Recently, I was on a business trip to the English Midlands, and because I was working on evenings, I had a bit of free time. Staying in a hotel on a road that went to Kidderminster , and realising that Kiddy was only about 16 miles away, I thought….
I decided to make the most of my time there, so after making inquiries about the best way to get there, I opted to go by train. As I approached the town, my levels of anticipation arose. Then having disembarked from the train, and made my way ‘down’ the street to the town centre, my excitement escalated with every corner I turned. I was expecting to see something that reminded me that I really was in Kidderminster , where the great Calvinist, Puritan and Presbyterian, Richard Baxter, ministered for some twenty years.
I was amazed that no one to whom I spoke in Kidderminster knew anything, or even much, about Richard Baxter. I told them he was their greatest son, but they were not a bit interested. The Waterstones bookshop carried none of Baxter’s titles, the reason being, when I enquired, that Head Office decides which books to stock!
The first ‘sign’ of Baxter was in my visit to Baxter United Reformed Church, which, I fear, ‘stole’ Baxter’s honoured name. My contention was validated when the one church member (?) whom I met knew nothing about him. Renovations were being carried out on the steeple, and only the cleaner was there. I asked her if this was the church that Baxter preached in, and she said she was only the cleaner and did not know. I retorted, “Oh, you’re not from Kidderminster , then.” And she assured me that she was. I thanked her and left.
Across the dual carriageway, I saw the statue of the great man. By a combination of Ulster charm, good looks and personality, and the over-ruling providence of God, I managed to persuade the vestry clerk to allow me inside the Parish church of St Mary and All Saints, which happened to be closed at that time.
What a joy and humbling experience that was. To reflect on what this great servant of God and of the Gospel achieved for Christ in that town and through that church was deeply moving. I could easily imagine the place filled to capacity with earnest hearers and anxious seekers after Christ as Baxter applied the Gospel as understood and taught by Calvin with clinical precision to men’s consciences – a skill we have all but lost today!
Having spent some seventy-five minutes there, and having been informed at the Parish church that Baxter’s pulpit now resided in the New Meeting House, I went to the New Meeting House where the Unitarian church meets, and providentially, the Secretary was there checking up on some electrical work that was being done.
He very graciously took me inside. I not only saw the pulpit (dated 1621) from which he preached “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” ( Col. ), but was photographed standing in it. I felt so unworthy to even stand in that pulpit, yet it was a great privilege, and renewed a deep sense of our reformed heritage.
In these two churches, there was greater interest in the church and building, statues and stain-glassed windows, tombs and tables, etc, than there was in Baxter, although, to be fair, the Unitarian church possessed the four massive volumes of Baxter’s complete works and his pulpit, and held them with pride, while the Parish church had what is believed to be Baxter’s chair, and his resident preaching place for two decades.
What gripped me was the fact that neither the Anglican church nor the Unitarian church possessed anything other than a purely historical interest in Baxter. The fact has not really dawned on them that they are part of our great historical and reformed heritage, albeit in severely dilapidated form, of which they ought to be exceedingly proud. So rich is this heritage that they should have committed themselves to the self-same outlook as possessed Richard Baxter, and preserving it for generations to come, rather than embracing a ‘non-Gospel,’ thus becoming a caricature of their glorious past.
Clearly, it is because they have lost the Gospel that Baxter preached that they have very few attending worship – the Unitarians have 30 families, but only about 20 people attending the services, while the Anglicans have a small number of families and less attendees.
It is also very sad that these three apostate denominations (Anglican, United Reformed, and Unitarian) claim that Baxter’s teaching is the basis of their current ecumenical and liberal activities, as evidenced in their joint services with every religious grouping in Kidderminster – RCs, Jews, Muslim, Hindu, Sheiks, etc. They admitted that morally the town faces much the same problems that Baxter faced, yet they do not have the same message that can change the people’s lives in that situation.
Even if they did get a solid Baxterian minister who preached a Baxterian message in any of those churches, the church has been so discredited and the Christian faith so diluted by those given the solemn charge to maintain the true Gospel, that people just have no time for it. Were another “Reformed Pastor” to go and work there, his work would be cut out for him.
But Richard Baxter faced exactly the same situation. In a town of a few thousand poor people, he visited all the people and taught them the Gospel with a personal orientation that only he could have done. He records that when he went there in 1641 as ‘lecturer’ or preacher, hardly one from the streets of Kidderminster attended church or had any fear of God; but when he left twenty years later, there was hardly one who did not attend church or believe in God through Christ.
The incumbent at that time, Rev Dance simply did not preach very often, so Baxter had the door wide open for him to minister the Gospel there. Indeed, after the great ejection of ministers (in 1666) who refused to conform to Anglicanism’s man-made rules and regulations, Dance was reinstated as rector of Kidderminster, yet it is so significant that we remember and honour the name of Richard Baxter, but ask, Who was Rev Dance?
It is clear that had Baxter believed in a Gospel that spoke only of some kind of partial atonement having been made by Christ, and that for the elect only, he would not have been motivated to take that Gospel to every creature within his reach, either by his voice or his pen! Thankfully, he had a message that he could take to everyone and an offer of something substantial and essential that was real, so real that it applied to all who believed the Gospel. He impressed upon them the sin of rejecting the sovereign love of God whose Son had died for them, and urged them to repent of this and every other sin, and to put their trust in the all-sufficient Saviour of the world.
Sadly, these three churches today believe a very different gospel, “which is no Gospel,” (Gal.1:7). The upshot is their mistaken belief that Baxter would be very pleased with their understanding of his toleration and desire for Christian unity through biblical compromise on ‘matters indifferent’ – which they interpret to mean their all-inclusive ecumenical religious activities regardless of what the various participants believed, if anything. Baxter differed from modern day Kidderminster religious dwellers in that belief in and commitment to the all-sufficient Gospel of saving grace was the only basis for Christian fellowship, not the contemporary emphasis on religion, whatever it happens to be, as the binding glue of fellowship. Baxter could not have been more different.
It is nothing short of a shame that the memory of this great and honoured servant of Christ has been so demeaned by the contemporary religious community there. Had the church and its ministers stuck to the message that Baxter preached, it may be that these islands would not be in the moral mess we are experiencing today. May God raise up another man like Richard Baxter to herald Christ Jesus and His saving Gospel for the world, before it is forever too late.
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