The Lord Griffiths of Burry Port | |
---|---|
Superintendent Minister of Wesley's Chapel and Leysian Mission | |
In office September 1996 –September 2017 | |
Succeeded by | Jennifer Smith |
President of the Methodist Conference | |
In office July 1994 –July 1995 | |
Vice President | Christine Walters |
Preceded by | Brian Beck |
Succeeded by | Brian Hoare |
Member of the House of Lords | |
Life peerage 30 June 2004 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Burry Port,Carmarthenshire | 15 February 1942
Nationality | British |
Political party | Labour |
Spouse | Margaret |
Children | 3 |
Alma mater | Cardiff University |
Other offices
| |
Leslie John Griffiths,Baron Griffiths of Burry Port FLSW (born 15 February 1942) is a British Methodist minister,politician and life peer who served as President of the Methodist Conference from 1994 to 1995. [1] A member of the Labour Party,he was an opposition spokesperson and whip in the House of Lords from 2017 to 2020.
Griffiths was born in Burry Port in Carmarthenshire,Wales,on 15 February 1942. He attended Llanelli Grammar School before studying at Cardiff University. [2]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2014) |
Griffiths became a local preacher in the Methodist Church of Great Britain in 1963. [2] He completed a Master of Arts in Theology at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge in 1969, while training for the ministry at Wesley House. [3] He spent most of the 1970s serving the Methodist Church of Haiti, where he was ordained, before returning to Britain to serve in ministries in Caversham, Loughton, and Golders Green. In 1987 Griffiths completed a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. [2]
In 1994, Griffiths became one of the few people to be elected President of the Methodist Conference whilst still a circuit minister. [2] In this role he was the spiritual and administrative leader of the Methodists in Britain.
In 1996 he became superintendent minister at Wesley's Chapel, London. He retired in 2017 and preached his last sermon on 6 August. However, he returned to take services at Loughton monthly during 2018, when the church there was between ministers. He was created Baron Griffiths of Burry Port, of Pembrey and Burry Port in the County of Dyfed in 2004. [4]
On 20 August 2009, Griffiths published an article in the Methodist Recorder outlining a prospective plan for his "conditional ordination" by Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, in the Church of England. The plan was the subject of detailed discussion at the Methodist Conference (sitting in closed session) in 2008 and 2009 and the conference withheld consent for this move.
On 1 September 2011, Griffiths was appointed as the thirteenth president of the Boys' Brigade. [1]
In 2012, Griffiths was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. [5]
|
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christian tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley were also significant early leaders in the movement. They were named Methodists for "the methodical way in which they carried out their Christian faith". Methodism originated as a revival movement within Anglicanism originating out of the Church of England in the 18th century and became a separate denomination after Wesley's death. The movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States and beyond because of vigorous missionary work, and today has about 80 million adherents worldwide.
John Wesley was an English cleric, theologian, and evangelist who was a leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies he founded became the dominant form of the independent Methodist movement that continues to this day.
William Williams, Pantycelyn, also known as William Williams, Williams Pantycelyn, and Pantycelyn, was generally seen as Wales's premier hymnist. He is also rated among the great literary figures of Wales, as a writer of poetry and prose. In religion he was among the leaders of the 18th-century Welsh Methodist revival, along with the evangelists Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland.
Llanelli is a market town and community in Carmarthenshire and the preserved county of Dyfed, Wales. It is located on the Loughor estuary and is the largest town in the county of Carmarthenshire.
Burry Port is a port town and community in Carmarthenshire, Wales, on the Loughor estuary, to the west of Llanelli and south-east of Kidwelly. Its population was recorded at 5,680 in the 2001 census and 6,156 in the 2011 census, and estimated at 5,998 in 2019. The town has a harbour. It is also where Amelia Earhart landed as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Nearby are the Pembrey Burrows sand dune and wetland system, forming a country park, and the Cefn Sidan sands. Its musical heritage includes Burry Port Opera, Male Choir and Burry Port Town Band.
The Primitive Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination within the holiness movement. It began in England in the early 19th century, with the influence of American evangelist Lorenzo Dow (1777–1834).
The Presbyterian Church of Wales, also known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church, is a denomination of Protestant Christianity based in Wales.
Primitive Methodism was a major movement in English and Welsh Methodism from about 1810 until the Methodist Union in 1932. It emerged from a revival at Mow Cop in Staffordshire. Primitive meant "simple" or "relating to an original stage"; the Primitive Methodists saw themselves as practising a purer form of Christianity, closer to the earliest Methodists. Although the denomination did not bear the name "Wesleyan", Primitive Methodism was Wesleyan in theology, in contrast to the Calvinistic Methodists.
Richard Watson (1781–1833) was a British Methodist theologian, a leading figure of Wesleyan Methodism in the early 19th century.
The Methodist Church of Great Britain is a Protestant Christian denomination in Britain, and the mother church to Methodists worldwide. It participates in the World Methodist Council, and the World Council of Churches among other ecumenical associations.
The Christmas Conference was an historic founding conference of the newly independent Methodists within the United States held just after the American Revolution at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1784.
Jabez Bunting was an English Wesleyan Methodist leader and the most prominent Methodist after John Wesley's death in 1791.
Thomas Coke was the first Methodist bishop. Born in Brecon, Wales, he was ordained as a priest in 1772, but expelled from his Anglican pulpit of South Petherton for being a Methodist. Coke met John Wesley in 1776. He later co-founded Methodism in America and then established the Methodist missions overseas, which in the 19th century spread around the world.
The organisation of the Methodist Church of Great Britain is based on the principle of connexionalism. This means that British Methodism, from its inception under John Wesley (1703–1791), has always laid strong emphasis on mutual support, in terms of ministry, mission and finance, of one local congregation for another. No singular church community has ever been seen in isolation either from its immediately neighbouring church communities or from the centralised national organisation. Wesley himself journeyed around the country, preaching and establishing local worshipping communities, called "societies", often under lay leadership. Soon these local communities of worshipping Christians formalised their relationships with neighbouring Methodist communities to create "circuits", and the circuits and societies contained within them, were from the very beginning 'connected' to the centre and Methodism's governing body, the annual Conference. Today, societies are better known as local churches, although the concept of a community of worshipping Christians tied to a particular location, and subdivided into smaller cell groups called "classes", remains essentially based on Wesley's societies.
The Wesleyan Methodist Church was the majority Methodist movement in England following its split from the Church of England after the death of John Wesley and the appearance of parallel Methodist movements.
Lord Griffiths may refer to:
Joseph Benson was an early English Methodist minister, one of the leaders of the movement during the time of Methodism's founder John Wesley.
Thomas Jackson (1783–1873), was an English Wesleyan minister and writer who acted as chair of divinity of the Richmond Theological College and president of the Methodist Conference during the mid-nineteenth century.