[The] Rt Revd John Ball, former Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, Honorary Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Chelmsford and former General Secretary of Crosslinks has passed on to glory after a period of illness. His funeral is to be held at Holy Trinity Church, Springfield, Chelmsford (date and time yet to be arranged).
Thirty years after John started his missionary work as a youth worker in Eldoret, Kenya, whilst on a return visit there, some of John’s African friends took him into the vicarage and reminisced over the time when he covered as vicar of St Matthew’s. One said, “when you were vicar it was the first time we black people had been allowed in the vicarage here, ”“ we just walked up and down.” Of course John would never have expected them not to come in. They were his brothers and sisters and the people God had called him to love. This desire to be, and living out of what it meant to be, inclusive, to see all people as valued and loved by God, equal and important, typifies what John stood for. It was why he was instrumental in the name change of BCMS from Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society to Crosslinks, for he believed that our christian brothers and sisters from other cultures were able to be partners in mission just as effectively and sometimes more so than we from the white west and he believed that the cross of Christ was central to that mission.
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