Jesus Life 87 - Jesus Army

Wilf Copping, Jesus Fellowship
pastor, poet, and one-time wannabe
prog rocker, talks to Jesus Life.
DESPITE THE fact that he is regarded as
something of a spiritual guru, creative
wizard and all round good geezer by many,
there’s nothing pretentious about Wilf. He
refuses to take himself too seriously, whether
he’s talking about medieval mysticism or what
makes a good poem.
The son of a working-class family, Wilf was
brought up in Chesterfield in a happy home. He
was an only child, but had good friends and was
happy. His conversion to Christianity wasn’t in a
“crisis”, nor did it happen at once.
“Aged 18, I saw a guy in a music magazine
wearing all this white kit (Raja Ram of Quintessence,
if you’re interested!)” remembers Wilf. “I
thought, ‘I want to look like you.’ All the songs
his band played were about God, though they
certainly weren’t a Christian band.”
Wilf’s spiritual search had begun. To some
extent, he reflects, it was part of the style of the
70s. “Looking for God was the sort of thing you
did in those days, for a bit anyway, until you gave
up and became a business man,” he smiles wryly.
Wilf met some Christians who took him to
evangelistic meetings. There, he asked questions
and became a Christian. The presence of Jesus in
his life soon started to change things.
“Soon after,” he says, “I finished with a girl I
had been going out with for two and a half years.
She wasn’t a Christian and I just instinctively
knew it wasn’t going to work.” It was around this
time that Wilf knew he had to surrender to God
the desire he felt to get married. Now he felt that
he was free to make a choice: to be married or
to stay single. It was several years later, in 1980,
when he was 26, that Wilf was praying and felt the
call to accept the gift of celibacy, a choice to embrace
a way of life that he describes as “brilliant”.
Shortly after his conversion, when Wilf had just
finished his studies at teacher training college,
www.jesus.org.uk
he visited Bugbrooke Baptist Chapel (where the
Jesus Fellowship began) – and was terrified! He
vowed he would never come again.
“It was the all-out commitment and nowhere
to hide,” Wilf confesses. “Everything was going to
have to be Jesus-centred. It freaked me out.”
Yet the initial shock receded, leaving Wilf aware
that he was witnessing something amazing.
“It was like watching a dream come true. It
seemed to me that this was how life was supposed
to be – heaven on earth, people loving one
another, sticking together, not being diverted by
jobs or careers. Something I could give myself to
100 per cent.”
Initially, it was too scary to conceive of living
the life himself, but in the end God whittled down
his fears and arguments and, 18 months later,
after several visits, Wilf moved in to a community
house in Northampton called “New Life”.
“Each visit I had made to the church was
like an explosion – I was left with loads to work
through and in the end I wanted to live the
dream. The early days of community were great
and the honeymoon period didn’t wear off for a
long time.”
What has sustained Wilf on his journey in
community? “Friends are everything to me,”
he replies.
As well as rubbing shoulders with living saints,
Wilf has found inspiration from spiritual heroes of
the past.
“Something resonates within me when it
comes to the old monks n’ that,” he says, adding
Continued overleaf
Each visit I had
made to the
church was like
an explosion
s
s
Jesus Life 13