One to One with John Hosier
 John Hosier is an elder at Church of Christ the King, Brighton, UK, and for many years has served as an outstanding Bible teacher among Newfrontiers churches especially in India and South Africa. Nigel Ring recently had the pleasure of interviewing him.
NR: John, tell me about your childhood.
JH: I grew up in a Christian family and became a Christian at the age of ten. I was baptised on my fifteenth birthday and Sue, my wife, was baptised at the same service. Of course, we were hardly thinking of marriage at that time!
I went into the Merchant Navy training to be a Navigating Officer on BP tankers but was really seeking God. The ship I was on was involved in a major explosion and I could have very easily lost my life. It was then I felt God was indicating He had a particular purpose for my life.
I applied to go to Spurgeon's College and was there for four years before going into the Baptist ministry. I married Sue in my final year.
NR: What do you feel about Bible Colleges?
JH: I really valued the four years that I had at Spurgeon's. It gave me a love for the Bible, and teaching and preaching. It gave me real opportunity to learn some discipline in study. I also taught for three years in a Bible College so I have seen it from both sides.
Today I would have some questions as to whether that is always the best route. Bible Colleges can remove you from local church life and isolate you. Also, they may be very good at academic study but do not necessarily speak from current experience of life in a local church.
NR: How does that affect the way you run the Leadership Training programme within Newfrontiers?
JH: Leaders in our churches are training others who are already exercising leadership responsibility. So we are not simply giving academic lectures but speaking personally out of experience.
NR: We will come back to leadership training but, first, how were you baptised in the Spirit?
JH: I was in my first Baptist church during the early stirrings of the charismatic movement in this country. I was partly affected by that but theologically far more persuaded by the preaching and teaching of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I then took a group of young people and couples to Basingstoke Baptist church, led by Barney Coombs. One of my church members was baptised in the Spirit very publicly and went flat out onto a pew in the church. One didn't do that in Baptist churches in those days!
That experience and the teaching of Lloyd-Jones got me searching and seeking God for baptism in the Spirit. It actually happened on my own in m y study. I felt myself being filled by the Holy Spirit from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. My arms went up in the air and a stream of tongues came from my mouth. I was so overwhelmed that I didn't quite know how Sue would react, so I recorded myself speaking in tongues on an old reel to reel tape recorder, selected my moment and played it to her and said, ‘What do you think about that!?'
NR: And...?
JH: She started to seek God for herself and was baptised in the Spirit sometime later!
NR: How did you handle that in the church?
JH: The most immediate effect it had was to get me thinking about the nature of the church. Shortly after that I moved to a second church in North Kent, where the leaders were on the same kind of pilgrimage as me. Our worship began to change, spiritual gifts came in, there was a strong sense of being the body of Christ and, because of the transformation that was taking place, we began to draw more and more people including many students from Kent University.
NR: Were you isolated or were you aware of things going on more widely?
JH: There was a certain amount of isolation. I didn't have anybody outside of the church to whom I could easily refer, but some of our people began to go to the Dales Bible Week then the Downs Bible Week, and were much affected and blessed by that.
NR: Why did you move out of the Baptist scene into the Newfrontiers family?
JH: At the Dales Bible Week Bob Mumford spoke on spiritual authority. In a moment of revelation, I realised that was a key issue to life in the local church. Theologically, at that precise moment, I changed from being Baptist to a ‘Restorationist' although it took some time to work out in terms of me moving into Newfrontiers.
NR: Would you happily embrace a term like ‘charismatic Calvinist'?
JH: I am sometimes asked whether I am charismatic or evangelical. I always respond by saying if I can only use one word, I would say that I am evangelical. An evangelical should embrace the full teaching of the Word of God and that should mean you are charismatic! Theologically, I am happy with terms like ‘reformed' and ‘charismatic'. One describes one's theological understanding, the other puts emphasis on life in the Spirit. I want to emphasise that balance between Word and Spirit.
NR: How do you rate the importance of submission to Scripture in all that one does?
JH: Think about the text, ‘...we have been given everything we need for life and godliness.' Scripture doesn't always tell us everything we would want to know but does tell us all we need to know for living a godly life. As we are conformed to the life of Christ because of what we read in Scripture, we will live a positive, purposeful and godly life.
NR: Is that what discipleship is about?
JH: Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples.' Discipleship is about knowing and living out the Word of God. But there are different methods. For example, Sue will very effectively disciple women one-to-one whereas Wendy Virgo is more comfortable discipling a group. People should be discipled through preaching. The issue is whether people receive the Word of God and then keep to that. The methodology must be secondary to keeping to the Word of God.
NR: There must be thousands of people who know their lives have been changed by your preaching. On their behalf, I thank you! What about your own personal walk with God?
JH: I always begin by reading some of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology which gets my mind structured around theological truths. I also tend to read something devotional such as The Glory of Christ by Peter Lewis. In the Bible, I read an Old Testament book and then a New Testament book which gives me a regular overview of Scripture. In my prayer life, I tend to follow the structure of the Lord's Prayer.
NR: I have noticed that you tend to preach through a book rather than preaching to a theme. Why is that?
JH: I am an expository preacher and, therefore, feel most comfortable going systematically through passages of Scripture. By doing that you hit every issue, every challenge and every problem that comes up in life which you don't do if you simply take passages of Scripture somewhat randomly.
NR: How do you impart your preaching style to up and coming leaders?
JH: You can only share what you do in order that they learn something from you, but I am always very insistent they also learn about other preachers' methods of preparation. I often tell them to read the books of great preachers or get downloads from the internet.
NR: How do you handle preaching in the Leadership Training Programme?
JH: We have two sections. One is a broad overview of Christian theology, church history, some exegesis, the Christian character and leadership skills, the kind of course that you might find in a Bible College. Our second phase, particularly, helps those who are preachers and deals with exegesis and hermeneutics. A course given fairly exclusively to that is very unusual.
NR: Until recently you led the Newfrontiers Theological Forum. Why is such a Forum important in our context?
JH: It is very important that, as a family of churches, we are aware of current thinking and discussions. For example, in recent years, there has been a lot of debate on the nature of hell, the issue of the atonement, matters concerning justification and so on. These are such key issues that we need to help leaders in our churches understand them more fully and how to address them for themselves.
NR: Talking of younger leaders, one of your sons is a leader who has come through and led two churches. Tell us about your two sons and your attitude to seeing them emerge in leadership.
JH: My sons are very different in terms of their contribution to church life. When they were born we immediately made it our prayer that they would one day become Christians, have Christian wives and a Christian dynasty would come through our family. So we would most celebrate the fact that both are Christians and have married Christian wives. Our older son is a pastor of one of our churches and our younger son, who is, in fact, an accountant, also serves very faithfully in one of our churches.
 NR: You have been an elder of Church of Christ the King in Brighton for 22 years and have led the church and served under other leaders. Has serving under Joel Virgo, who is half your age, been difficult?
JH: No, we felt as a group of elders that we needed to drop down the generations and have a younger leader come through to build a new team in the coming years. As it happens Joel is the youngest elder of a team of nine elders and, together with the rest of the team, I am full of faith that he will continue to lead well and will bring through that new team in the years to come.
NR: You are one of the best known leaders in the whole Newfrontiers family because of your widespread travels and your preaching to many, many churches. What you are seeking to impart as you travel?
JH: I have a great passion for the local church and a genuine heart for leaders and their wives. Sue and I know something of the struggles and challenges of leadership. Over the last fifteen years or so we have had the privilege of travelling more widely in the UK and overseas. In the UK, I work regularly into about fifteen churches and overseas have had very strong connections with churches in India, South Africa, Ghana, France, Dubai and Oman.
NR: Finally, what do you feel is now the greatest call on the church in this generation and what is your vision for the future?
JH: We are living in a post-Christian society. An understanding of Christian truth and background started to come to an end about 1960. So, we are committed to evangelising what is a post-Christian nation and I think that one of the strongest challenges at the present time is to hold to Biblical truth in an uncompromising way yet be culturally relevant. I have a vision that we will continue to plant and establish good, healthy, growing churches across this nation but also that we have within us, as a family of churches, a very clear call to go to the ends of the earth. Until Jesus comes again we must be involved in planting churches to help fulfil that!
NR: That seems a very positive note on which to end! Thank you so much, John. |