Page 7 - Moravian Messenger September 2019

Ashton McIntosh tribute
In June Hall Green United Community Church lost one of our most important members and the Moravian Church in the UK: a pioneer, a visionary and a faithful servant. Ashton McIntosh was called to higher service on 1st June 2019.
Ashton was incredibly important in my faith life and in the life of the Moravian Church. In fact, there is a very good argument that Hall Green United Community Church, would not exist if it were not for the work that Ashton and others put in back in the 1960s and 70s.
In 1961 the first Moravian
service in Birmingham was
conducted by the Rev Kirby
Spencer but the church didn't
have a permanent base until 1963 when a Methodist manse in Anderton Park Road, Moseley, became its home and headquarters.
It was about this time that five year old Selwyn McIntosh asked his best friend's mother to come to his church. She accepted the invitation and so the association between Beryl and Rev David Welbrock with the Birmingham Moravian Fellowship began. The Welbrock's worshipped at Sparkhill Congregational Church, later to be Sparkhill URC and it was that church which the Birmingham Moravian Church would merge with in the 1970s and establish Sparkhill United Church. But how do you put two denominations into one church? Of course we know now that you have high powered delegations from headquarters, you talk about it for years and then, hopefully, eventually get somewhere.
Not back then. No, we put six people in a room with a sheet of foolscap paper (before A4!) and let them get on with it. They actually filled 2 sides of foolscap to produce a constitution. I actually still have those two sides of foolscap!
The passage of years and Ashton's passing means that only one of those six is still with us, brother Alan Perkins. Alan's memory of those discussions which Ashton led for the Moravian side was of his willingness to compromise to drive the arrangement through, to always be prepared to find a way. They came to agreements about communion, eldership (very foreign to Moravians) and much much more.
The result was a new church amalgamating the best of the traditions of both. At that time I was a member of the URC but in 1975, like many others, I became a proud Moravian and so I remain.
That spirit of compromise within faith also came to fruition in our present church when Sparkhill 'moved up the road' to join Hall Green Methodists. This church, this building, this congregation are part of the legacy of Ashton McIntosh.
I say part of the legacy because that legacy is broad. Ashton was loved, loved because of his faith, his manner, his own very individual sense of humour, his intelligence. He teased the children in the congregation and they loved him for it. He led worship and we all loved him for his word and inspiration. He helped me as I followed him into Moravian lay preaching and I loved him for it.
His inspiration and service extended well beyond his church work. He served for many years as a Magistrate in Birmingham. The bench benefitted from his wisdom and compassion in equal measure. He was a volunteer with the St John's Ambulance service and his 30 years of work with the Post Office was recognised with a special award. Wherever Ashton McIntosh went his faith went with him, guiding him and being shared with those he met.
In all the years I knew him he frightened me only once. It was my first Moravian lay preachers weekend and at the end of the day I joined the others in the bar. Ashton was playing dominoes, and the way he banged those down frightened the life out of me!
But the overall memory is his kindness, his love of his family, his love of his Lord and his care for our church family. I feel his spirit is embedded in the very walls of our church building in Hall Green, in our worship and our service to the community, in fact, in everything that we hold dear.
Of course, his influence goes much wider than Birmingham. This was witnessed by the visitors to his funeral from across the Province. His fellow lay preachers, Moravian minister, friends from other churches. Especially from URC Churches where Ashton was a popular leader of worship.
He was a very special man and as we, God's church, move forward we should always remember the saints on whose shoulders we stand. Ashton McIntosh is one of those saints.
Br Blair Kesseler
Hall Green
103