Our Minister

Rev. Dr. Ebute Obiabo

The new minister at Barnes Methodist Church, Rev. Dr. Ebute Obiabo, is a Biblical scholar. He hails from Nigeria, although he has lived in the UK for the last twenty years.

In 1980 he embarked on translating the whole Bible from Hebrew and Greek into his own language, Idoma, spoken by the Idoma people in the Benue state of Nigeria, and he hopes that his translation will shortly be published.

Ebute trained originally in Theological Studes in Ibadan and Ilorin in Nigeria. In 1988 he and his family came to Britain, where in Queen's University, Belfast, he read for a Bachelor of Divinity and an MA in Semetics (in case you don't know, that's the study of the Hebrew texts of Exodus). From Belfast, in 1995, the family moved to Edinburgh where he did a Doctorate in Philosophy and Divinity.

He and his wife and children stayed in Edinburgh for seven and a half years. But in 2002 they left Scotland for London, where they lived in Battersea, and where he worked with the Battersea Mission and the Clapham Church of Nazarene and also with the Battersea Riverside group of Churches Together.

In 2005 they moved again, this time to Luton, where Ebute worked in the Luton Methodist Circuit. He also had more time to work on his translation of the Bible.

And now he has come to live in Barnes, where, in addition to Barnes Methodist Church, he will also have responsibility for the Methodist churches in Brentford and Chiswick.

RENEWED FOR SERVICE