WOODALL, Walter Emmanuel 1883 - 1961

Obituary from the Minutes of the Methodist Conference 1962, page 195

Born at Stourbridge in 1883. Accepted for the Wesleyan Ministry in 1905. he was appointed to serve a year as a non-collegiate at Spalding.

He entered Didsbury College in 1906 and left in 1909 to begin his probation in the Wadebridge Circuit. After his ordination at Liverpool in 1912 he served in such widely differing circuits as Holsworthy, Aylesbury, Southall Mission, Newcastle-on-Tyne Mission, Kilburn and Hampstead, Plymouth and Halifax.

While he was at Aylesbury he did excellent work as chaplain to the women’s prison. In 1916 he was appointed Chaplain to the Forces and was posted to Egypt, where he served for five years and quietly exercised a powerful influence upon the men in his care.

He was endowed with the natural gift of leadership, which earned for him the King’s Territorial Decoration. Modest and unassuming in manner, he possessed a wise and sound judgement. He was a faithful and sincere minister who did a lasting work for the kingdom of God.

In all his circuits there were many who remembered him with affection, and he had the warm esteem of all who knew him. He never sought to exalt himself, but always the Master whom he served.

In 1945 he retired from the active Ministry to Fairlight Estate, near Hastings, but for him there was no discharge from the work. He continued to preach regularly with great acceptance, assisted in the Sunday School, and was a beloved pastor amongst the people of the housing estate.

Happily employed up to the end in preaching, visiting, reading and gardening,

he died suddenly on 3 November 1961, in the seventy-seventh year of his age and the fifty-fifth of his ministry.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1962

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