This is a text-only version of an article first published on Thursday, 16 February 2017. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
A PRIEST who is retiring after more than 60 years of ordained ministry has cited Ephesians 1 as he reflected on his career.
The Revd Ted Bale with his wife Sylvia on Remebrance Day in 2015.
The Revd Ted Bale, 94, from Milton Keynes, who has finally retired, says he has been amazed and moved at the number of 'God-incidences' that proved to be turning points in his life. "There were the quite extraordinary events through the Great War which led to my Mum and Dad meeting," says Ted, who trained as a builder at Willesden Polytechnic in the 1930s before following his dream to join the RAF. Ted served in the Night Fighter Squadron in North Africa, before being posted to the frontline at Cassino in Italy in 1944.
This led Ted to much questioning about the meaning of life and eventually, after he married his wife, he felt Jesus "nagging him out of the RAF" and into the priesthood.
"I went into the ministry via King's College, London and my first job involved the building of a new church in Corby which needed my polytechnic knowledge.
And there has been much more.
During the renewal in the 1970s to my retirement in 1988 and all of the freelancing I have done, I can see how God has been at work.
I can wholeheartedly refer readers of the Door to Ephesians 1, which talks of God's plan for their lives and mine. "