Monk in the marketplace publishes his story Ray Simpson, the founding pastor of the ecumenical church in Bowthorpe, has published an autobiography called Monk in the Marketplace. The book begins with his war-time childhood and then maps his early ministry assignments and his calling to be a pastor, which became reality in the ‘divine experiment’ of Bowthorpe.
John Drake from YMCA and Paul Hodgson from the Church on the Way, who both climbed the haystack in the centre of Bowthorpe to pray over what would become the site of the new church.
Bowthorpe Church was launch in a packed village hall during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in January 1978. Ray Simpson was commissioned by the Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, Quakers and United Reformed churches, accompanied by the Salvation Army Band, with the Pentecostal and Community Church leaders offering the right hand of fellowship, ‘to establish one family of Christians for one neighbourhood.’