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.

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I gratefully acknowledge my thanks to Our Inheritance Bible Ministries for their
kind permission in allowing me to reproduce this article.
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