Make a point of visiting us weekly!
Churches
Ashingdon Elim Church
Ashingdon Elim Church
If you go on to Ashingdon Elim’s excellent website you will see they operate as the ‘elder brother’ to the group of Elim churches in the area that go under the name of the Estuary Group of Elim Churches. Now although Rayleigh is technically outside ‘our area’ because Keith Maynard is so much part of Rochford and Ashingdon, we are including him in the various interviews we are planning on doing with the Group.
Although, as you’ll see when you read the interview, Keith has been a Christian for most of his life and has been very active in a number of churches, he is very unusual in that he has gone “into the ministry” after retirement from his life in industry. His story also shows how similar churches of different denominations must be, as you’ll see his walk through his Christian life has taken him into most of the main denominations. This is a fascinating account.
Interview with Keith Maynard of Elim Estuary Church Group (29th November 2010)
Rochford Life: Keith, what is your role now in terms of church?
Keith: I am the Pastor of Rayleigh Elim Church, Castle Road, Rayleigh. I took up the position in November three years ago, at the request of David Redbond who is the senior Pastor of what is now the Estuary Group of Churches which includes Rayleigh, Ashingdon and Southend Elim.
RL: You had presumably been at Ashingdon for some while?
Keith: I had been at Ashingdon a number of years. My history with the Elim Church goes back to when I was very young. When I was three years old I was sent to the Southend Elim Church Sunday School until I was about eleven years old. When I was about six years old I made a commitment and asked Jesus into my life. From then on I always knew that God was there and had a real assurance of that when I prayed.
Later as the family grew we were sent to Sunday School at St. Lukes in Southend which was nearer. That gave me a perspective of the Church of England. Then there was a drifting away until I met my wife and she was part of the Methodist Church and we were married in York Road Methodist Church. We were invited to help in the Sunday School in Rochford which was the Bethel Free Church in Rochford as it was then, I made a fresh commitment to my faith, and we helped there for a number of years. We wanted further teaching and we were encouraged to join Earls Hall Baptist Church where we were for nineteen years. We became involved in lots of things there. We were both baptised in the Baptist Church at Earls Hall. We later moved house to Rochford and one winter time, it was a bad winter and too snowy to go over Warner’s Bridge, so we went to Hawkwell Baptist Church just up the road and we later transferred our membership there and we were there a number of years. I got involved in Boys Brigade there. There came a point in time when we felt God leading us from there down to the Ashingdon Free Church. Now several other people we knew from Earls Hall had gone down there to help set up a Sunday School and were then involved in rebuilding the church building, replacing the old ‘tin building’ with a new brick built church, and we became involved in that. About that time, David Redbond from the Elim Church used to come down to preach now and again. I was wanting to do some form of church training and so he suggested that my wife and I go on the Elim Church Training Course on the first year it was run. As part of it we had to attend Chelmsford Elim Church once a month doing various teaching assignments and that sort of thing. Two of our sons heard that David was starting up a church plant in Hockley, at the Community Centre, and they went there and later we went up and joined them there. And that’s how we became re-involved with the Elim Church, so the wheel had gone full circle from the days of my childhood. It was in 1996 that that happened so we were back with the Elim Church after a gap of fifty years!
RL: During all those years you had a job as well as doing things in the various churches?
Keith: Yes, I trained as a centre lathe turner in Leigh Old Town working for the Southend Engineering Company, anything to do with marine stuff. I had to do a year in the bronze and iron foundry and then served a five year apprenticeship in the actual machine shop. Then we were getting married and I needed more of an income so I asked the Lord to lead me to another job. There was a brief interim while I worked for the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment at Poton Island for a few months. I wasn’t happy with the job so handed my notice in without another job lined up, and prayed about it, saw a job advertised in the Southend Standard for a centre lathe turner and ended up working for Aviation Traders. The big bump in wages in a few months I saw as God’s provision for us. I worked for four years in the machine shop on the lathe and then was promoted to machine shop inspector which I did for eight years. Later I moved to Lentern Aircraft at Hockley, again on machine-shop inspection and I was there for three years. During that time I did a course at college on quality control and qualified in that, a member of the Charted Quality Institute, and eventually went on to Marconi Research where I worked for twenty years. While I was there I was involved with the workers Christian Fellowship and it is interesting to note that in most defence and scientific organisations there are groups of Christians who meet together regularly. People seem to think that all scientists are atheists but I can tell you they are not. Eventually they were taken over by BA Systems and they were offering a year’s redundancy payment. A friend pointed me to another job and I left at the end of one week and moved into a new job at the beginning of the next, back at the airport, and it was from there that I retired a few years ago. I’ve worked for fifty years in industry virtually without a break, all the time fitting that in with what God wanted me to do in church life. I would have probably wanted to do Christian work earlier but whereas most people go into the ministry and retire at sixty five. I’ve gone the reverse.
RL: And that’s taken you to your present role at Rayleigh Elim
Keith: Yes, it’s only a small church at the moment. The average attendance on Sunday mornings is about sixteen or seventeen, sometimes as many as twenty four, sometimes less. When I first went there, there were four or five, so we have grown a little bit. We’ve had to spend a lot of time and effort on the building itself which was badly neglected. The people who have joined us recently have come in through the coffee mornings we hold. We sometimes do a combined service, and people from the Ashingdon church may come over.
RL: With all the experience you’ve had in both churches and industry, how do you view the requirements for church leadership.
Keith: Well, I see right back in Jesus’ time and the early church, people had a job or trade. I see benefit of leaders who have worked in the world and have experienced the working environment, before moving into ministry. I feel that everybody should spend a year or two, if not longer, after they have done their studies, doing a secular job and then get involved in whatever way God leads them. One of the problems, I believe, is that once you are a Christian leader, it is very easy to meet no one except those who come into your church. I belong to a group called REMAP which is a group of retired engineers who meet with occupational therapists at the Southend Hospital and if somebody needs an adaptation of say a wheelchair, a walking frame or whatever, we do those changes. It’s free of charge; it’s a national charity. We do it because we enjoy doing it, but I also do it because it helps me keep involved with people outside the church, and we need to have that ‘hands-on’ to the community.
RL: Other characteristics for a church leader.
Keith: Well obviously you must have committed your life to Christ, you must have responded to the call of Jesus to allow him to come into your life to lead you. After that it is listening to what he has to say to you by way of guidance. It’s being aware that whatever decision you take, whatever pathway you are following, that you commit your way to the Lord, and then he can guide you.
RL: Highs and lows of being responsible for other people as a Pastor?
Keith: The highs are, I find, visiting people and caring for them. I do like the pastoral side of ministry. The lows or difficulties, I find, are coping with difficult people. I enjoy the easy people but find the difficult ones, difficult!!! A recent high was the joy of bringing two people into membership, that was good.
RL: What is it like working in a team?
Keith: You have the advantage of the expertise of others. We have a group of ministers so while I am Pastor at Rayleigh we get a variety of ministry. Organisationally it is obviously more complicated because you have to have a rota of who is going where and when. We also rely heavily on musicians coming from other parts of the group mainly from Ashingdon.
RL: A one line conclusion? I like what I’m doing today because....
Keith: This is where God has put me at this point in time.
RL: OK, Keith, thank you for giving us your time and for sharing so widely about your life and how you have arrived where you now are.
Although, as you’ll see when you read the interview, Keith has been a Christian for most of his life and has been very active in a number of churches, he is very unusual in that he has gone “into the ministry” after retirement from his life in industry. His story also shows how similar churches of different denominations must be, as you’ll see his walk through his Christian life has taken him into most of the main denominations. This is a fascinating account.
Interview with Keith Maynard of Elim Estuary Church Group (29th November 2010)
Rochford Life: Keith, what is your role now in terms of church?
Keith: I am the Pastor of Rayleigh Elim Church, Castle Road, Rayleigh. I took up the position in November three years ago, at the request of David Redbond who is the senior Pastor of what is now the Estuary Group of Churches which includes Rayleigh, Ashingdon and Southend Elim.
RL: You had presumably been at Ashingdon for some while?
Keith: I had been at Ashingdon a number of years. My history with the Elim Church goes back to when I was very young. When I was three years old I was sent to the Southend Elim Church Sunday School until I was about eleven years old. When I was about six years old I made a commitment and asked Jesus into my life. From then on I always knew that God was there and had a real assurance of that when I prayed.
Later as the family grew we were sent to Sunday School at St. Lukes in Southend which was nearer. That gave me a perspective of the Church of England. Then there was a drifting away until I met my wife and she was part of the Methodist Church and we were married in York Road Methodist Church. We were invited to help in the Sunday School in Rochford which was the Bethel Free Church in Rochford as it was then, I made a fresh commitment to my faith, and we helped there for a number of years. We wanted further teaching and we were encouraged to join Earls Hall Baptist Church where we were for nineteen years. We became involved in lots of things there. We were both baptised in the Baptist Church at Earls Hall. We later moved house to Rochford and one winter time, it was a bad winter and too snowy to go over Warner’s Bridge, so we went to Hawkwell Baptist Church just up the road and we later transferred our membership there and we were there a number of years. I got involved in Boys Brigade there. There came a point in time when we felt God leading us from there down to the Ashingdon Free Church. Now several other people we knew from Earls Hall had gone down there to help set up a Sunday School and were then involved in rebuilding the church building, replacing the old ‘tin building’ with a new brick built church, and we became involved in that. About that time, David Redbond from the Elim Church used to come down to preach now and again. I was wanting to do some form of church training and so he suggested that my wife and I go on the Elim Church Training Course on the first year it was run. As part of it we had to attend Chelmsford Elim Church once a month doing various teaching assignments and that sort of thing. Two of our sons heard that David was starting up a church plant in Hockley, at the Community Centre, and they went there and later we went up and joined them there. And that’s how we became re-
RL: During all those years you had a job as well as doing things in the various churches?
Keith: Yes, I trained as a centre lathe turner in Leigh Old Town working for the Southend Engineering Company, anything to do with marine stuff. I had to do a year in the bronze and iron foundry and then served a five year apprenticeship in the actual machine shop. Then we were getting married and I needed more of an income so I asked the Lord to lead me to another job. There was a brief interim while I worked for the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment at Poton Island for a few months. I wasn’t happy with the job so handed my notice in without another job lined up, and prayed about it, saw a job advertised in the Southend Standard for a centre lathe turner and ended up working for Aviation Traders. The big bump in wages in a few months I saw as God’s provision for us. I worked for four years in the machine shop on the lathe and then was promoted to machine shop inspector which I did for eight years. Later I moved to Lentern Aircraft at Hockley, again on machine-
RL: And that’s taken you to your present role at Rayleigh Elim
Keith: Yes, it’s only a small church at the moment. The average attendance on Sunday mornings is about sixteen or seventeen, sometimes as many as twenty four, sometimes less. When I first went there, there were four or five, so we have grown a little bit. We’ve had to spend a lot of time and effort on the building itself which was badly neglected. The people who have joined us recently have come in through the coffee mornings we hold. We sometimes do a combined service, and people from the Ashingdon church may come over.
RL: With all the experience you’ve had in both churches and industry, how do you view the requirements for church leadership.
Keith: Well, I see right back in Jesus’ time and the early church, people had a job or trade. I see benefit of leaders who have worked in the world and have experienced the working environment, before moving into ministry. I feel that everybody should spend a year or two, if not longer, after they have done their studies, doing a secular job and then get involved in whatever way God leads them. One of the problems, I believe, is that once you are a Christian leader, it is very easy to meet no one except those who come into your church. I belong to a group called REMAP which is a group of retired engineers who meet with occupational therapists at the Southend Hospital and if somebody needs an adaptation of say a wheelchair, a walking frame or whatever, we do those changes. It’s free of charge; it’s a national charity. We do it because we enjoy doing it, but I also do it because it helps me keep involved with people outside the church, and we need to have that ‘hands-
RL: Other characteristics for a church leader.
Keith: Well obviously you must have committed your life to Christ, you must have responded to the call of Jesus to allow him to come into your life to lead you. After that it is listening to what he has to say to you by way of guidance. It’s being aware that whatever decision you take, whatever pathway you are following, that you commit your way to the Lord, and then he can guide you.
RL: Highs and lows of being responsible for other people as a Pastor?
Keith: The highs are, I find, visiting people and caring for them. I do like the pastoral side of ministry. The lows or difficulties, I find, are coping with difficult people. I enjoy the easy people but find the difficult ones, difficult!!! A recent high was the joy of bringing two people into membership, that was good.
RL: What is it like working in a team?
Keith: You have the advantage of the expertise of others. We have a group of ministers so while I am Pastor at Rayleigh we get a variety of ministry. Organisationally it is obviously more complicated because you have to have a rota of who is going where and when. We also rely heavily on musicians coming from other parts of the group mainly from Ashingdon.
RL: A one line conclusion? I like what I’m doing today because....
Keith: This is where God has put me at this point in time.
RL: OK, Keith, thank you for giving us your time and for sharing so widely about your life and how you have arrived where you now are.
Ashingdon Elim Church
535 Ashingdon Road, Ashingdon, SS5 3HE
535 Ashingdon Road, Ashingdon, SS5 3HE
Pastor David Redbond
01702 548438
dave@ashingdonelim.co.uk
Pastor Simon Law
01702 204326
simon@ashingdonelim.co.uk
Pastor TonyTween
01245 600138
tony@ashingdonelim.co.uk
Pastor Dean Courtier
01702 544179
dean@ashingdonelim.co.uk
01702 548438
dave@ashingdonelim.co.uk
Pastor Simon Law
01702 204326
simon@ashingdonelim.co.uk
Pastor TonyTween
01245 600138
tony@ashingdonelim.co.uk
Pastor Dean Courtier
01702 544179
dean@ashingdonelim.co.uk
To return to the Elim front page, please CLICK HERE
