Bill Dixon

Bill Dixon grew up in Bourton-on-the Water in the rural Cotswolds, when the sight of a car was a rare thing.

From 1952 to 1954, he did National Service in The Royal Air Force, as an Aircraft Engine Mechanic. He returned to the Cotswolds for two more years and learnt about woodwork and felling trees by axe and crosscut saw.

In 1957, he left home to train for the Ministry at Bristol Baptist College. He studied theology at Bristol University and served as a pastor at Downend Baptist Church in Bristol for ten years, and at Small Heath Baptist Church in Birmingham for 28 years. During this time he often took study groups to the Middle East.

Bill’s voluntary work in Birmingham included serving as Chairman of the Mercian Housing Association and as a member of the Prison Parole Board. His urban regeneration work in Small Health resulted in a Prime Ministerial visit.

In the 1980s, he undertook a sabbatical at the Newport Beach Vineyard Fellowship, California, led by John C. McClure, who worked with John Wimber and was one of the founding pastors of the Vineyard movement. Bill learnt about the new move of the Holy Spirit and it changed his life. He helped to bring the first Vineyard Pastors from California to the UK.

In the 1990s, Bill began travelling across Africa and took up residence in the black township of Kabalatstane, north of Pretoria, South Africa, where he attended the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. His main ministry was to be in Malawi, working alongside the prolific church planter, Kapalamula Booker Banda.

Bill’s interest in Egypt led him to work as a researcher in the Eastern Desert, recording ancient rock art sites under the direction of the renowned Egyptologist, David Rohl. Bill’s often humorous exploits in the desert are captured in his book, Another Egypt, (Transforming Cities, 2013), with a foreword by the broadcaster and Egyptologist, Professor Joann Fletcher.

In his later years, Bill has continued to travel widely, including in Malawi, Mozambique, Siberia, Iraq, Albania, Lebanon, Egypt, and California, training church leaders and mentoring new believers. In his book, The Holy Spirit Handbook (Transforming Cities, 2015), he discusses how the Holy Spirit is moving today.

Bill is a widower. He was married to Jennifer and has one remaining son, Peter.

He now has pretensions to be a poet.