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Meeting David Coster, new Rector of St. Andrew, Rochford Parish Church (26th Sept. 2012)

We first came face to face with the new Rector of St. Andrew’s Rochford, David Coster, on our quest on behalf of Australian writer, Wendy J. Dunn (see the article “In Search of History”). Briefly mentioning a contact that had led me there, David quickly identified me, my daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren and mother-in-law, all by name. This is a ‘people person’ as you will shortly find!  Taking the opportunity we set up a meeting two days later in Stambridge Church where David holds open ‘Friends Days’ in the hall on Wednesdays where people can just pop in for tea or coffee and a chat with him.  David is one of those remarkably engaging people to whom you find yourself pouring your life out. On this occasion he poured his out to us. We hope you’ll enjoy reading something of the history of this new servant of the church here in Rochford.  


Rochford Life: David, thank you for giving us your time. How long have you been here in Rochford now?
David: 1st July was our first Sunday.

RL: And you’ve come from where?
David: Leigh-on-Sea. I was the curate at St. Clements in Leigh-on-Sea and that was my first official post within the Church of England. Prior to that I was in secular employment and then there was a three year training period and after my ordination my first post was at St. Clements, Leigh-on-Sea.

RL: What did you do before you entered the ministry?
David: I started off working for IBM in Portsmouth. I was a systems engineer and rose through the ranks there until the time of personal computers hitting the market when people like me working on main-frame computers found themselves scraping their heels. I was made redundant from IBM and went off to work for a funeral directors’ firm in London as their IT manager to move them from the days of written ledgers into modern technology, a company called Kenyon’s. They were the royal funeral directors who looked after the big royal and diplomatic funerals. I worked for them for some years migrating them, if you like,  into new forms of data management and technology until my job was reasonably done and the systems set up and I got to the point of looking for things to do. Working now in an industry that was completely different from anything I’d experienced before, I was quite drawn in and interested. I became more and more involved in the funeral business including studying for and achieving a diploma in funeral directing and then I became a tutor of funeral directors and I also studied embalming and became a tutor for embalming, and I also became an examiner and for a while was the General Secretary of the International Examination Board of Embalmers.    

RL: What an unusual path, but what triggered your moving on from that?
David: I’ve always had a very strong Christian faith. I was brought up in Roman Catholic Church life; it’s been a very big part of my journey through the years. I went to Catholic primary and secondary schools and when I left secondary school I did think about going into the Roman Catholic priesthood.  In fact I went for an interview with the bishop and the dean of the seminary in Guildford, but then fell in love and my life took on a different turn and I ended up going into computers which had been my interest at school. So I think there has always been a call to the ministry and I went down various convoluted paths and my involvement with funeral directing re-engaged the pastoral side of me.  More and more I became involved in active interaction with bereaved families and people in emotional distress and so on, and more and more people were saying, you’re really good at that, have you thought about ministry, and of course I had, and so it started to come together.

RL: So when you did make the leap, why into the Anglican ministry and not the Catholic Church?
David: Well I was involved at the time in training, as what is called a Pastoralised Assistant in the Roman Catholic Church which is kind of the equivalent of an Anglican Lay Reader, which meant that I was involved in preparing people to be received into the faith, and one of the things that we did was that we instructed the Catechumens and on the weeks leading up to their being received into the church, we would banish them to the choir loft in the church, symbolically, so that when it came to the time of Communion they were shut away and excluded. Somehow that really rankled with me and I felt this was so un-Christ-like that I cannot be doing this, and it was really powerful and it took me off on a little journey of exploration away from the Roman Catholic Church  whilst I examined my own spirituality and faith  

RL: This was in recent years?
David: Yes, while I was still funeral directing. One of my last appointments was in Stibbards Funeral Directors in Hadleigh and I was their general manager for about ten years. So I had this little challenge to my faith and my doctrine and my theology and it took me on a tour to find where my spiritual home was.  I went to various churches to find my place and ended up at St. Mary’s in Prittlewell where Canon Mason was the vicar at the time, and a very strong preacher, and his preaching convinced me I should stay there a bit longer. I got talking to him and he again reaffirmed the sense that I was called; he identified that. Lots of people had been telling me that over the years and he was bold enough to write a letter of recommendation for me to go and visit the diocese and Director of Ordinands who discerns calling on behalf of the diocese. The rest is history, as they say, and eventually I was ordained in June of 2009 and my first post was St. Clements in Leigh.      

RL: That’s an amazing journey!
David: Yes. When I worked in IBM I took a degree in Computer Science and now, of course I have a BA in Theology. While I was at St. Clements my training cover, Kenneth Havey, was very keen to make sure that I wasn’t type-cast or bound in one particular tradition. St. Clements was very much Anglo-Catholic tradition and I had come from a Catholic church and so he allowed me to wander to various other places to experience ministry.  I came fairly regularly to St. Andrew’s in Rochford, which was in interregnum, and found that I fitted in very well and they liked me and I liked them.  So, in the fullness of time, it was inevitable that I would apply for that vacancy there, which they accepted and encouraged and here I am.

RL: I’ve noted you like working with schools?
David: My particular interest is the schools; I love working with the schools. Both Andy Howe at Rochford Primary and Maureen Sealeaf at Stambridge Primary have been very welcoming and encouraging and have invited me in to lead assemblies and we are just preparing a little project called ‘Open the Book’ which means a team led by me will go into each school for fifteen minutes a week on a regular basis for a school assembly to enable us to talk about our faith and teach the Bible’s stories, in a very interactive way with some dramatisations, use of video clips and modern songs with our team. We’ve already got Harvest Festivals and Carol Concerts planned with the schools.

RL: You sound like you’re very much at home here already.
David: Yes, I think I probably could have been at home here a year ago but the church moves in a very slow way and so consequently it hasn’t quite happened as quickly as I would have liked, but now I’m here I’m determined not to waste the time.  

RL: That’s really great. Thank you for sharing your life experience with us. Again and again hearing these life stories I find I just marvel at the ways these things work out sometimes. Thank you again and I’m sure we’ll meet again in the days ahead in the life of Rochford.