Gordon Jeff
I come from the north of England (Cheshire), and after
National Service as a sergeant in the Korean War, I took up an Open Scholarship
to Oxford University to read English Literature, followed by some years as an
administrator at Kings College Hospital, London.
After ten happy pagan years, I found myself at the then
Wells Theological College and spent the whole of my subsequent ministry in the
diocese of Southwark, mostly as a parish priest, and where at one time I was
area dean of one of the largest boroughs in London.
I trained and worked as a marital and group counsellor,
representing London on the then National Marriage Guidance Council, but found I
was increasingly being sought by people to talk about their journey with and to
God.
So in 1979 I founded SPIDIR, an ongoing network for
encouraging the ministry of spiritual direction. I ran courses in spiritual direction for twenty years, and I’ve
been invited to do work in twenty nine of the forty three English dioceses, and
in three Welsh dioceses, as well as in the USA and twice in Australia.
For my last five years before retiring over ten years ago, I
think I must have been the most privileged priest in the Church of England,
with a job description of simply ‘to exercise gifts and graces in the church at
large’. I just hope I fulfilled, and
try to continue to fulfil, that alarming expectation.
I wrote two books on spiritual direction, one of which
(‘Spiritual Direction for Every Christian’) went to four impressions and is to
be re-issued in a new edition by SPCK ON 7 August this year. I also co-edited a religious book
best-seller entitled ‘Approaches to Prayer’, which subsequently also appeared
in an American edition.
Alongside this I have conducted a lot of retreats, been
involved in work consultancy, and been a trainer for seventeen years for the
Myers Briggs Type Indicator, a widely used guide to personality type.
Colette and I were married only a few weeks after I was
ordained, and we have now been happily married for nearly forty six years. Colette was originally a nurse at the
Westminster Hospital, but subsequently became head teacher of a large church
primary school in London, and is now Vice Chairman of Somerset WI. We have two grandchildren.
We are both enthusiastic gardeners, and while I was once a
reasonably competent organist, I now inflict my decaying skills on St Peter’s
only when no-one else can be found.