Earl Soham Baptist Church - who are we?
Alan Cutting
Almost everyone knows what goes on inside a Parish Church, even if they only go to weddings, funerals or Remembrance Day services. There are pews, pulpit, altar, stained glass windows, font, bells, strange men in robes, organ, tombstones… but what kind of a place is a Baptist Chapel? And what strange people frequent this weird establishment?
To solve this mystery for you and to show that most of us are really quite normal, we shall feature each month a short feature on one or two people—their background, their role in the church, why they come and what they do elsewhere. We start with Alan Cutting.
Alan started life in Earl Soham (Dial Cottage) in 1952 but moved to Felixstowe in 1958, where he became a Christian. He then moved to Ipswich, Thrapston and Kettering, where he pastored churches, and is now living in Suffolk once more. These days he is International Partnerships and Teams Manager with Samaritan’s Purse International, who amongst many other things manage Operation Christmas Child (which sends 1.25 million giftboxes to children all over the world). Because he travels a lot, usually in Europe, Central Asia and Africa, we don’t see that much of him and he has no specific role in our church, but he preaches on occasions when we can grab him.
Why does Alan come to this church? “It’s something to do with being easily included, but at the same time not being made a fuss of. It’s a place where God is allowed to colour outside the lines, where he is known and loved and yet where the mystery of God and the enigmas of Christianity are enjoyed, debated, and yet regularly left to hang without stifling conclusion.”
Last January Alan spent a month in Sri Lanka helping with the tsunami relief programme. In 2002 he took several of us to Kyrgyzstan to build houses for Habitat for Humanity—a tremendous experience. He is now making plans to send five distribution teams out to Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Southern Africa this winter. See Samaritans Purse, where you can read about his experiences with a similar team in Serbia last Christmas.