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 PrintableVersion John Eddison, 1916-2011ObituaryOver 350 gathered at All Saints, Crowborough, East Sussex, on May 31 to give thanks for the life and singular ministry of the Rev. John Eddison, who had died a few weeks earlier shortly before his 95th birthday. John had been led to Christ as a schoolboy by the Rev. Eric Nash (Bash) and, from then on, throughout his schooldays, his years at Cambridge where he was President of the CICCU, and following a curacy in Tunbridge Wells, his lifework was with Scripture Union. SU commissioned him to work with schoolboys in the private sector, initially helping ‘Bash’ in running the camps at Iwerne Minster where he succeeded John Stott as Bash’s right hand man, and then in pioneering work among those at preparatory schools. Devoted giftsJohn was hugely talented. He had contemplated a medical career and would have been a marvellous doctor. Instead of dissipating his energies, as so many leaders do, he devoted his gifts to this seemingly narrow field, and the harvest was wonderful. He was a superb speaker — many boys subsequently claimed that the only sermon in school chapel that they remembered was one of John’s. He won the confidence of the headmasters of many of these schools, and as a result joined the governing body of many of them. As Andrew Cornes, vicar of All Saints, pointed out at the funeral, John always ‘set forth the word plainly’. He spoke with wonderful lucidity — as did Bash — and was the model for subsequent Bible teachers such as Dick Lucas. He proclaimed the light of the glory of Christ in the gospel, and like John the Baptist he did no mighty works but everything he said about Jesus was true. He captured the imagination of prep school boys with the wonder of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only was John a powerful and mellifluous speaker, he was also a powerful writer. His daily Bible readings in Step by Step have just been republished, as has Heart Castle, and in his hymns he summed up the gospel with wonderful clarity: At the cross of Jesus I first heard John when, as a schoolboy, I attended a Scripture Union rally in the Central Westminster. I was spellbound. Two or three years later he was my room leader at the camps I attended. He nurtured me with great sensitivity. Shortly before Easter this year I visited him. His mind was as sharp as ever. His concern for and interest in gospel work never wavered. The twinkle in his eye and his abiding sense of fun never left him. It could be said of him as he said of Bash at Bash’s funeral: ‘Do you not know that there is a prince and a great man fallen in Israel this day?’ (2 Samuel 3.38). Jonathan Fletcher,
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