We met around the tea table on All Saints Eve and mindful of all the Halloween nonsense that was going on outside on the street (thankfully, minimal by comparison to what we witnessed and experienced in Northern Ireland when we lived there) we gave thanks to God for those who’d gone before us in the faith. Saints, whose lives had touched and enriched our own. For one it was his grandmother and mother, another a friend, another their mother-in-law. Whilst I was very mindful of my own parents, who have both died in the last couple of years, it was uncanny that Shirley and I had the same person in mind as we thought about people whose godly influence had a profound impact upon our lives. David Rigby, "the Doc" was the principal of the Bible College that Shirley and I attended as a young married couple. A remarkable “father in Christ” who shaped our faith in the early days of learning what it meant to follow Christ. The Doc taught us to avoid majoring on the minors, to hold differing views in tension, to embrace humility as a way for living, to use all that God has blessed us with as a means to bless others and whilst a phenomenally busy man, leading the Bible College community, pastoring the local church and doing locum duty for doctors during the summer months, he was a lovely and deeply loved husband and father. One abiding memory was whenever he was speaking or preaching about those who were “lost”, those outside of the faith, there would be a little tear that ran down his cheeks. Such was the depth of compassion that he felt for people to know Christ that it moved him to tears. This was no put on for effect, like that dreadful and highly dangerous leading light in the Tea Party Movement in the States who effects tears to elicit the support of thousands who tune in to listen to his diatribe against President Obama and play on the fears of an American nation undergoing major cultural change. No, David Rigby was a genuine man of faith who gave up the prospects of becoming an eminent medic to journey to India and serve among the poor of Madras before returning to Britain and establishing a really good Bible College to train people like Shirley and I primarily to love God and serve others. The lessons we learnt were not theory but imparted by men like “The Doc”. Spiritual formation is at the heart of our Community’s vocation. Shirley and I gave thanks to God on Sunday night for someone who imparted to us a way of life that was about loving God and your neighbour. A true Saint!
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