(posted 7280 days ago)Telegraph
Canon Sir Nicholas Rivett-Carnac, Bt
(Filed: 20/05/2004)Canon Sir Nicholas Rivett-Carnac, 8th Bt, who died on May 4 aged 76, exercised a remarkable ministry as Vicar of St Mark's, Kennington Oval, in multi-racial south London, from 1972 to 1989; having undergone an evangelical conversion after ordination, he became a leading figure in the charismatic movement.
Home Office statistics indicated that this was one of the most socially deprived parishes in the country. But the services at St Mark's were characterised by a high degree of spontaneity and informality. The large congregations were made up of local residents, many of them with acute personal and social problems, and a high proportion of young single people from further afield - all of whom were attracted by the dynamic quality of the church's life and the warmth of its fellowship.
Care groups undertook a great deal of pastoral work in the parish; a coffee bar and counselling service at the church was never without customers; reports of the apparently miraculous healing of sick people were not uncommon, and the annual income rose to £150,000. When £75,000 was needed for the refurbishment of the church in 1979, the congregation produced the money in eight weeks.
Rivett-Carnac was not, however, an extrovert character skilled in beating the evangelical big drum. On the contrary, he was a man of gentle manner and one who was happy for others to occupy the limelight; but he had a deep concern and compassion for the underdog and the dropout, and he exerted considerable influence over individuals and groups by means of a powerful mixture of psychology and piety.
Thomas Nicholas Rivett-Carnac was born on June 3 1927. His father, the younger son of the sixth baronet (also an Anglican clergyman), ended his naval career as a vice-admiral, commanded the battleship Rodney from 1941 to 1943 and was rear-admiral in charge of the Normandy beaches during the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944.
The baronetcy was created in 1836 for James Rivett-Carnac, who was chairman of the East India Company for two years in succession, MP for Sandwich for many years, and Governor of Bombay from 1838 to 1841.
Nicholas Rivett-Carnac went to Marlborough, after which he joined the Scots Guards. He spent 10 years with the regiment, serving as a platoon commander during the fighting in Malaya, when he was mentioned in dispatches, and returning home in time to take part in the Coronation procession in 1953.
Two years later, he left the Army and took a job in the City, but this did not suit him. He then spent some months in Spain, seeking inspiration for the thriller novels he hoped to write. When the inspiration was not forthcoming he returned to London, where a chance encounter led him to social work in Bermondsey.
He was greatly influenced by the preaching of Dr Leslie Weatherhead at the City Temple, and, after training and serving as a probation officer from 1957 to 1959, Rivett-Carnac went to Westcott House, Cambridge, to prepare for Holy Orders. He was ordained in 1963.
His first curacy was in the tough parish of Holy Trinity, Rotherhithe, where he stayed for five years and, in addition to his parochial duties, worked among drug addicts in the West End of London. It was in the course of this work that he underwent the conversion experience that shaped his future ministry.
Next, he spent four years as a curate at the fashionable Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, where he opened the crypt on Saturday evenings for homeless people and dropouts and, for a time during an interregnum, found himself in charge of the parish.
Rivett-Carnac's gifts were now becoming widely known in London, and in 1972 the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, invited him to cross the Thames to begin what turned out to be a ministry of extraordinary influence at Kennington Oval. In the same year, on the death of his uncle, he succeeded in the baronetcy.
From 1978 to 1982, Rivett-Carnac was Rural Dean of Lambeth; he was an honorary Canon of Southwark Cathedral from 1980 to 1996, then Canon Emeritus. Following his retirement in 1989 he became an honorary curate at Little Common and shared in a marriage renewal project, a special ministry for single people and the establishing of a prayer centre in the stable block at Ashburnham Place, near Battle.
He was Pastor, the Kingdom Faith Ministries, at Roffey Place, Horsham, in Sussex, from 1989 to 1993, and Pastor, Ashburnham Place, Battle, from 1993 to 1996.
He married, in 1977, Susan Marigold MacTier Copeland, who shared fully in his work. There were no children. The heir to the baronetcy is Sir Nicholas's brother, Miles James Rivett-Carnac, who was born in 1933.