Minister Rev Tom Pender

Tom moved to the UK from Seattle, Washington, in 2008 and spent the first 14 years of his time here working as a secondary school science teacher. Teaching reflected his long-standing love of helping people learn and grow, and it was during those years that he met and married his wife, Camilla.

Church life has always been central to Tom’s story. Throughout his life he has served in a range of ways, including volunteering, preaching, leading home groups, and running courses. From an early age, he sensed a calling to help people and to teach. In 2022, he stepped away from the school where he had been teaching to pursue ministry training at Spurgeon’s College. Following the college’s closure, he completed his training in London with Bristol Baptist College while serving at Hadleigh Baptist as a trainee and student minister.

Tom is passionate about serving Christ through preaching, discipleship, and outreach into the local community. He longs to see the church’s motto, ‘Making Jesus known to all’, become a tangible part of church life and clearly reflected in all the church does. With his background in education, he has been especially keen to build links with the local primary school, supporting pupils and staff and helping the church form strong, lasting relationships in the community.

He is excited to become even more involved in community life and to get to know Hadleigh and the surrounding area more deeply. Outside church, Tom enjoys science, reading, walking, watching films, and playing board and card games — though it has been said that he can be more than a little competitive!