Jerusalem
and the Middle East
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JIM WILSON R.I.P.

Bishop John Bickersteth writes:

If my father, who was Secretary from 1916 to 1935, really made the former Jerusalem & the East Mission, as old hands would at once recognize (and this is not just filial affection), Jim Wilson was a most worthy successor, two or three along the line, in the 1960s and 1970s. Just as the others had, Jim would be constantly consulting ‘Bick’; and I mean constantly, once or twice a month, often with ongoing problems. This was no chore to father whose life’s work and interest was in the Jerusalem Archbishopric, which he had largely engineered. Jim did this mainly because early on in his time at 12 Warwick Square in Westminster (the home as well as the office of successive secretaries), he realized the fount of wisdom and experience to be drawn from the older man, but also because he was innately courteous and soon came to know that father loved to be still wanted, and was perfectly able to do a lot behind the scenes from his not-all-that-demanding country parish down the line in Kent.

Brought up in rural Worcestershire, and having read law at Cambridge, Jim was in what used to be called the Near East before, during and after the Second World War, his main commitment having been eighteen years on the administration side of Sudan Railways. He was back in England when recruited for J & EM. He threw himself into the work, with a shrewd efficiency and a delightful way with people. It was he who worked with the Council to organise the move of the office out of London to Farnham, the Wilsons making their home in Alton.

This brings me to the family’s remarkable and continuing love affair with each other, stemming from the complete devotion of Jim for Audrey and vice versa. Happily, that can be said of thousands of married couples, but without question there was something out of the ordinary between this particular husband and wife. Having known them for forty years, my wife and I enjoyed the opportunity of looking them up several times in their former Manse in Northumberland. There they did a lot with the local church, Jim (that much older than Audrey) growing old gracefully, still interested in everyone and everything; and when in his last days he made the move to an excellent nursing home they already knew- almost next door- he cheerfully said it was almost as good as home, but meant that he did not make so much work for Audrey.

I shall remember and thank God for Jim, the devout Christian, the able servant of the universal church in general and Jerusalem and its affairs in particular, and above all as a man who demonstrated the way in which a husband in his nineties can be, if anything, more in love with his wife than they were on their engagement day. May they rest in peace, united in their deaths to this life and rejoicing together for sure in the next.

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