The Director

Peter Milsom, the directorPeter Milsom

Peter grew up in Cardiff where he attended a Presbyterian Church. After working for an insurance company, he trained for the ministry of the Presbyerian Church of Wales and was ordained in 1973. His first pastorate was in Mancot in North Wales. With real sadness, he resigned from this denomonation and his ministry in Mancot at the end of 1974 and began a church planting ministry in the Deeside area. He has good friends who continue to serve in the Presbyterian Church. During the early years of this new ministry he worked as the Head of Religious Education in a senior secondary school in Wallasey. In the 1980’s, whilst continuing his ministry in Deeside, he was involved in the planting of a new church in Bala. In 1993 he moved to an evangelical church in Newport.

Peter is convinced of the importance of evangelical church unity and its significance for our witness to the Gospel. He believes it is important for these convictions to be expressed in tangible ways. Disunity undermines the credibility of our witness to people who are searching for God and need to know the truth. Peter has expressed his convictions about evangelical church unity in practical ways. The church in Deeside became a member church of the British Evangelical Council, which is now Affinity, in the late 1970’s. For many years Peter has been involved with the ministries of the Evangelical Movement of Wales and was the Executive Chairman of the EMW in the early 1990’s.  In the mid 1980’s Peter was involved, with others, in the formation of the Associating Evangelical Churches of Wales which brings together 60 evangelical churches in Wales. In the late 1980’s Peter served on the organising committee of the Grace Baptist Assembly and chaired two Assemblies. From 1990 to 1993 he was the chairman of the BEC Council. At this time the first Church of England congregation was accepted into membership of the BEC.

Since 1997 Peter has been the Director of UFM Worldwide, a mission agency which works closely with local churches. UFM missionaries serve in more than 25 countries across all continents and one of Peter’s responsibilities is the pastoral care of the missionaries. This ministry has taken him to many countries and given him some insights into the work of God’s Kingdom around the world. The work of taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the peoples of the world, with the help of the Holy Spirit, requires the combined efforts of all the Lord’s people. Peter has served on the Council of Global Connections and has also chaired the Affinity World Focus Team since its inception. He is keen to develop more fully the role of the Associate agencies belonging to Affinity. We face great challenges in taking the Gospel to our own nation and to the nations of the world and it is vital that we seek to do this together.

One of the immense privileges of being a Christian is that, because we belong to the Lord and are “in Christ”, we have a real and eternal fellowship with all our fellow Christians. The great divide in the world is between those who are “in Christ” and those who are not. The great desire and prayer of all Christians is that people around the world will be rescued from the dominion of darkness and be brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves. Affinity is one expression of our unity in Christ and of our passionate desire to express this tangibly so that the peoples of world might believe in him.

 

Assistant to the Director