Lord’s Day September 20th at 3.00 PM there is an inauguration service of the Bradford Community Church. Erroll Hulse is the preacher for this occasion. The historic Westgate Baptist Church is the place of meeting. With the support of Hall Green Baptist Church, Haworth, (pastor Mick Lockwood) this church plant has been in progress for three years. The area surrounding Westgate is now predominantly if not overwhelmingly Muslim. This is the mission field come to the UK. If our prayers are answered for an increase in turning to our Lord Jesus Christ (like we have seen among Iranians) this could be a significant church plant.
Meetings at 3.00 PM every Lord’s Day have been taking place in the hall at the back of the handsome stone church building. These meetings have now begun to take place in the main church building.
Many assemblies would envy the accommodation afforded at Westgate Baptist Church which with galleries is capable of seating large crowds (helpful when we have the next revival!). To conserve heat the galleries have been temporarily sealed off with plastic covers.
The background story of this church goes back to William Steadman (1764-1837) who belonged to the heroic age of itinerant preaching: the era during which the Particular Baptists advanced from the introspection of the early eighteenth century into an age of vigorous expansion. Steadman was a man of large physical stature which characterised the massive contribution he made. He was in every way a huge figure. Powerful, outspoken, without any pretensions as to gentility, style or good looks. Dr Ryland in his indomitable way used to refer to ‘that great lump of goodness, Dr Steadman’! Pastor of a large church, the president of an academy, a great proponent of mission, a leader in associational life, and always a tireless evangelist. Throughout his life he could be found in all weathers, tramping through the dark muddy countryside to humble cottages where he would preach Christ and him crucified. He displayed heartfelt joy at the commencement of the foreign mission movement, which he supported from its outset in 1792.
William Steadman was born in 1764 in Eardisland, 5 miles west of Leominster. His godly mother died when he was six. Due to a serious sight defect, he was unable to read until the age of nine, and received little schooling. Finding himself then so far behind he became consumed with a desire for learning, and effectively educated himself. At the age of seventeen, with minimal formal education but many hours of private study behind him, he started a school. Eventually he assisted in the school run by the clergyman at Eardisland, who helped him lay down a sound foundation of classical learning.
As a teenager he neglected religion, but was convicted on attending a baptism at Leominster. He was converted in 1781 at the age of 17 and was baptised in April 1784. His pastor, Joshua Thomas, encouraged him to begin preaching and then to seek training at Bristol Academy. Taught by Caleb Evans, Robert Hall and James Newton, he was a contemporary with Samuel Pearce, later minister at Birmingham, with whom he maintained a friendship through correspondence.
In 1789 he accepted a call to the pastorate at Broughton, IN HAMPSHIRE a village of about 700 inhabitants, twelve miles from Salisbury in WILTSHIRE. Most of the forty or so church members were poorly educated. This first pastorate was filled with discouragements. He experienced spiritual apathy and opposition from his own congregation, and saw few conversions. He started a Sunday School, but his members would not support it.
On April 16, 1793 he married Sarah Webb, a woman who was spiritual and evidently gifted. They were happily married for nineteen years. In June 1798 Steadman moved to Plymouth Dock (later Devonport), as assistant to Isaiah Birt. He saw greater visible success, with many more conversions than he had seen at Broughton.
His great life work began in 1805 when he moved up to Bradford to pastor the Westgate Church and lead the fledgling Academy at Horton (later Rawdon College). After just eight years at Westgate he had baptised 164 people, and admitted 175 to the membership. By 1819 there were 263 members, and 300 in Sunday Schools. In 1823 numbers were such that a second Baptist church was founded. Eventually Westgate church had to be extended. With ‘hearers’ the congregation often numbered eight or nine hundred.
Steadman recognised the dire consequences of an uneducated ministry. In his diary he noted of his new colleagues in the Yorkshire area: ‘Most of the ministers were illiterate, their talents small, their manner dull and uninteresting, their systems of divinity contracted, their maxims of church government rigid, their exertions scarcely any at all.’ Starting from scratch, he had to overcome prejudice in the churches against ministerial training, and get the new Academy off the ground. In a real sense it was his baby, and he laboured here for the rest of his life, for the next 30 years. He only laid down the presidency in his 72nd year, and he died in his 73rd year. Much of his time and energy had to be spent travelling to raise funds for the institution; right to the end there were periodic questions as to its viability. Steadman regularly had to make real financial sacrifices to keep it from collapse.
The curriculum consisted of English grammar and composition, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, plus geography, history, philosophy and other subjects. Steadman lectured twice a week on Theology, and there were regular sermon classes. The great stress was always on usefulness and ‘laboriousness’. Steadman encouraged the students to engage in itinerant preaching, and saw this as giving vital practical experience alongside taking the gospel to needy villages.
Many testified to Steadman’s warm, fatherly concern for his students. He attended 115 ordinations, and delivered 101 charges to new ministers. Afterwards he maintained a keen interest in their progress. When he retired, 157 students had entered the Academy, nine were still studying, 23 had died, 14 had left the ministry, and 111 were engaged in active ministry all over the world. Moreover, ‘all the neighbouring churches [were] supplied with ministers of his own training.’
As if his labours in the Westgate church and Academy were not enough, Steadman revelled in continued scope for his true passion: village preaching. From 1816 until his death he was Secretary to the Yorkshire and Lancashire Association of Baptist churches, and he used this position to promote village evangelism as well. He also maintained a keen interest in THE overseas mission.
One of his most outstanding characteristics was a genuine humility: he was acutely aware of his own faults. He was more than willing to submit to reproof from others. He examined himself as to his salvation and his motivation for service right up to the end. Another notable characteristic was determination and perseverance. Though largely self-taught, he acquired competence in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Theology and the other disciplines he taught at Horton.
Steadman’s adherence to Calvinism inspired rather than inhibited his evangelistic fervour, and it was maintained without a contentious spirit. In an Association circular letter of 1807 he argues that as ‘protestant dissenters, as Calvinists, as Baptists’ they have urgent reason to associate together, yet ‘we love all who love Christ, and wish to demean ourselves towards them in such a way, as to convince them of the sincerity of our affection and esteem.’
In 1787 the Yorkshire and Lancashire Association included seventeen churches; by the year of Steadman’s death in 1837 there were 65. Whitley comments: ‘This progress was due directly to evangelism steadied by education, and these were incarnate in one man, William Steadman.’. Steadman produced men who had evangelism and church planting as THEIR primary aim. Even in rough and primitive conditions it was always assumed that all ministerial candidates should study the biblical languages. This reflects a high view of the Word of God which is all too lacking today.
TODAY (OR IN 2009)
This NEWLY-BORN fledging church at Westgate in BRADFORD is small and vulnerable. Yet our omnipotent triune God is glorified in scenes of weakness. It will be wonderful indeed if some of the former glories described above were recovered at Westgate. Let that be our prayer and also the prayer that the associational life of the churches of Yorkshire will increase in vitality.
How to get there
If you come in from Shipley take the Manningham canal road into Bradford. Take the right turn just before the Volvo garage and right at the T junction, onto Queens road, follow the road up the hill, over the next traffic lights, follow the road up through Manningham, past AN ASIAN supermarket on the left and a mosque on the right, round the bend and the church is on the left. If you get to Manningham pools then you have gone too far. There is a big car park on the left before the church.
The above presentation is based on the work of Sharon James which was published in Reformation Today number 161 and is available by e mail.
