Elizabeth Catherwood, the globally loved Vice-President of IFES 2003–2011, went to Heaven on 26 January 2026, not long after celebrating her 98th birthday the previous October. The notice of her death was transmitted by IFES worldwide.
Starting with her lifelong devotion to IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) may be an unusual opening, but it is deliberate. She was of course the daughter of Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the maternal great-granddaughter of Evan Phillips and the beloved wife of Fred Catherwood. But she was a remarkable figure very much in her own right. What comforts those who knew her truly well is that now in the presence of the Lord whom she served so faithfully for decades it was not her earthly descent or marriage that made her so prominent, but her use of the many and great gifts that God gave her – and now she knows it eternally!
She was born in Wales on 26 October 1927, and although she only lived in Wales the first 11 years of her life, she always identified very fully with her Welsh heritage, still able to sing her favourite hymns in Welsh to the end of her life. Aberavon in the Great Depression was a place of much poverty and unemployment and that sense of growing up with deprivation never left her. She was strongly a Lloyd-Jones, in resemblance, in her considerable intellect, her profound pastoral insight, her amazing ability to speak without notes for an hour while captivating her audience, her utter enthusiasm and gift of encouragement, and in her lifelong devotion to IFES, a movement which she would tell students was in her family DNA.
Aged 11 she and the family moved to London – in time for the Second World War! She was evacuated briefly to Haslemere, but in London, during the VI and V2 raids, she acted bravely as a runner. Many of the people at Westminster Chapel during this era made life-long friendships of whom she was one of the last survivors. Her final school was part of the Girls’ Public Day School Trust (GPDST) – she inherited the profound belief in equal education for women from her maternal grandparents and was actively involved with the GPDST in later years, raising scholarships for girls who deserved them.
Then she went to Oxford, to the then all-women’s college St Hilda’s, a place of academic esteem in the golden era of English literature at that university. Her personal tutors were Dame Helen Gardner and Dorothy Whitelock, and she attended the lectures of C.S. Lewis (which she loved) and J.R.R. Tolkien (which she found dull…) The Oxford Inter Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU) was enjoying a period much blessed by God, and she served on its Executive. Above all though she made Christian friends there who were lifelong, meeting in a small group once a week that included Eunice Gerber and J.I. Packer. Of this trio she was the last survivor, and Jim Packer and she, later along with my father, remained in active fellowship until the end, all the vicissitudes of later ecclesiastical separation put to one side.
She qualified as an English teacher, and while she gave up a full-time job on marriage, she remained an enthusiastic part-time coach well into her 90s, with an infectious love of her subject.
In 1954 she married Fred Catherwood, thus beginning one of the great Christian marriage partnerships in decades. Fred and Elizabeth were a team, and a team as much in shared Christian ministry as they were a happy Christian couple. So much of their life, in secular matters as well as spiritual, was the two of them together, whether in UCCF, IFES, the Evangelical Alliance, or at the European Parliament to whose sittings she always accompanied her husband.
They had three children – Christopher, an academic, who followed her to Oxford and OICCU in the Presidency of Lindsay Brown, and who continues with ties to IFES; Bethan, who followed her as an English teacher; and Jonathan, who for many years kept the flame of his grandfather Lloyd-Jones in the USA and is a businessman like his father. In time came grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Although she led Sunday School classes at Westminster Chapel, her two longest links were IFES (79 years) and Eden Chapel in Cambridge (47 years in attendance). In the latter she mentored female students – frequently from Wales – and for over four decades was part of a quartet of faithful women nicknamed The Committee who met and prayed weekly together until shortly before she died.
IFES was where she enjoyed her worldwide ministry. Lindsay Brown called her and Fred the Priscilla and Aquila of the movement, and they jointly house parented some 16 IFES conferences and assemblies over the decades. It was she who became Vice-President 2003-2011 since, as everyone recognised, she was the better speaker of the two! As her IFES tribute said, “When Elizabeth Catherwood talked about IFES, her whole face lit up. Even well into her later years, her eyes would sparkle as the stories spilled out – of students she’d met, conferences she’d helped host, and moments in which she’d seen God at work. It was that warmth, attentiveness, and joy that marked her life and ministry, far more than the titles or reputations attached to her family name.
"For Elizabeth, student work was never simply an institution; it was a way of helping young people encounter the God she loved."
In 1997 she was interviewed by Lindsay Brown at the Golden Anniversary in Boston. She mentioned the great cloud of witnesses of the founders back in 1947, now in glory. On 26 January 2026, God took her to join them. Her words resonated then and are played to this day: she is herself in glory now, yet her eloquence continues.
