Early life and ministry Lloyd-Jones was born in
Cardiff on 20 December 1899 and raised in
Llangeitho, Cardiganshire. His father was a grocer, and he had two brothers: Harold died during the
1918 flu pandemic, while
Vincent went on to become a
High Court judge. Llangeitho is associated with the
Welsh Methodist revival, as it was the location of
Daniel Rowland's ministry. Attending a London
grammar school between 1914 and 1917 and then
St Bartholomew's Hospital as a medical student, in 1921 he started work as assistant to the Royal Physician,
Sir Thomas Horder. Lloyd-Jones obtained a medical degree from the
University of London, and became a
Member of the Royal College of Physicians. After struggling for two years over what he sensed was a calling to preach, in 1927 Lloyd-Jones returned to Wales, having married Bethan Phillips (with whom he later had two children, Elizabeth and Ann), accepting an invitation to minister at a church in
Aberavon (
Port Talbot). In 1932 Lloyd-Jones spent nine weeks preaching at
Sherbourne Street United Church in
Toronto. It was there that he discovered the writings of
B. B. Warfield; he described the experience as being like "stout
Cortez" in
John Keats' poem "
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".
Westminster Chapel After a decade ministering in Aberavon, in 1939 he went back to London, where he had been appointed as associate pastor of
Westminster Chapel, working alongside
G. Campbell Morgan. The day before he was officially to be accepted into his new position,
World War II broke out in Europe. During the same year, he became the president of the
Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Students, known today as the
Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. During the war he and his family moved to
Haslemere, Surrey. In 1943 Morgan retired, leaving Lloyd-Jones as the sole Pastor of Westminster Chapel. Lloyd-Jones was strongly opposed to
liberal Christianity, which had become a part of many
Christian denominations; he regarded it as aberrant. He disagreed with the
broad church approach and encouraged evangelical Christians (particularly
Anglicans) to leave their existing denominations. He believed that true Christian fellowship was possible only among those who shared common convictions regarding the nature of the faith. Although he opposed liberal Christianity, he was sympathetic to the
Liberal Party;
Michael Meadowcroft said that, whilst he was member of the Chapel, Lloyd-Jones had said to him, "you could be a Christian Liberal but you couldn't be a liberal Christian." Lloyd-Jones was well known for his style of
expository preaching, and the Sunday morning and evening meetings at which he officiated drew crowds of several thousand, as did the Friday evening Bible studies, which were, in effect,
sermons in the same style. He would take many months, even years, to expound a chapter of the Bible verse by verse. His sermons would often be around fifty minutes to an hour in length, attracting many students from universities and colleges in London. His sermons were also transcribed and printed (virtually verbatim) in the weekly
Westminster Record.
Evangelical controversy Lloyd-Jones provoked a major dispute in 1966 when, at the National Assembly of Evangelicals organised by the
Evangelical Alliance, he called on
evangelicals to withdraw from denominations in which they were "united with the people who deny and are opposed to the essential matters of salvation." This was interpreted as referring primarily to evangelicals within the
Church of England, although there is disagreement over whether this was his intention as there were other denominations with liberal wings. There was also disagreement as to what the new ecclesiology he was proposing would look like in practice, although he spoke of "a fellowship, or an association, of evangelical churches." However, Lloyd-Jones was criticised by the leading Anglican evangelical
John Stott. Although Stott was not scheduled to speak, he used his position as chairman of the meeting to oppose Lloyd-Jones publicly, stating that his opinion was against history and the example of
the Bible. Yet the disagreement remained and the following year saw the first
National Evangelical Anglican Congress, which was held at
Keele University. At this conference, largely due to Stott's influence, evangelical Anglicans committed themselves to full participation in the Church of England, rejecting the separationist approach proposed by Lloyd-Jones. These two conferences effectively fixed the direction of a large part of the British evangelical community. Although there is an ongoing debate as to the exact nature of Lloyd-Jones's views, they undoubtedly caused the two groupings to adopt diametrically opposed positions. These positions, and the resulting split, continued largely unchanged, at least through 1996.
Later life Lloyd-Jones retired from his ministry at Westminster Chapel in 1968, following a major surgery. In a letter dated Thursday, May 30th, 1968, published in the
Westminster Record, he wrote: For the rest of his life, he concentrated on editing his sermons to be published, counselling other ministers, maintaining correspondence and regularly speaking at conferences. Although having spent most of his life living and ministering in England, Lloyd-Jones kept strong ties to his native Wales, including support for the
Evangelical Movement of Wales, regularly addressing their English and Welsh language conferences. ==Legacy==