The pastor of Holbrooks Evangelical Church in Coventry shared his ‘unspectacu-larly spectacular’ story in late March of 16 baptisms in his congregation in 2016.
Reported on the FIEC website, Ben Holmes emphasised that he does not want others to see Holbrooks as a ‘go-to’ model.
‘I am painfully conscious that, whilst there are best practices, unless the Lord builds the house we labour in vain. When you experience a sovereign blessing of God’s grace, the last thing you should do is ask “How can we reproduce that?”.
‘Having said all of that, and amidst the normal and not so normal difficulties and challenges of church life, we have experienced real and steady blessings in the form of conversions and baptisms over the last few years which I hope will be an encouragement to others.
Coming to faith
‘We’ve seen around 35 people baptised and around 25 come to faith in the last 7½ years. 2016 was an unusual year in that we saw 16 people baptised on four separate occasions.
‘The youngest person we baptised was 15 and the oldest was almost 80 – and all have been converted in the past few years. We even baptised two people in a freezing river at camp (it was a quick service!).’
‘We haven’t been huge on organised evangelism (I often have guilt pangs about this) but we have offered the odd Christianity Explored course and occasional evangelistic meals or bowling evenings.
‘These have been great; but the conversions haven’t come from here. They have generally come as a result of much prayer, personal evangelism and exposing people to God’s Word. In other words: they have been unspectacularly spectacular.’ After training at London Seminary, Ben Holmes became pastor in 2009. He said the ‘weight of responsibility’ that hit him on that night has never left him.
