Stephen is the vicar or senior pastor of ChristChurch, the international community church of Virginia Water. He and his wife have been in full time Christian ministry together for 30 years. He became a Christian at university and served as an evangelist with Agape in the UK and Eastern Europe for four years before training for the Anglican ministry at Trinity College, Bristol (in the good old days when it was associated with reformed evangelicals like Jim Packer, Joyce Baldwin and Alec Motyer).
Originally from Lowestoft, he has served as a curate in St Leonard’s on Sea, Sussex and then was Rector of St John’s, Stoke, Guildford in Surrey for eleven years before moving to Virginia Water in 1997.
He identifies with the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans formed at the Global Anglican Futures conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem in June 2008. He has endorsed the Jerusalem Declaration and supports the Third Province Movement.
He is a member of Anglican Mainstream, Reform and Church Society and supports the Fellowship of Word and Spirit, New Word Alive, Keswick and UCCF. He is a member of the Executive of the Guildford Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship and a member of Guildford Diocesan Synod. He is an Advocate (trainer) for the Christianity Explored Course.
Stephen was until recently chairman of the International Bible Society UK, who sponsored and publish the New International Version (NIV), the most widely read Bible translation in English. IBS has recently merged with Send the Light. He is now a trustee of the new IBS-STL Ministries Trust.
He is a founding member of the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism (ISCZ), a member of the Advisory Council of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding (EMEU), a Trustee of the Amos Trust and the UK Board of Reference for the Mar Elias Educational Institutions, in Ibillin, Galilee, founded by Bishop Elias Chacour.
Stephen has served as an external examiner for post-graduate degrees (MPhil and PhD) awarded by the University of Wales and the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS) and also Tyndale-Carey Graduate School, Bible College of New Zealand.
He regularly teaches in churches, seminaries and universities in Europe, the Middle East and USA. In the last year he has taught in the USA, Iran, South Africa, Turkey, Libya, Lebanon and Indonesia.
In his spare time, he enjoys photography, painting, golf and karate, although not very well. And he even has time to blog.
