Moore, John Benn (1885-1963)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

JOHN BENN MOORE: born in Maryport, Cumberland, in 1885. After training at Hartley College he began his ministry at Wakefield. His subsequent ministry, except for two years at Biddulph, was spent in the North East of England where he served in Burnopfield, Ashington, Bishop Auckland, Shotley Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne, Stanley and South Shields. In all these Circuits he gained the respect and affection of his people. 

He was a capable administrator, but it was as pastor and preacher that he sought the fulfilment of his calling. He counted it a privilege to share the joys and sorrows of his people. There was comfort in his presence. His pulpit ministrations were prepared with deep thought, wide reading, and sincere prayer, and he preached with a spirit of devotion and challenge which marked him as a man with a message from God. Several of his friends, including an ex-President of Conference, pressed him to publish his sermons, but he was a man of such modesty and humility that this would have been an embarrassment to him. He lived only to be a preacher of the Gospel and a faithful servant of his Lord. 

But his life was his greatest utterance. The qualities of strength and courage, gentleness and humility, were finely woven in him. In friendship and understanding he generously shared himself with his brethren. Void of jealousy, and without any self-seeking ambitions, his life was a tower of strength and encouragement to his colleagues and brethren. His sure confidence in God was revealed in his brave endurance of physical affliction during the last two years of his life. 

He died on 20 October 1963, in the seventy-eighth year of his life, and the fifty-first year of his ministry.

Family

John was born on 28 April 1885 at Dearham, nr. Maryport, Cumberland, to parents William, a blacksmith, and Hannah.

He married Annie Underwood (b1888) in the spring of 1916 in the Wakefield Registration District, Yorkshire. Birth records identify three children.

• John Wilfred (b1818)
• Maurice Benn (1923-1969) – died in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Geoffrey Benn (b1925) – an administrative oficer (1955)

John died on 20 October 1963 at Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1912 Wakefield I
• 1916 Biddulph
• 1918 Burnopfield
• 1924 Ashington
• 1930 Bishop Auckland
• 1936 Shotley Bridge
• 1939 Newcastle Heaton
• 1944 Stanley
• 1951 S Shields
• 1953 Edinburgh (S)

References

Methodist Minutes 1964/194

W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers