In Depth:  Leith Samuel

Have you ever heard an exciting story from the lips of some fairly new convert and wished you could tell a lurid story yourself e.g. 'How wicked you were before your conversion'?

Well, I am one of those people with no lurid story to tell. But it doesn't worry me at all now, because it takes just as much of the grace of God to keep a person from falling into vile sin as it does to pull them out!

Many years ago, it became public at church that one deacon (now in glory!) had nominated an old friend for the next elections to the diaconate. The nominee was a nice enough fellow, and had done lots of repair work for the church, but he was never at the prayer meeting, and I seriously doubted his ability to lead us in prayer helpfully at the Lord's Table.

(The situation is different now. A name has to be approved by either the church secretary or the pastor before the owner of it can be put to the church for voting on.) Faced then with what to me was no small problem, I said nothing to the church secretary or even to my wife, but waited on the Lord for light.

Leith Samuel, a former minister of Above Bar Church in Southampton, and senior evangelical statesman looks back on family conversions.

'Janet, are you sure you are married?' the missionary, home from Africa, asked my mother.