 The Royal Fleet Auxiliary
Oct 2008
2/Officer Alex TOWNSHEND—RFA
I have been a Christian now for 5 years, having had a sea baptism in 2003, this quite fitting for a seafaring Christian. I have recently been praying about whether to stay at sea or move ashore to a different style of job, which might allow me to be amongst more Christians and allow a more ‘normal’ lifestyle. I had however felt that God’s answer to my prayers was to not leave the sea, but to take God to sea with me. I have felt God saying to get the Gospel to sea, and have taken some Alpha course notes with me in the hope of some day running a mini Alpha course onboard.
As many of you may know or may not know, the RFA is a small service providing the larger Navy and other services with much needed support and transport. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary has 2200 personnel of which 90% are sea going. We operate in support of MOD operations throughout the world. What you may not know, is there are only 3 people from that number involved with the Naval Christian Fellowship (NCF) and that has only grown to this number in the last few months. (Eds’ note … 4 now Roger Route joined at New Wine!!!!) The average age of RFA personnel is about 48 years old, with many people spending 40 years at sea, never holding shore jobs; we generally stay in the RFA for 40 years for pension reasons.
As you can imagine this leaves a great number of people who may have very little contact with active Christians while on the ship, especially with ship’s companies ranging from 50 – 100 people. I have been in the RFA for 10 years now and a few months ago I met up with my god-father who had served some 35 in the RN, and after talking to him about my faith, something I had never done before, he pointed me in the direction of NCF.
I proceeded to email the NCF and this is the response I received from Steve:
‘Alex ..... SO good to hear from you and be encouraged God is with you AND already answering prayer through you !!!!!!!!!!! NCF has been around for 60 odd years and we are really excited about where God is leading us .... only yesterday at our NCF weekend we were praying that God would begin to work in the RFA in a new way and I came back to the office this morning to your E mail ..... what a great God!’
Now this for starters was great and I could instantly see God moving here, with the timing of my getting in contact. As ship postings go I could have been sent anywhere in the world, having just made contact with the NCF, a week after joining the ship in Gibraltar I found myself alongside in Portsmouth. Now this obviously allowed me to meet Steve and the team at the NCF and chat through a few ideas.
Throughout the trip I managed to get home for some important dates in my church’s calendar and in my last 2 weeks onboard, my boss left the ship and his relief… one of the other 2 member of the RFA in the NCF! Although I have a short period left onboard as I write, I do hope to speak to him and the fact that God has put one of the only few active Christians within my grasp, I feel this is an opportunity not to be missed.
Although I have not been able to run an Alpha course this trip, I have been finding my feet and I think God may be equipping me with the knowledge I will need and I look forward to meeting other Christians and bringing the Gospel to all those who do not yet know Jesus.
I have started a Facebook group, so all those on Facebook should join!
It is entitled ‘Seafaring Christians’ and below is the web address:
I felt it might be a way of helping Christians who are at sea to connect and meet up with other Christians, something that is always beneficial in the remote and lonely environment in which we work.
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