service, evangelising among friends or strangers, initiating children’s projects, conducting and singing with local choirs, playing in orchestras, teaching in Tonbridge schools, running some startling assemblies, or working with hymns and songs on musical projects, Chris was a constant bundle of gospel-focused energy. We might say, ‘as if he knew his time was short’; but no, he had no forebodings. Our time is always short.
Chris will be missed by an extraordinarily wide variety of friends and colleagues; we shall treasure memories of his effervescent humour and flashes of wit, almost as much as his grasp of gospel priorities and theological accuracy, with Scripture as the court of first and last appeal. He is with Christ; his family remains in our prayers.
