Adrian Greenwood writes:
TED ROBERTS, who died on 28 June, aged 86, in November 1928, was born in south-east London, to a Roman Catholic mother from Middlesbrough and a Jewish cockney father. They lived on the borders of Peckham and Nunhead, where Ted’s grandfather ran a succession of pubs. The household was very poor, but their parents wanted Ted and his sister “to do better”.
Ted passed the 11-plus, and thus enrolled with Brockley County School, although it was evacuated en masse at various times. After an unfortunate choice of subjects, he left school at the end of the first year of the sixth form. This very uncertain, unsettled, and anxious time made him resilient, and perhaps contributed to his reputation for charm (as a survival technique).
He entered the advertising industry, joining the firm that later became Ogilvy & Mather. There, he fell in love with a young artist, Audrey, also on the staff. They were married in August 1951, aged 22.
In preparing for their wedding in church, they befriended the churchwarden, Jack Wallace, a battle-scarred infantry captain who had become a Christian. In 1952, they attended a residential weekend with Jack, and both decided to commit their lives to Christ. They served as counsellors at the Billy Graham crusade meetings in Harringay in 1954.
By then, Ted had already felt called to the ministry, and started training at Oak Hill, while Audrey lived alone during term time in their home in north London. He was ordained in 1956. He disliked his first curacy in suburban Edgware. Their eldest daughter, Jane, was born here. The second curacy was in the mining town of Bedworth, Coventry, with Will Maggs. There, Ted formed what was to be a life-long friendship with Snowy and Sybil Davoll (Gazette, 25 April 2014), and Simon was born.
In December 1961, Ted was appointed Vicar of St James the Less, Bethnal Green, and St Mark’s, Victoria Park, and remained there for 17 years. During them, Kate, Peter, and Liz were born. Tragedy struck in 1971, when a car knocked Kate down outside the vicarage, and inflicted multiple injuries.
During the 1960s, as the influence of John Stott spread throughout Evangelical circles, Ted realised that the Church of England had rarely become established among working-class urban communities, and was convinced that Evangelicals must rediscover what Jesus meant when he said that he had come to bring “good news to the poor” (Luke 4.18). They joined a group of clergy couples, led by David and Grace Sheppard, at the Mayflower Centre in Canning Town. They were also strongly influenced by a Baptist layman, Roger Dowley, and the founders of the Frontier Youth Trust, among others.
Their prayers, studies, and discussions produced several initiatives, including the Evangelical Coalition for Urban Mission (ECUM) and the Evangelical Urban Training Project (now UNLOCK). Much of the fruit is to be found in the Faith in the City report of 1985.
Besides, Ted forged two projects in Bethnal Green; both have stood the test of time. The first involved demolishing the buildings at St Mark’s, Victoria Park, and rebuilding them to provide a new church, a hall, and 32 rented flats, owned and managed by Victoria Park Housing Association, as described in his short book Housing and Ministry.
The second project was the selection, training, ordination, and placement of local working men in the two parishes — the so-called “Docker Priests”, although only one was a docker. Ted wrote about it in his book Partners and Ministers.
Having served as Area Dean, Ted left Bethnal Green in 1978, for a short and unhappy spell as Residentiary Canon of Bradford Cathedral, and Director of Social Responsibility for the diocese. He left after just four years, spending time as Acting Warden of Scargill House, before returning to London as Vicar of St James and St Anne, Bermondsey, where he was reunited with Snowy and Sybil Davoll.
There, he began a long-term programme of refurbishment and re-ordering of St James’s, which continues to this day, and, a second attempt to launch an Ordained Local Ministry Scheme, following Faith in the City’s recommendations.
Ted had already agreed to leave Bermondsey to begin working full-time on establishing the OLM training scheme in Southwark, as the Bishop’s Adviser for Urban Ministry, when a second tragedy struck the family in August 1990 — his son Peter, having long suffered from depression, took his own life, aged 26. Peter’s life is commemorated in the communion tables and lecterns at St James’s, which he designed and helped to manufacture.
The OLM Scheme, initially called the Local NSM scheme, was launched in Southwark diocese in 1992, and made a huge impact before it was closed in the mid-2000s.
Ted and Audrey retired to Ipswich in the mid-1990s. They both enjoyed an active life, and Ted was much in demand for his services, especially at St Margaret’s, Ipswich. In 2013, they moved to Morden College, Blackheath, almost back to where life had started. Ted was unwell from almost the moment that they arrived, but he entered fully into the life of the college when he could. He spent his last seven months in the sick bay.
Ted was an exceptional and warm human being, and a faithful and inspiring minister, who lived out his life-changing commitment to Christ in deprived urban and inner-city areas, despite many setbacks. He was charming and witty, yet possessed of clear vision, analytical thinking, and steely determination to tackle big issues.
A service of thanksgiving for his life and ministry will take place at St James’s, Bermondsey, on Saturday 26 September at 11.30 a.m.