JOHNSON, Robert John Anglin 1883 - 1962

Obituary from the Minutes of the Methodist Conference 1962, page 213

Born at Skibbereen, Co. Cork, in 1883. He was accepted for the Wesleyan Methodist Ministry in 1904, and after serving as a non-collegiate in the Evesham Circuit, entered Headingley College in 1905.

On leaving college he served in Harrogate, Morecambe. North of Scotland Mission, Falkirk, Coatbridge, Liverpool Mission, Huddersfield, Yeadon, Barnoldswick, Cross Hills, Stoke-on-Trent, Settle, Blackburn, Peterborough and Gateshead. During the 1914-18 War he was a Chaplain to the Forces.

He became a supernumerary in 1951.

Throughout his ministry he was a keen student and a wide reader. He was fond of writing and expressed many of his Christian beliefs and opinions in articles to the religious Press and the newspapers.

A man of simple tastes and interests, he was a keen naturalist, a lover of beauty, and a humble seeker after truth. Reverence for God, for life, for men and women, for children, and for all created things dominated his thought and work. This reverence expressed itself in his conduct of worship, in his preaching of the Gospel, in his visiting, and in his affection for ordinary people.

A man of catholic tastes and catholic outlook, he had no desire for fame. He was content to serve Christ quietly and humbly, and to have the approval of his Lord and the love and loyalty of the people he served was sufficient reward. The brotherhood of the Ministry was precious to him. He loved preaching, and in the pulpit he was forceful and dignified. After his retirement and up to the time of his death he regularly conducted Sunday services both in the Colne Circuit-where he lived and in other circuits of the North Lancashire District.

His ministrations, his kindliness, and his natural grace and charm won him countless friends in all walks of life. His devotion as a minister and as a family man was of the highest order, and he will be remembered by all who knew him with love, admiration and gratitude.

His last Sunday on earth was spent at home because he was unwell and not able to take his appointments. It gave him the opportunity to listen to a radio service from Headingley Methodist Church and it was fitting that for his last act of public worship he returned to the place where he had spent his student years.

He died on 17 April 1962, in the seventy-eighth year of his age and the fifty-fifth year of his ministry.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1962

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