Gareth Crossley

Gareth Crossley

Pastor Crossley and his connections

23rd January 2007

© 2007 Roger Stanyard

Pastor Gareth Crossley has been associated, over the last six years with planting three fundamentalist churches in the Midlands of the UK. This article looks at those churches and the connections involved. It essentially shows how a careful look at one nominally independent fundamentalist church shows up links throughout the creationist movement in the UK. The article shows links between 18 different creationist churches.

It also shows very strong links to the Evangelical Theological College of Wales, headed by a young earth creationist.

Crossley, head of Grace Community Church in Belper was, until 2003, Pastor of West Park Church in Wolverhampton. This is very definitely a young earth creationist church. It’s web site, http://www.west-park-church.co.uk, links to Answers in Genesis and claims (when the author visited it) that people once lived to be 900 years old. Crossley had been pastor there since about 1982.

Crossley holds a doctorate in theology (from where, not known), a masters degree in counselling (Keele University) and a post-graduate diploma in youth work.

We understand that Crossley decided to retire in 2001; he appears to have been a minister for about 40 year. However at around the time, he appears to have been writing a substantial book on religion, ‘The Old Testament: Explained and Applied’ (published by Evangelical Press, which has close connections to Truth in Science), so maybe had a few extra pennies to cover his retirement. In any event, it looks like he wanted an active retirement and attempted to run a team of church planters as well as get involved in the “in the post-graduate training of ministers during and after theological college training.”

This is how, we assume, he teamed up with trainee pastor and young earth creationist David Anderson. (See this site by the author of this blog.)

Anderson is a Baptist who dislikes being described as a fundamentalist; his web site, though, links to extreme fundamentalist organisations including Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International and Truth in Science. He is also a graduate of the fundamentalist Evangelical Theological College of Wales.)

However, the plan seems not to have entirely worked – Crossley tried it out in Lichfield. He then appears to have moved to Belper, presumably taking Anderson with him. Anderson is understood to have been with Grace Community Church in Belper since 2004.

His training and church planting programme was called TEAMwork - ‘Training, Evangelism And Ministry’. Interestingly it had a web site that is now defunct (we therefore conclude the project is defunct as well but could be wrong). The address is www.teamwk.co.uk. TEAMwork was established in 2001.

Interestingly if you click onto this URL you arrive at the web site of Reading Room Ltd where it says – “This server is holding teamwk.co.uk for a client of Reading Room Ltd.” A ping shows that the registered server is 194 164 94 229. That is the same as used by Truth in Science, Grace Community Church, Anderson’s private web site, that of his wife’s business, Diddlybums and Derwent Free Church.

We will follow up the significance of the URL later in this article.

It looks as if the attempt of TEAMwork to plant a church in Lichfield didn’t work out (we may be wrong but we have no evidence for a new church being successfully established there). Lichfield is about 16 miles from Birmingham.

The centre of activity seems to have switched to Derbyshire, about 70 miles North of Birmingham where Crossley and Anderson now appear to be involved in a number of new “plant” churches as well as some long-established churches.

Crossley looks to have close connections with Crich Baptist Church. This is a very fundamentalist church; the views of one of the visiting pastors there, Cecil Andrews sends shudders through the author. Crossley is known to have undertaken baptisms there.

Crossley’s own church in Belper may not be Baptist (we are almost certain that it is, though); however he is an elder at a new plant church, Ashbourne Baptist Church. Ashbourne is about 10 miles from Belper. It does not have any church premises of its own. (Nor does Crossley’s own church, Grace Community Church). It is understood that Crich Baptist Church’s baptistery has been used by the Ashbourne congregation.

Ashbourne Baptist Church looks to be a church plant.

Interestingly, when we did a search on Ashbourne Baptist Church, we came across a comment which suggests that it wants nothing to do with other churches in the district. The local Methodist Church report on Ashbourne Churches Together, stated that Ashbourne Baptist Church had been kept informed of all its meetings but had “chosen not to respond”. (See http://www.ashbourne-methodist-church.supanet.com/ACMtg05.html.)

Given the apparent disdain of TEAMWork for the ecumenical movement (and, by definition, other Christians), this comes as no surprise.

Asbourne Baptist Church is not a member of the mainstream Baptist Union – nor, indeed, are any of the other churches we mention in this report apart from Belper Baptist Church which appears to have no connection at all with the others. It seems that Crich Baptist Church in particularly maybe be hostile towards mainstream denominations – evidenced by Cecil Andrews’ close association with it.

Indeed, all of the churches that we link to Anderson and Crossley are independent and not part of or affiliated to a larger organisation. However, some of them, such as Crossley’s church and Crich are listed on the GraceNet web site. We are not quite sure of the significance of this but believe that GraceNet basically represents Strict Baptist churches or churches with beliefs close to those of the Strict Baptists. In any event, they are strongly Calvinistic.

Belper has a long-established (1817) mainstream Baptist Church of its own which is also affiliated to GraceNet. Its web site is at http://www.belperbaptist.freeserve.co.uk/. The church building looks to be substantial and dates from the end of the 19th century. It has its own baptistery. It is a member of the Baptist Union. However, apart from being listed on the GraceNet web site, we can find no connection at all with any of the other churches or people we detail in this article (including Crossley).

Crossley is also understood to have given sermons to Stanton Lees Chapel in the district. Stanton Lees Chapel was part of the Methodist Church until 1971 when it broke away and became independent.

David Anderson has also been involved in the Derwent Free Church in Derby (about 8 miles or so from Belper). The following URL link - http://www.derwentfreechurch.org.uk/sermons.htm - shows that he has been a very active preacher there, alongside Stephen Dancer, a self-proclaimed friend of Anderson.

Dancer has attacked the BCSE on his blog. Apart from that, it’s actually quite a good blog. It completely lacks the sanctimonious self-righteousness and insulting libels, threats and innuendoes of Anderson’s own ghastly blog. (Dancer, though, thinks Anderson’s blog is wonderful which seems to put a serious question mark up about Dancer’s own judgement.)

Our understanding is that Dancer recently (2006) completed a BA at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales (where Anderson got his theology degree from). Anderson and Dancer appear to be the main, if only, preachers at the church. Dancer’s blog, which can be found here gives some details about his background and further information can be found here.

He appears to be an advocate of Intelligent Design. BCSE holds the view that there is no difference between Intelligent Design and YEC. It’s one and the same thing, as shown by Judge Jones and Truth in Science. It’s a scam to deceive the public.

(Most creationist/IDers in the UK have not woken up to the fact that the creationist movement lost the Dover trial in the USA last year and that Intelligent Design in the USA is basically dead in the water.)

He holds a PhD (believe to be from Glasgow University) and has worked as an engineer at Rolls-Royce in Derby. His academic qualifications are in physics and maths (the PhD is in nuclear physics). He worked on research and design of jet engines at Rolls Royce. It is understood that he worked as a student intern at Derwent Free Church whilst studying for his theological degree.

From this blog, it appears that the Derwent Free Church is Baptist - https://beta.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6460088&postID=113102207246848359. However, it doesn’t appear to be a member of the Baptist Union. Moreover, as far as we can make out, it has no premises of its own.

Dancer is now assistant minister of a new church formed a year or so back (in 2005), the Solihull Presbyterian Church. Solihull is in Birmingham. It appears to have no church premises of its own. It meets in a local school. It is a member of the small Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales. Despite Dancer being openly ID/YEC, the web site is not absolutely and 100% clear whether the church is creationist – see http://solihullpres.org.uk/pdfs/belief/BS-5-Meaningful-Life-sm.pdf and http://solihullpres.org.uk/pdfs/belief/BS-2-Bible-sm.pdf and http://solihullpres.org.uk/pdfs/belief/BS-1-Hist-of-Christianity-sm.pdf. The latter, though, is almost impossible not to interpret as YEC.

See here for Dancer’s view of the BCSE.

There is one final link we came across which goes back to the web site teamwk.co.uk. This name was registered Oct 01 and up to Oct 07 to one Alan Stenfalt of Cosby, Leics. He is pastor of in Leicester and it appears to be another “plant”. It has no church premises of its own. We have no evidence at all to suggest Stenfalt is a YECer or that his church endorses it.

Stephen Dancer has helped out at this church – see He's helped Anderson out in Belper and according to his web has had an involvement in Birstall IBC. See this link for confirmation.

Yet another connection between Crossley and Stenfalt can be seen in this article dated November 2004.

According to Evangelical Times (http://www.evangelical-times.org/Articles/Jan03/jan03a01.htm) Stenfalt helped set up TEAMwork with Crossley. Stenfalt rather gives the game away about the exclusive fundamentalism of TEAMwork.

In describing the initial choice of Lichfield as a target for planting, he says “We were led to the city of Lichfield (population around 30,000). It has several churches but, as far as we knew, they were all involved in ecumenism.”

TEAMWork also tried to establish a plant church in Scunthorpe and Tamworth.

Yet more links to Fundamentalism: It transpires that the trainee pastor involved in trying to set up a plant church in Lichfield (Grace Church Lichfield) was Evan Richards. In 2003 he moved on to be pastor of Mount Elim Evangelical Church, Pontardawe, near Swansea (see Evangelical Times, http://www.evangelical-times.org/etnews/feb04/feb04n10.htm). This church endorses creationism – see http://www.mountelim.co.uk.

Richards has, apparently, studied at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales. YECer Stuart Olyott of the college conducted the induction of Richards as pastor at the South Wales church. Crossley attended the event.

There is also a mention of TEAMwork in the Evangelical Times, June 2003 - http://www.evangelical-times.org/ETNews/June03/jun03n21.htm