My Dad has been a man of commitment and integrity throughout his life. He is, without doubt, the person from whom I have learnt the most. At this point in his life when he is so ill I would like others to know a little of what it is about him that has been so special to me and many others. What follows, in this and subsequent posts, is a little of the man that we know and love in his own words:
Philip Alistair Evens was born, in 1936, into a North Somerset working class family - his father was a plumber by trade - living on the edge of the city of Bristol. He remained in that setting, and in membership of a strict non-conformist group called the Open Brethren, until his early twenties. After doing a variety of jobs, including clerical work, factory work and nursing (which gave him a real interest in people), he began studying through night school and correspondence courses for a GCE 'A' Level.
In 1958 he went to Leicester University where he obtained a special honours degree in Sociology, and then a certificate in Applied Social Studies (Social Work Training Course). He married during 1962 and then began work as a basic grade Social Worker (Child Care Officer) in Somerset. This process of social mobility led him to become, in 1965, the youngest Deputy Children's Officer in the country when he and his family moved to Luton. Here, he helped set up a new Children's Department, as Luton had just become a County Borough, and new, experimental projects such as the Bury Park Family Advice Centre in a multi-ethnic part of Luton. He also started a research project on deprived social needs areas at the London School of Economics.
In 1970, the family moved to Oxford where Phil entered Social Work education by becoming a Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at Oxford University (Department of Social and Administrative Studies). He discovered that he really did not 'fit' into that rather exclusive network of 'North Oxbridge Society' people. He was able to move back a bit nearer to his ideological 'home', and his working class identity, by setting up an Applied Action Research Community Work Project in 1973. This was a joint project between the University, the Local Authority Social Services department, Central Government and an international charity called the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The project was called the 'Barton Project' after the council estate on which it was based. Phil was appointed Director of the project. His experiences in this project and other contributions to the development of community work were published in a two volume series of books called Readings in Social Change. Volume 1 Community Work: Theory and Practice was published in 1974 and Volume 2 The Barton Project in 1976. Both were published by a company called Alistair Shornach Oxford, set up and marketed by Phil.
In 1976, following the massive inflation of the 1970's, the Project lost funding and Phil's job was re-structured away. He became unemployed, had to sell his home in Oxford and return, somewhat disillusioned, to his working class roots in Somerset. He became a £39 per week horticultural labourer, then did a TOPS retraining course in horticulture. Following this, he became self employed as a gardener/landscaper setting up his own business 'Wessex Gardening' with nil capital. This became successful and provided a healthy outdoor life for a number of years.
During this major mid-life crisis he, and his wife, put their roots down in the Church of England. Within this, Phil continued to do, as he had done for many years, to set up and run detached types of Christian youth clubs. From the end of the 1970's, this led into involvement in wider aspects of the ministry of Church of England - pastoral work, PCC membership, deanery stewardship officer - eventually resulting in a 'call' to train for the ministry.
Phil automatically presumed that, seeing as he was a working man enjoying the outdoor life and having re-created his human security following his redundancy, God would want him in the non-stipendiary ministry. He very much liked the worker priest concept. When interviewed by the Suffragan Bishop of Taunton, however, an Abramic challenge was put to him. Was he prepared to go forward in utter trust in God not knowing what the result would be, or where it might lead? Or, instead had he decided that it had to be NSM ministry in Somerset? This challenge was deeply moving as it touched very directly on the personal struggle of his wife and himself for survival and human security for themselves and their family. Being socially mobile from the factory floor to Oxford and then to lose it all had led to a colossal struggle to re-adapt to working class life and self employment. Now that he had succeeded in this, to give it up would be extremely hard.
After the interview, the Suffragan Bishop strongly advised Phil to go forward for full-time training saying, "The Church of England had been thoroughly middle-class in its ministry ... that the number of Priests available to the Church who could communicate with artisans and working-class people was at a premium ..." So, in a strange way, after leaving the city and experimental community work God seemed to be dragging him back again.
Following ACCM and the Bishop's acceptance of its recommendation, the family sold up and moved to Trinity Theological College. Whilst there, he set up a Trust to sponsor Christian ministry in Urban Priority Areas, mainly through community work project developments linked to local parish churches. He called it the 'Voice of the People Trust'.
During 1984, a Christian magazine called Grassroots had published a critique by Phil about the magazine and what, he perceived to be, its failure at that time to uphold its objective of being "a friend to the poor and oppressed". This critique argued against an 'issue' orientated approach which he equated with middle class thinking. This "allows people to be intellectually involved in discussion about social justice, the nuclear debate, the poor and oppressed etc. without this necessarily having any real effect on their own lifestyle". Such an approach allows "the freedom to maintain a split between the two parts of our nature, the intellectual beliefs (social justice etc.) and the emotional (the actual lifestyle adopted, affluent, cultured etc.)."
He argued that "it is more important to emphasise the work of the Holy Spirit in challenging the British class structure than to be concerned about issues of social justice, the nuclear arms race, feminism and the like. We need to be very cautious lest we are pressed into humanistic and secular objectives that are likely, in the end, to leave the poor, and the disadvantaged ... Instead we must try to discover what the 'voice' of the ordinary people really is and what their values are. We must do what Jesus did, to come down among the ordinary people and relate to them according to their actual needs. Only this will help all of us to move out from the social class stranglehold into the classless freedom of being sons of God."
A friend of Phil's challenged him not merely to write critiques but to actually do something about the matter of discerning more of the voice of under privileged people. The result was the 'Voice of the People Trust'.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Clail On-U Sound Syatem - (There's Something Wrong With) Human Nature.
Philip Alistair Evens was born, in 1936, into a North Somerset working class family - his father was a plumber by trade - living on the edge of the city of Bristol. He remained in that setting, and in membership of a strict non-conformist group called the Open Brethren, until his early twenties. After doing a variety of jobs, including clerical work, factory work and nursing (which gave him a real interest in people), he began studying through night school and correspondence courses for a GCE 'A' Level.
In 1958 he went to Leicester University where he obtained a special honours degree in Sociology, and then a certificate in Applied Social Studies (Social Work Training Course). He married during 1962 and then began work as a basic grade Social Worker (Child Care Officer) in Somerset. This process of social mobility led him to become, in 1965, the youngest Deputy Children's Officer in the country when he and his family moved to Luton. Here, he helped set up a new Children's Department, as Luton had just become a County Borough, and new, experimental projects such as the Bury Park Family Advice Centre in a multi-ethnic part of Luton. He also started a research project on deprived social needs areas at the London School of Economics.
In 1970, the family moved to Oxford where Phil entered Social Work education by becoming a Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at Oxford University (Department of Social and Administrative Studies). He discovered that he really did not 'fit' into that rather exclusive network of 'North Oxbridge Society' people. He was able to move back a bit nearer to his ideological 'home', and his working class identity, by setting up an Applied Action Research Community Work Project in 1973. This was a joint project between the University, the Local Authority Social Services department, Central Government and an international charity called the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The project was called the 'Barton Project' after the council estate on which it was based. Phil was appointed Director of the project. His experiences in this project and other contributions to the development of community work were published in a two volume series of books called Readings in Social Change. Volume 1 Community Work: Theory and Practice was published in 1974 and Volume 2 The Barton Project in 1976. Both were published by a company called Alistair Shornach Oxford, set up and marketed by Phil.
In 1976, following the massive inflation of the 1970's, the Project lost funding and Phil's job was re-structured away. He became unemployed, had to sell his home in Oxford and return, somewhat disillusioned, to his working class roots in Somerset. He became a £39 per week horticultural labourer, then did a TOPS retraining course in horticulture. Following this, he became self employed as a gardener/landscaper setting up his own business 'Wessex Gardening' with nil capital. This became successful and provided a healthy outdoor life for a number of years.
During this major mid-life crisis he, and his wife, put their roots down in the Church of England. Within this, Phil continued to do, as he had done for many years, to set up and run detached types of Christian youth clubs. From the end of the 1970's, this led into involvement in wider aspects of the ministry of Church of England - pastoral work, PCC membership, deanery stewardship officer - eventually resulting in a 'call' to train for the ministry.
Phil automatically presumed that, seeing as he was a working man enjoying the outdoor life and having re-created his human security following his redundancy, God would want him in the non-stipendiary ministry. He very much liked the worker priest concept. When interviewed by the Suffragan Bishop of Taunton, however, an Abramic challenge was put to him. Was he prepared to go forward in utter trust in God not knowing what the result would be, or where it might lead? Or, instead had he decided that it had to be NSM ministry in Somerset? This challenge was deeply moving as it touched very directly on the personal struggle of his wife and himself for survival and human security for themselves and their family. Being socially mobile from the factory floor to Oxford and then to lose it all had led to a colossal struggle to re-adapt to working class life and self employment. Now that he had succeeded in this, to give it up would be extremely hard.
After the interview, the Suffragan Bishop strongly advised Phil to go forward for full-time training saying, "The Church of England had been thoroughly middle-class in its ministry ... that the number of Priests available to the Church who could communicate with artisans and working-class people was at a premium ..." So, in a strange way, after leaving the city and experimental community work God seemed to be dragging him back again.
Following ACCM and the Bishop's acceptance of its recommendation, the family sold up and moved to Trinity Theological College. Whilst there, he set up a Trust to sponsor Christian ministry in Urban Priority Areas, mainly through community work project developments linked to local parish churches. He called it the 'Voice of the People Trust'.
During 1984, a Christian magazine called Grassroots had published a critique by Phil about the magazine and what, he perceived to be, its failure at that time to uphold its objective of being "a friend to the poor and oppressed". This critique argued against an 'issue' orientated approach which he equated with middle class thinking. This "allows people to be intellectually involved in discussion about social justice, the nuclear debate, the poor and oppressed etc. without this necessarily having any real effect on their own lifestyle". Such an approach allows "the freedom to maintain a split between the two parts of our nature, the intellectual beliefs (social justice etc.) and the emotional (the actual lifestyle adopted, affluent, cultured etc.)."
He argued that "it is more important to emphasise the work of the Holy Spirit in challenging the British class structure than to be concerned about issues of social justice, the nuclear arms race, feminism and the like. We need to be very cautious lest we are pressed into humanistic and secular objectives that are likely, in the end, to leave the poor, and the disadvantaged ... Instead we must try to discover what the 'voice' of the ordinary people really is and what their values are. We must do what Jesus did, to come down among the ordinary people and relate to them according to their actual needs. Only this will help all of us to move out from the social class stranglehold into the classless freedom of being sons of God."
A friend of Phil's challenged him not merely to write critiques but to actually do something about the matter of discerning more of the voice of under privileged people. The result was the 'Voice of the People Trust'.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Clail On-U Sound Syatem - (There's Something Wrong With) Human Nature.
2 comments:
This is powerful and - in all its present contexts - moving stuff, Jon.
Not having met your father on more than a small handful of occasions, I am now getting a firmer impression of him.
I am challenged afresh by Phil's own emphasis on identification with the poor and their political realities. In my own work, I am certainly finding myself increasingly chary about middle-class 'issues'-stuff. (I had to fight tooth-and-nail to refuse the working title 'Social Responsibility Advisor' and also the suggested replacement 'Social Issues Advisor'. I am not sure how much better 'Faith in Action Advisor'is - but then I am not convinced that I can usefully 'advise' without first getting sleeves rolled up and hands dirty where folk are.)
Coming myself from working class rural Cornish roots - and with a fragmented, chasing-work family upbringing - I find a deal to relate to, also. Not least making that transition into the academic world and then subsequently into the ordained ministry.
Reassuring you of my continuing prayers, I shall also look forward to reading more about Phil as you write it...
Go well, mate
Thanks Paul, very grateful for your prayers and support.
Jon
Post a Comment