The Reverend Reginald Walter Inchpin (1919-2016)

It is with much sadness that I share the news of the passing of someone who was a pioneer in contextual Baptist mission, the Reverend Reginald Walter Inchpin, who has died aged 97 after a long life of service.

Reg (always ‘Reg’) was born on 15 January 1919, the elder son in a family of agricultural labourers on Mersea Island in Essex. The family were staunch members of the East Mersea Baptist chapel (as it then was). For Reg, church on Sunday meant attendance at morning service at 11am, Sunday School at 3pm and evening service at 6.30pm, often shepherding his younger siblings to and from church. We forget nowadays how primitive life was in rural Essex in the 1920s. There was no electricity at the church until 1934 and Reg liked to reminisce that among the duties he shared with other young men in the fellowship was being a ‘lamplighter’ of the paraffin lamps and the chapel's coke-fired boiler.

Leaving school at 14, his first job was with the Merchant Navy, where he learned seamanship and where began his love of the sea and those who live along its coasts. He continued to serve in the Merchant Navy throughout the 1939-45 war but soon after VE Day, having spent 12 or so years in the service, he felt a strong call to train for Baptist ministry. He completed his studies at Spurgeon’s College in 1949.  It was while at Spurgeon’s that he met Bunty and they married soon after his graduation.

He served his first and second pastorates in Ilford (then very much ‘Essex’ rather than east London) and in Portsmouth, where he was a chaplain to seamen.  It was while in Portsmouth that Reg and Bunty were blessed with 3 children.Though always dedicated in their work, they never really felt ‘at home’ in Hampshire. After four years, the Inchpins dared to hope that there might be a way for their future ministry to include their twin loves, both of the sea and also mission among the people of the Essex marshes.  In the 1950s, parts of Essex were still remote from railways and life continued in the marsh villages much as it had for generations. Growing up in the area Reg loved the people and the place.  A kindly benefactor, knowing of their prayerful exploration, offered to buy and refit a 40-foot motorised launch as a mobile base for mission to the inlets and creeks of that stretch of the Essex coast. An amazing missional door was opening!

Evangeline, in the foreground, off the Essex coast around 1960

Once fitted, the boat was renamed ‘Evangeline’ and Reg was formally inducted to a peripatetic ministry at a commissioning ceremony in 1959 jointly hosted by the (then) Essex Baptist Association and the Coastal Mission Fellowship.  During term-time the family was billeted among church members at Wivenhoe, where the children attended school. This released Reg and Bunty to sail the boat to visit the coastal villages and some isolated farmsteads, where they would invite people on board.  Everyone looked forward to the choruses (the Keswick Convention Songbook was a favourite), a gospel message delivered with much good humour and to the ‘spread’ – tea, sandwiches and cake served by Bunty afterwards. Reg had a seemingly endless store of amusing anecdotes and jokes and this was the basis for his memorable talks to adults and children alike.  They had no need for a baptismal pool for any who responded: the waters of the Crouch, Roach and Blackwater rivers served in place of the Jordan!

The mission boat continued as their home base for the next 25 years’ of active ministry and it was only reluctantly that Reg accepted retirement in 1984.  By then the cost of necessary repairs to Evangeline was very high and the Essex Association could not continue to support the work (the Coastal Mission Fellowship having sadly closed in 1977).  To everything there is a season and it was time now for the Baptist mission boat to conclude its pioneering work.

In retirement, however, Reg found a role as mentor and encourager of a new generation of pioneer Baptist ministers – some young enough to be his grandchildren!  Though by then in his mid-80s, Reg took a keen interest in new Baptist church plants. He was mentor to several pioneering Baptists, though to the end he called it being their ‘senior friend!’  They found in him someone who was indeed a friend and whose commitment to mission served as a pattern to follow.  He will be much missed, not least in the Eastern Baptist Association (the successor to his beloved Essex Association, in which he was a long-serving council member in the '70s and '80s).

A memorial service is planned some time in May or June. If you would like to be kept informed, please contact me by email: parsonking@hotmail.co.uk 

 Ivan King, April 2016