OAC Publications
Borderlines
June 1999

How it all started

The story of OAC West Country, as told by Korky Davey to Paul Hazelden

"Anni and I moved to Bristol in April 1973 so I could attend Trinity College, with the aim of becoming an Anglican clergyman. As part of the course, we were sent out into the parishes to see what the clergy were doing. It soon became evident that their work was very interesting to the people who already came to church, but had almost no relevance to those who didn't. In three years of doing door to door work in a housing estate, I located six people who were interested in the gospel.

"It became clear that the ordained ministry was not for us. What to do next? The answer came from an old friend of ours, David Fanstone. "Why don't you preach in the street?" he asked, "Jesus did!" With Anni's support and encouragement, I spent six months training with David in Brighton, travelling from Bristol on a Norton motorcycle each week.

"One Saturday morning in 1977, I stood alone in St James' Barton to do my first open-air in Bristol. About 60 people stopped, some of whom are still friends. Other Christians joined me, and together we built a small team.

"When doing open-airs in Bath, we had made contact with a number of Spaniards, and so In 1978 Anni and I and our two children (as it was then) went off round Spain in David Fanstone's car, after spending two weeks re-building the engine. We went around Spain from one contact to another. One man called Pedro invited us to his town, and 130 Spaniards, including some missionaries, were trained as a result.

"So much has happened since then. The Billy Graham Association invited us to do training seminars in Amsterdam, we brought 'Tell A Tourist' to Bath, and we pioneered a schools ministry that now reaches so many children across the country each year. God has opened doors for us, and we have simply walked through them."