SHIPS
by Julie Knox
WHEN OM VENTURED OUT TO SEA This autumn, we mark the Ship Ministry’s 50th anniversary. Our pioneering vessel, Logos, was purchased in October 1970 and launched into ministry from London in February 1971. In this article, the first teacher to serve on board, Nancy Izzard (née Coates) and OM’s founder, George Verwer, share their reflections.
B
y 1970 the Ship Ministry had been five years in the pipeline. There had been persistent prayer, fundraising frustrations, ship-shopping setbacks and many doubters to convince. Not to mention coming up with skilled crew who would be willing to serve as volunteers. Twenty-three-year-old American Nancy Coates was on a two-month summer outreach in Spain and heard about the need for someone to teach the leaders’ children on board the new venture. “I said ‘Sure!’ and called the school I worked in to say I wasn’t coming home. I’d just bought a red Mustang convertible – I told Dad to sell it and give all the money to OM!” Nancy found herself on Logos, undergoing refit in Rotterdam that Christmas. Shipmates sneaked onto a Chinese vessel in the same dockyard and hid gifts of Christian literature on the shelves of
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OM’s pioneering vessel, Logos.
the ship’s reading room. “The guys were frogmarched down the gangway,” she says, “But we prayed hard for those Chinese books. You never know where they ended up.” George and Nancy agree that in the early days they were on mission in uncharted waters: “Our lawyer could have written a book on bluffing your way through ship purchasing!” Verwer laughs. “It was a miracle to buy this old ship and ready her.
In refit, she almost tipped over. The captain was not on board and the engineers made a mistake shifting liquid; putting the ship into a dangerous list. But that led to a weekly planning group being set up which still continues in the Ship Ministry today.” “God had His hand on us and knew the ministry the ships would have – we didn’t,” Nancy muses. “We were just a bunch of immature, ignorant kids – a mess of a crew – and we frustrated the experienced seafarers. In each port, we were taught something new. From pastors’ conferences to tours of the vessel and outreach in communities: it got more successful and God showed us ministries along the way.”
