Paul & Sue Hazelden
- Curriculum Vitae -
Paul Hazelden

Personal Details

Education

Qualifications

Employment History

Christian History

Started attending the West Woolwich Baptist Church Sunday School at the age of 4. At some point in the next 10 years, the church left the Baptist Union, and became in effect a strict Calvinist Exclusive Brethren assembly, calling itself 'The Church in West Woolwich'.

Started attending the local Anglican church at 8 when I joined the Cub Pack. Met my future wife, Sue, in the Sunday School there.

Made a profession of faith at the age of 14. For the next three years, attended both the Anglican and the ex-Baptist/Brethren churches each week. Helped to run the Anglican Sunday School for a while. A lot of misguided attempts at evangelism.

Discovered the Holy Spirit when I went to the University of Surrey. The CU there was at the forefront of the Charismatic Movement at that time, and we had some superb input from many of the early leaders of the movement.

Was brought into leadership in the CU, and involved in a wide number of activities: prayer, leading meetings, teaching, pastoral care, missions, and church politics. As one of the few people present with any theological background, was involved in negotiating our position with various soundly Evangelical but violently anti-Charismatic representatives of UCCF, from the local 'Trav Sec' to numerous meetings with the General Secretary.

There were three Christian groups at the university: Protestant Evangelical (the Christian Union), Protestant Liberal ('Chi-Rho', led by the Anglican Chaplain), and Catholic ('Cath Soc', led by the Roman Catholic Chaplain). In my second year, I developed links with Chi-Rho, and in my final year with Cath Soc, going away with each of these groups.

Through my involvement, the three Christian groups agreed to hold a joint mission to the University, and I was on the organising committee. The mission, led by Roger Forster early in 1980, was a wonderful success. As far as I know it was at the time, and still is, the only university mission ever to have been held in the UK with the active support and involvement of all Christian groups.

As part of our preparation for the mission, I went one evening to a play in London, and met Sue again at the Friends' Meeting House in Euston. This contact eventually led to her moving down to Guildford, and eventually to the pair of us getting married.

At this time, I was 'living by faith': working for Kim Tan and technically self-employed selling Christian books, but not making any profit from the books. Amongst other works, I sold over 50 sets of the 3-volume Dictionary of New Testament Theology by Colin Brown; later I heard that the most any UK bookshop had managed to sell was 2 sets.

A group formed around myself and a friend, John Baker, and we found ourselves leading a House Church for several years. We turned down an invitation to take over our local Evangelical Church, and instead took our group into membership in Westborouogh, the local United Reformed Church. We played an active part in church life, and helped it through a number of changes over the next few years.

One of these changes was that the church stopped baptising babies and started baptising believers. This was permitted by the URC consititution, but it created a problem in the URC District Council, and this problem rapidly became a major crisis within the URC nationally. Was ordained as a URC Elder, and took part with Derek Wensley, our minister, in meetings with the URC national leadership and the theological department. Spoke at the National Assembly, and took part in the groundbreaking 'Consultation on Baptism'.

In 1980, I helped Westborough establish 'Evangelism Explosion', an evangelistic training and outreach ministry, handling the administration for several years, as well as talking part. We were one of the first churches in the country to benefit from Evangelism Explosion (or 'Teach and Reach' as the British version was called for a while), and Westborough was used as the base for several national training seminars.

At the same time, we were developing a missions strategy, and starting to send people out into Christian work around the world. One of the couples we sent out were Mark & Sue Howe, who trained with Korky Davey in Bristol and went to pioneer an evangelistic and training ministry in France with Open Air Campaigners.

The support group for Mark & Sue turned into 'Europe Now'. I became the Chairman of the trustees, and then the UK Director. Our involvement in missionary work and evangelism in Europe led us eventually to set up the 'Snowball' training programme for evangelists. Korky & Anni Davey invited us to come and set up the Snowball programme in Bristol.

We ran the training programme for a year, and as a result two new national works have been established in Austria and Slovakia. We discovered in August 2000 that we could not run Snowball in 2000-2001, and I was asked to come in to run Crisis Centre Ministries for six months while a replacement for Derek Groves could be found. It soon became evident that the task was a much larger one than anyone anticipated, and that I was surprisingly well suited to the job.

It became clear that we would not be able to run Snowball - at least in its original form - for several more years. In April 2002, my position with Crisis Centre Ministries was made permanent.