Joe essentially pioneered what is now a thriving ministry to Oxford’s graduate students.
He grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the deep south of America. While studying history at Harvard, he met Christians who challenged his recently-avowed atheism. Those early days in the Inter Varsity Fellowship left him with a deep appreciation of and commitment to student ministry.
Joe went on to Princeton Theological Seminary, hoping to become a pastor, but a visit from Francis Schaeffer changed his course. Schaeffer was beginning to establish a reputation as a brilliant apologist and evangelist, especially to younger intellectuals. He and his wife, Edith, had recently opened L’Abri in Switzerland as a place for people to seek ‘honest answers to honest questions’ in the context of warm hospitality. This approach, as well as Schaeffer’s clear orthodoxy and his prophetic analysis of contemporary culture, struck a chord with Joe, who joined his team.
Many features of Joe’s ministry were learned at L’Abri: the importance of taking each individual seriously; of listening carefully before speaking; of love as the essential mark of the Christian; and of engaging the whole person with the whole gospel in the whole of life – including the life of the mind. At L’Abri, Joe met his wife Linette. They remained devoted to each other until Linette’s death in 1998.
After a period back in America, the Martin family moved to England in 1969 and based themselves in Ealing, where Ranald and Susan Macaulay (Schaeffer’s daughter and son-in-law) were establishing the International Presbyterian Church. Joe worked as a computer programmer, while devoting much of his time to serving the church as an elder. Then, in 1985, Joe and Linette moved to Oxford. Joe could earn enough in six weeks of freelance work to cover their costs, so he gave the rest of his time to student work, first based at St Aldates and then, from 1994, at St Ebbe’s.
Joe was a man with a very big heart. He loved people, and he embraced life to the full. He was always pushing himself to think deeply, from a biblical worldview, about all of life (his library contained over 12,000 books).
These passions combined to great effect in Joe’s remarkable ministry with students. In every context, at home, church or at one of the student house-parties, he was the catalyst for a huge amount of fun. He called the barn dances (with clothing and accent returning to their Southern roots) and initiated extraordinary games, such as ‘blowball’ and ‘bumblepuppy’.
Joe very obviously didn’t fit any Oxford stereotype, and so anyone who felt like an outsider in the rarefied atmosphere of university life was put immediately at ease by him. Here was a man they could talk to and who cared. He had evident integrity, both in his personal godliness and in the integration of his faith with the whole of life. He loved nothing more than gathering reading groups, in which students could discuss works by authors like Schaeffer or Nancy Pearcey. Countless former students, now scattered all over the world, have reason to thank God for Joe’s lasting impact on their lives.
Joe remained active in ministry until weeks before his death. To the very end of his life he was strong in faith and hope. Almost his last words to me, said with conviction and with a twinkle in his eyes, were: ‘The new creation will be such fun!’
