The Mid Sussex Times April 21 1977

THE CHURCHES OF MID SUSSEX

Cuckfield Reformed Baptist Church

The 205 years history of Cuckfield Reformed Baptist Church is dominated by courage in the face of adversity leading to remarkable success. 

For in 1957 there was only one service a week and one member, Miss Win Perry, the secretary, belonging to a well-known Cuckfield family, whose constancy and unswerving faith saved the church from extinction when all seemed lost.

Reluctantly, however, it was eventually decided that the doors must be closed forever, and the building sold. This came to the attention of a Baptist Church in Brighton, whose members infused new interest, collected together a small group of Cuckfield and district supporters, and opened a Sunday school, and kept services going. 

Now, the church which, after all, was never closed, has its seating accommodation for about 180 people so much in demand that many worshippers often have to sit on stools. 

The church at the time of expected closure could only seat a maximum of 70 people, but this number was more than doubled through an extension in 1968. 

“The problem is becoming more and more acute”, said the pastor Errol Hulse. “The church is regularly packed to the doors at the Sunday morning services.”

The number 12 keeps cropping up in the history of the church – just as it did at the dawning of Christianity through Christ with his trial 12 disciples. 

For the 12 Baptists, some from Ditchling, met in the Cuckfield home of one of them, for services, and it was they who decided to build the church, opened in 1772. After the new Sunday school, attended by around 20 local children, was a principal cause for the church's revival in the early 1960s a dozen Baptists invited Pastor Hulse to become their part-time minister. 

Twelve people formed the entire new membership. Within a year of Pastor Hulse’s full-time appointment, from part time, extensions were completed to the church.

Members have been encouraged by the drive, enthusiasm and organising abilities of the Pastor, with the result that there are now around 100 members.

Said Pastor Hulse: “From Cuckfield, we encourage development of other Reformed Baptist churches in various parts of the world. Nearest to us are churches at Crawley and Barcombe. 

“Literature production and distribution at the Cuckfield church, involving a number of members, has resulted in regular publications of: an ambitious magazine, ‘The Reformation today’, my book.

‘An introduction to the Baptists’, and re-printing of the most famous of the Baptist confessions of faith, the 1689 confessions transposed into modern language. We supply copies of ‘Baptism and Church membership’, to churches all over the world.”

Travel. 

Pastor Hulse travels the world to back up the Cuckfield Church’s work of Reformed Baptist “planting”, Involving churches in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as many parts of the United Kingdom. 

He has had an eventful career. Born in South Africa and now a naturalised Britisher, Pastor Hulse grew up in the Anglican Church before covenanting into a Baptist Church. He graduated in architecture in Pretoria, and came to this country with the object of pursuing a career as an architect. He studied at the London Bible college, began to take a keen interest in Christian publishing, and was manager of a Christian publishing firm for 10 years until 1967. Before becoming a full-time pastor, he was engaged in itinerant preaching in Baptist churches in Surrey and Sussex, and also in Anglican churches.

His ordination at the Cuckfield church was singularly fortunate for its members. For under his guidance they have been involved in progressive campaigns involving not only home and overseas Reformed Baptist “planting”, but also militant support for the nationwide anti-evolution drive evidence by their backing of a recent mass meeting at Haywards Heath to further the cause. 

The position of members of his church as Reformed Baptists led to the pastors explanation.

“We feel,” he said, “that most modern established churches, including the Baptist, have drifted away from the solid foundations which were laid at the time of the Reformation. 

“Reformed” means that we believe in the doctrinal formulations made by the Protestant Churches of the Reformation. The main body of the Presbyterians and the 39 articles of the Church of England are regarded by us with much esteem, and we only wish that the 39 articles were believed now by the Anglicans. 

“We are associated with the puritan expositors from 1558 to 1662, who left a tremendous wealth of Christian literature by way of exposition.”

In the congregation has been the well-known actor, James Fox, who, said Pastor Hulse, has been converted to evangelical Christianity. 

Pastor Hulse’s travels have also taken him to the Holy Land, and he talks, from first-hand experience, of a modern Reformed Baptist insight into the Nazareth, Jerusalem and Bethlehem of today, and what they must have been like at the birth of Christianity. 

The Cuckfield church has as its librarian Mrs Marion Hogwood, responsible for invaluable research into its history.

By Geoffrey Titmus