David Watson: a legacy

Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the death of David Watson, one-time vicar of St. Michael le Belfrey, York; pioneer behind the Renewal movement within Anglicanism during the 1960s-80s; and much-loved international evangelist.

In Matthew 22, the Lord Jesus rounds on the Sadducees, telling them: ‘You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God’. In these words, Jesus encapsulates the basic, two-fold requirement of Christian discipleship: to know and love the Word of God; and to live in the power of God’s Holy Spirit. It could be argued that evangelical leaders through the years have usually stood on one or the other side: they are either remembered for their ability to expound the Scriptures eloquently, or for their advocacy of a Spirit-filled, Spirit-empowered Christian life. David Watson is remembered for both. As such, his memory and work should be treasured by so-called ‘conservative’ and ‘charismatic’ evangelicals alike.

Wide influence

Apart from the blessing on his church of St. Michael le Belfrey, York, it is clear that David left a lasting impression on the evangelical church nationwide. It was he who first urged John Wimber to come and minister in the UK and Wimber’s subsequent visits to Britain in 1981 and 1984 had a meteoric impact on, among others, Holy Trinity Brompton and St. Andrew’s Chorleywood . In view of this, it can even be claimed that Watson is indirectly responsible for the celebrated Soul Survivor youth movement, which in turn arose out of St. Andrew’s in the early 90s. Worldwide, Watson’s influence spread further still through the frequent and often gruelling international evangelistic missions he led throughout his relatively short ministry. Working with an indispensable team of musicians, dancers and actors, this humble vicar from York proclaimed God’s gospel all over the world.

Unsung hero

But for all this, Watson is largely unsung within the British evangelical church today. Could this be because evangelicals are wary of the definite emphasis on the Holy Spirit in his ministry? Could it be because of his controversial penchant for fraternising with the Roman Catholic church? Or could it be because the evangelical church has simply forgotten him, 26 years on from his sad and untimely death?

It is widely agreed that David Watson’s ministry was shaped by three main themes: reconciliation, evangelism and renewal. What was Watson’s approach in these three areas?

Reconciliation: attitude before conviction

In 1971, David Watson was asked to speak at the International Fountain Trust Conference in Guildford. On his arrival he was shocked to discover that he would be sharing the platform with a popular leader from the Roman Catholic church . It is important to realise that Watson had been groomed as a young Christian man at the seminal Iwerne Minster camps for public school boys, run by the inimitable Eric Nash. In such an environment, Roman Catholicism was cast as an aberration to be avoided.

He was very much taken aback, therefore, to discover that he had much in common with his Roman Catholic colleague at the conference. Praying about this earnestly later, Watson had the impression that God was telling him to sort out his attitude towards people with other beliefs, rather than revel in his own ‘sound’ theological convictions. This moment of prayer was to have a profound impact on Watson and the shape of his later ministry: he worked hard to build bridges with Roman Catholics who shared his fundamental beliefs about Christ, while never compromising his own, deep-felt evangelical principles. This got him into hot water with more stringent evangelicals who saw this as compromise.

David did not help matters by telling the National Evangelical Anglican Conference in 1977 that, ‘in many ways, the Reformation was one of the greatest tragedies that ever happened to the church’. However, it is important to understand Watson’s point here. He wasn’t arguing for a watering-down of evangelical theology or identity; he himself preached the harder evangelical truths unflinchingly, as we’ll see later in this article. Instead, Watson was decrying the messy disunity brought about by the Reformation in general and the subsequently unloving attitude of many evangelicals towards Roman Catholics, many of whom worshipped Christ as Lord and trusted in his death and resurrection for their salvation. Christian comedian and writer Adrian Plass worked with David Watson in the early 1980s and observed Watson’s renewed attitude first-hand. Through Watson’s example of ‘enthusiastic respect’ for a Roman Catholic acquaintance, Plass ‘learned something quite new... about meeting people where they are, and not dragging them crudely into the arena of my own beliefs in order to club theirs to death’.

Evangelism: a note of God’s judgment

When asked to recall David Watson’s strengths as an evangelist, Andrew Cornes, his first curate at St. Michael le Belfrey, remembered that, ‘there was... a note of God’s judgment — a theme many contemporary evangelists shy away from’. Indeed, for all his personal charm and excellent communications skills, Watson was no mere people-pleaser and he was never afraid to present his listeners with the unpalatable truth of God’s wrath over a sinful and rebellious world. Shortly before he died, he preached movingly on Psalm 91 at St. Michael’s, Chester Square in London, describing Christ as like a ‘cleft in the rock’ in which we can hide from God’s ‘awesome judgment’. Watson’s willingness to teach the harder truths witnesses to us in two main ways.

Firstly, it reminds us that wooing the world with God’s love and warning the world about God’s wrath need not be mutually exclusive. Many so-called evangelicals in today’s church argue that threatening unbelievers with God’s judgment just doesn’t work anymore. They claim that talk of ‘hell’ or ‘wrath’ will turn people away from the church before they’ve had a chance to grasp Jesus’s love for them. Watson proves this argument to be wrong. He managed to build a reputation as a man of grace, humility and warmth while remaining committed to God’s whole truth, and God was pleased to bring scores of people to faith through his ministry.

Secondly, the ‘note of judgment’ in Watson’s message challenges a 21st-century evangelical church which has gone soft on God’s wrath in general. How many pastors dare to confront their churches with a God who hates sin? How many evangelists warn of the real peril of rejecting Christ?

Renewal: to know God’s love

When the charismatic renewal movement, of which David was a champion, burst excitedly onto the scene in the 1960-70s, many evangelical leaders within the British church were understandably very wary. David inevitably copped some flak from some of his more conservative brethren who were deeply distrustful of his new convictions, and particularly his use of the ‘gifts of the Spirit’: his relationship with former mentor Eric Nash was arguably never the same from then on. Observing the situation with hindsight 40 years on, it might be argued that the reservations of these more traditional evangelicals were justified. Following David’s death in 1984, the charismatic wing of the Anglican evangelical church has arguably stumbled into dubious territory, first flirting with the Word and Faith movement and then embracing the Toronto Blessings that followed. In some cases, churches have been pervaded by an unhealthy and self-serving preoccupation with the spiritual gifts, over and against Bible study, evangelism and perhaps even God himself.

In contrast, David Watson’s original vision for renewal was based around people coming to know God’s love for them more deeply, that they might love and serve him in return. David’s own ministry was transformed when, as a young curate serving in Cambridge, he received a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit and, in his own words, ’had a quiet but overwhelming sense of being embraced by the love of God’. From then on, David sought to share this new experience of God’s love with those inside and outside the church, believing passionately that ‘the authority of the preacher, evangelist or witness lies not only in the God-given message that is being proclaimed, but also in the personal experience of the message’. Fittingly, when David was invited to outline the very heart of his message in a television interview shortly before his death, he replied, ‘The most important thing is that people really need to know that God loves them. An awful lot of people are hurting for one reason or another. Down at the roots you find that they are not sure they are loved and accepted — by anyone. To know that God loves them, that is the important thing’.

Evangelical Christianity rightly prides itself on its orthodox theology, its courage in upholding the gospel and on its traditionally sound, expository preaching. But have we become so concerned with defending God’s truth, that we have forgotten his love? The Apostle Paul prayed for the Christians in Ephesus, that they would be ‘come to know [Christ’s] love in all its fullness’.

Conclusion

In Britain today, it is increasingly difficult to define what constitutes an evangelical Christian. There are ‘conservative’, ‘open’, ‘charismatic’, ‘classical’, ‘liberal’ and ‘post’ evangelicals and, in the resultant confusion, the evangelical church is strongly in need of role models to provide much-needed direction and focus. I would argue that we need to rediscover David Watson. We need to re-read his immensely practical and visionary books; we need to learn from his experiences, outlined so honestly in his two autobiographies; and we need to follow his example in seeking to present Jesus Christ relevantly to a needy and sinful world.

Famously, Watson used to go to bed very late and rise extremely early in order to fit his writing commitments into an already-packed day. When challenged on this manic schedule, Watson would reply that God hadn’t given him long to live on this earth so he had to make the most of his time.

Tom Marshall

This article was first published on Fulcrum — http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk — and is used with permission.