Richard Bewes and Equipped to Serve

Richard Bewes was the Rector of All Souls, Langham Place for 21 years. He retired to Ealing and so I would occasionally pop in on him for coffee. He would preach for me, but attended the local Anglican Church near his home, much to my frustration. I wouldn’t have theologically dotted all his i’s nor he crossed my t’s but he was a generous, catholic spirited, conservative, Anglican, evangelical. Richard went home to glory in 2017.

Richard was a gentle, loveable man. He led All Souls when it was at its largest and kept together a very diverse staff team. I think it would be fair to say he was quite eccentric, so when we would pray together he would say, “Here we are Lord at Curzon Road in West Ealing. You know Paul…” There was a delightful reverent familiarity that he had with the Lord in prayer. I often wondered why he told the Lord our address, but there was a genuineness about his prayer life which was endearing. He was slightly nervous about a burglary at one point as he was often away preaching, so he built what can only be described as a dummy and dressed it up as himself which sat in his living room. So we had coffee and prayed together with the three of us sitting there: Richard, myself, and the dummy.

He once got me involved in filming a series of short online sermons. I was determined not to be involved, but somehow Richard persuaded me. I’d never done it before and never hope to do it again. My abiding memory was him telling me to ‘introduce yourself, and treat the camera like an old friend’. He was a master at it, I most certainly was not. If you get the chance just look at how he greets the camera in these two sermons – The World in 1 Place and Who can crack the code Read More