Tom Arthur
90 Brunswick Street
Cardiff CF5 1LL
United Kingdom
Email: Tom Arthur

Tom Arthur is the pastor of the City United Reformed Church in the center of Cardiff, the capital of Wales. Tom has been serving since his appointment and commissioning in 1988 with the PC(USA)’s partner church in the United Kingdom, the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom.

City Church is a hub of ecumenical activity in Cardiff, formally "covenanted" with the Presbyterian Church in Wales and the Methodist Church to work together in the city center. The church funds and hosts an ecumenically managed adult Christian education center (in partnership with and accredited by Cardiff University) in which Tom is occasionally invited to teach such subjects as religion and literature and New Testament Greek. The church also runs a popular café, a bookstore, a counseling service and has a team of lawyers (backed by a large crew of volunteers) offering free legal advice to destitute asylum seekers.
In his first newsletter from his pastorate, Tom wrote that City Church has "lost 75 percent of their membership over the last twenty years, 25 percent over the last two years alone. Granted, churches are declining all over the place, but this decline beats the worst records, nationally, regionally and locally."

Letters from
Tom Arthur

• December 2008
• June 2008
• March 2008
• April 2007
• May 2006
• November 2005
• July 2005
• December 2004
• April 2004
• December 2003
• December 2002
• April 2002 (2)
• April 2002 (1)
• September 2001
• January 2001

Today City Church, committed to a radical, unconditional welcome, is one of the very few mainstream churches in Wales that is growing, with many young adults and young families, a thriving Junior Church, and expanding music and adult education programs. Many of these new members are actively engaged in ministries of their own, working with drug rehabilitation, homelessness, human rights, special education, HIV/AIDS ministry, prison ministry, and hospice chaplaincy. Several members have undertaking training and service as lay church leaders and are active in supporting other churches in the South Wales area.

Prior to accepting the call to City Church, Tom was minister for nine years at Weoley Hill United Reformed Church in Birmingham, England. He also found time to lecture part-time in the bachelor of theology program at Westhill College and to be the chaplain to URC students at Birmingham University. His first four years in the U.K., from 1988 to 1992, were spent as the minister for the Ely Pastorate, three churches on a large “counsel estate” (counsel-owned housing) on Cardiff’s west side. While there, Tom had one of these churches re-built that had been torched just prior to his arrival.

From 1981 to 1988, Tom was the minister during church redevelopment of St. James United Presbyterian Church in an extraordinarily multi-ethnic neighborhood (less than 1 percent English-speaking Protestant) in Chicago, Illinois. "Starting out with about 30 elderly ladies (average age 75)," writes Tom, "I ended up with a flourishing congregation with an average age of about 35, a thoroughly renovated, modernized building, a thriving Sunday school, choir, and mission program."

Tom has served on the faculty of Loyola University (part-time, 1983-1985) and of the World Mission Program at the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago (part-time, 1982-1983). From 1976 to 1981 he was editor of seminary publications and coordinator for the non-degree continuing education program of McCormick Theological Seminary.

Tom holds a bachelor’s of art and a master’s degree in comparative literature from Indiana University. His Ph.D. is in English Renaissance literature from the University of Wisconsin, and his M.Div. is from McCormick Theological Seminary.

Ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament on June 15, 1981, at St. James United Presbyterian Church, in Chicago, Illinois, Tom is a minister member of Chicago Presbytery.

He and his wife, Marieke, have three children taken in foster care in 1989 and adopted in 1992. Tina, born 1 June 1978; James, born 10 January 1987; Rachel, born 27 June 1984. Tina and husband Michael, living in Yorkshire (they met as youth delegates to the URC General Assembly), now have three children. James and Kelly, living in Dudley near Birmingham, have one son. Rachel is working as a special education teacher in Cardiff.

Birthdays:
Tom - January 8
Marieke - November 24