Born into a
staunchly Protestant household,
Edward Joshua Poole-Connor was
brought up in London. His father
was a builder and decorator, and
deacon of Trinity Church, a
Calvinistic Independent church
in Hackney. One of six children,
he was from his earliest days
brought up on the works of the
Puritans and taught the way of
salvation through Jesus Christ.
When he was thirteen, his father
fell ill and he had to leave
school to help run the business.
This loss of education left him
with a life-long desire to
learn. At the age of fifteen he
was received into membership of
Trinity Chapel, and led a Sunday
School class with several pupils
older than himself. Three years
later he was Secretary of the
local branch of the Calvinistic
Protestant Union, and gave
strong support to the crusades
of John Kensit.
Early 19th
century Nonconformity was
strongly Protestant, there being
a universal orthodoxy amongst
the churches. The Puritan
doctrines were preached and
churches were largely made up of
families where the Word of God
was soundly taught in the home.
Anglican evangelicalism was at
its height. One of our
historians has noted that "The
power of Evangelical religion
was the chief influence that
prevented our country from
starting along the path of
revolutionary violence during
this period of economic chaos
and social neglect." However by
the middle of the century things
were changing. The publication
of Darwin’s "Origin of Species",
the influence of the Oxford
Movement, the infiltration of
Higher Criticism into
theological colleges, and the
fashionable acceptance of
church-going amongst the
Victorian upper classes, all
contributed to a decline in true
godliness. Amongst the
nonconformists, family
congregations worshipping in
small buildings gave way to
massed congregations in huge
buildings.
Trinity
Church, however, retained its
orthodoxy among the Free
Churches, and Poole-Connor’s
grounding in the doctrines of
grace served him well through
the succeeding difficult years.
Expressing a desire to enter the
ministry, he was encouraged by a
Baptist minister, William Frith.
He preached his trial sermon
when eighteen, and then took
over a little church in South
Hackney for a year. Though he
did not have strong convictions
about baptism and had been
sprinkled as an infant, he felt
that the balance of Scripture
was in favour of immersion, and
about the age of twenty was
baptised by immersion, along
with his future wife Edith Ford,
a childhood friend. Mr Frith
then introduced him to the Rev
James Spurgeon with a view to
his entering the Pastors’
College, but instead
Poole-Connor accepted a call to
Aldershot Baptist Church. He
began his ministry in the summer
of 1893 and spent four happy
years there. During this time he
was appointed Baptist Chaplain
to the soldiers in Aldershot,
the first such appointment for
the denomination. In 1895 he
married Edith Ford, and enjoyed
a long and happy union with her.
Poole-Connor left Aldershot not
because he had received a call
from another church, but because
he felt that his task there was
done, and that God would have
him work elsewhere. Not knowing
where that would be, he trusted
in God’s providence to lead him
forward. In 1898 he was called
to the pastorate of Borough Road
Baptist Church near the Elephant
and Castle in London, a very
different situation from that in
Aldershot, as he was brought
face to face with the abject
poverty and rampant crime in
that part of the city. During
his two years of ministry, the
work prospered, but he soon
moved on.
In 1900 he
was called to the Baptist Church
at Surbiton, a pleasant surburb
and a striking contrast to
Borough Road. He speaks of the
years spent here as "the most
fruitful of my life." At the
time the church met in a little
wooden hut known as Balaclava
Baptist Church where, he says,
"God was pleased to bless us,"
but it was clear that larger
premises were needed and much
prayer was offered to God.
Eventually, in March 1904 the
new Church was opened.
Poole-Connor’s ministry at
Surbiton was a decisive phase in
his life, for his experience
there led to a gradual breaking
down of his denominationalism.
Whilst there, he accepted an
invitation to become President
of the Kingston Free Church
Council, entering into a "circle
in which the traditional
attitude of Dissent to the
Church of England was much in
evidence. I was out of my
element," he recalls. "I could
not on Scriptural grounds join
with other Nonconformists in the
Passive Resistance movement. I
was expected to exchange pulpits
with ministers of Modernist
views. I found the Baptist Union
to be strongly leavened with the
same influence. I grew more and
more unhappy. At last I cut the
bonds that bound me;" He
resigned his pastorate after a
ten-year ministry and with
nothing in view moved to
Twickenham to wait the Lord’s
leading.
In 1910 at
the invitation of Mr Fuller
Gooch of West Norwood, he joined
him as assistant pastor at
Lansdowne Hall, a church which
expressed the principles towards
which Poole-Connor had been
moving during the past few
years. "It gave me a vision of
Christian unity, based first
upon the fact of the essential
oneness of all believers, and
second upon a common belief of
the fundamental doctrines of the
Christian faith…It was in the
fullest sense an evangelical and
unsectarian Christian assembly."
Poole-Connor’s preaching proved
so successful that it caused
embarrassment, and rather than
be the instrument of splitting
the church he resigned after
just two years. In spite of
this, some from Lansdowne moved
house to be able to sit under
his next ministry. It was at
Talbot Tabernacle that he was
invited to minister on a number
of Sundays in November 1912, and
in January the next year he was
welcomed as Pastor of what was
the most prominent
interdenominational and
unsectarian church in West
London. With a membership of 318
and a very large Sunday School,
Talbot Tabernacle was a thriving
church and the faithful
expository preaching of the new
minister was much appreciated by
both old and young. Missionary
endeavour was a prominent
feature of the church’s witness,
eight members actually serving
on the mission field at this
time and many societies being
supported.
In 1921,
Poole-Connor’s ministry took a
new turn when he was invited to
become Deputation Secretary for
the North Africa Mission, one of
the Societies supported by the
Tabernacle. As he travelled
round the country visiting
churches and mission halls, he
was struck by the isolation of
many of those which were not
attached to a particular
denomination. There seemed to be
little fellowship or association
between such assemblies, and
Poole-Connor began to ask
himself whether there might not
be a means of bringing them
together in an "association of
mutual helpfulness." As he
pondered on this he saw that
there were many difficulties,
not least that to create a new
movement of such unattached
churches would lead to
accusations of forming a new
denomination, which was the last
thing in his mind. He sought
advice and counsel from his
friends in the ministry and
received numerous rebuffs, yet
there were also those who
encouraged him to go forward,
and so in 1922 the "Fellowship
of Undenominational and
Unattached Churches and
Missions" was formed. Over the
next few years as the register
of affiliated churches and
ministers grew, it was
recognised that the title chosen
for the Fellowship was becoming
less appropriate, and so it was
changed to "The Fellowship of
Independent Evangelical
Churches", which it was felt
more accurately described the
character of the membership.
After eight
years with the North Africa
Mission, he returned to pastoral
work in Cheltenham, but stayed
there for only eighteen months
before moving back to London.
His continuing interest and
practical involvement with many
missionary and other
associations, together with
pressing family needs, was
behind this decision. Within
twelve months he was invited to
become General Secretary of the
Mission, a post which he held
until 1938. He threw energy and
zeal into this work, making
numerous visits to North Africa,
and was much loved by colleagues
and friends. In October 1933 he
began a second period as pastor
of Talbot Tabernacle and for
five years he carried the two
responsibilities side by side.
That same year he wrote a book
entitled "The Apostasy of
English Nonconformity", in which
he reviewed the way in which
modernism had infected so much
of the professing church. He was
not afraid to name names and to
point the finger, and called for
a return to the faith once
delivered to the saints. Not
surprisingly his comments were
unwelcome in many quarters! In
the following year, he organised
a series of meetings to
celebrate the centenary of the
birth of CH Spurgeon. An
‘official’ celebration had been
arranged, but he wanted to draw
attention to those things which
were missing from this and to
highlight the ‘Ominous Silence’
about the Down-Grade
controversy, reference to which
was altogether absent from the
official meetings. Once again he
demonstrated that he was not
afraid to stand up and be
counted.
Poole-Connor’s second pastorate
at Talbot Tabernacle proved to
be much blessed by God. Despite
the many and varied activities
undertaken in the life of the
church, he was very careful not
to lose sight of the primary
work of the ministry of the
Word. This was at the very
centre, and all else was
submitted to its authority. In
1938, he resigned from the North
Africa Mission, so that he might
devote his energy to the
pastoral ministry, but the
outbreak of the second world war
brought new problems for the
church. The large Sunday Schools
disappeared, and many of the
membership were dispersed. An
increasing burden fell upon a
declining number, and
Poole-Connor found it impossible
to do justice to both his
pastoral duties and his wider
ministry. In 1943 following an
invitation to join the Council
of the London Bible College, he
tendered his resignation to the
church which received the news
with great sadness.
Now 71,
Poole-Connor might have been
justified in reducing his
work-rate, but on the contrary
he seemed to do just the
opposite. The FIEC became the
centre of his attention, and
given the title of National
Commissioner he travelled widely
throughout the country
preaching, and encouraging the
small churches and fellowships.
In 1944, he became Chairman of
the Lord’s Day Observance
Society, in which he had always
taken an active part. At the end
of the war he was largely
responsible for the
re-establishment of All Nations
Bible College, becoming its
Principal for three years, and
then, on retirement, Principal
Emeritus continuing to travel to
the college to lecture each
week. In 1952 he played a
leading part in the formation of
the British Evangelical Council
and two years later he became
Editor of the Bible League
Quarterly, a position which he
held until his death. The same
year he became Vice-President of
the Evangelical Library, in
which he had been involved with
Dr Lloyd-Jones from the
beginning.
Although he
wrote a number of books and
pamphlets, one of the primary
concerns and longings of
Poole-Connor’s life was for
unity among evangelical
Christians, and in 1942 he set
out the sum of his thoughts in
Evangelical Unity. Originally
intended to be a sketch of the
Independent Evangelical churches
in this country, it developed
into a re-examination of the
causes of ecclesiastical
disruption, the evils of
sectarianism, and the bearing of
revival on the subject of
evangelical reunion.
Poole-Connor had noted that in
times of revival, the Holy
Spirit "pays not the slightest
attention to the party walls
that we so carefully build up.
Anglicans or Brethren;
Denominationalists or
Undenominationalists; all who
‘hold the Head’ are alike used
and blessed. He favours none and
He refuses none." This led him
to the view that the
fragmentation of the evangelical
movement arose "not so much from
differences on fundamental
doctrines as from divergent
opinions concerning church
government and church
ordinances." He went on "If the
conflicting conclusions in
regard to these two points (to
which…the Holy Spirit pays very
little attention) could be
eliminated, the way would be
paved for Evangelicals to form
one large, united and powerful
church."
Ten years
later, his magnum opus was
published, 'Evangelicalism in
England', a detailed and
thorough account of the rise and
fall of evangelicalism. In it he
reveals the breadth of his
reading of history and his acute
perception of the various
elements and stages in the
progress of modern day
ecumenism. He deals at length
with the events surrounding the
Down-Grade controversy of the
late 1800s, and is unashamed in
his admiration for CH Spurgeon
whom he first met when he was
ten years old. He had been taken
to worship at the Metropolitan
Tabernacle and introduced to him
after the service. No one ranked
so high in Poole-Connor’s
estimation; he read much of his
output, shared his theological
outlook, and followed him in his
steadfastness in the faith. When
in 1887, Spurgeon published his
article on the Down-Grade in
'The Sword and the Trowel',
following it up with subsequent
articles in which he charged his
contemporaries with denying the
inspiration of the Scriptures,
Poole-Connor was open in his
support. He considered it of the
utmost importance that
Evangelicals should acquaint
themselves with the facts. In
his book he writes "He, being
dead, yet speaketh," and his
conclusion, which is no less
apposite today than it was
nearly 50 years ago, is that
"words are not enough. It is
action that is demanded." He
goes on: "Evangelicals who
remain in complacent fellowship
with those who deny their faith
are not only failing to stem the
tide of apostasy; they are
accelerating the pace. Their
very leniency is eloquent
advocacy; it cries aloud to
multitudes that what men call
liberalism in religion is far
from being the harmful thing
that Spurgeon thought it, for
are not they - outstanding
evangelicals - hand-in-glove
with those who teach it? That
the ebb-tide now runs like a
mill-race is due, more than
aught else, to this damaging
quiescence." In 1999 the
mill-race is now surely a
torrent. Where are those who are
standing firm?
It was on 20
January 1962 that this giant in
the faith was called home. Just
a few days before his death he
dictated to his wife some
thoughts which had occurred to
him during his illness, hoping
to speak from them. His mind was
still active, and his desire was
ever to be of service to others.
A funeral service was held at
Lansdowne in West Norwood, and a
memorial service at Westminster
Chapel, his body being laid to
rest not far from that of CH
Spurgeon in the local cemetery.
John Westmacott
