Supporter spotlight: an occasional series in which supporters share their stories with BRF Ministries. We always love to hear from supporters and readers about what BRF Ministries has meant to them, and some remarkable stories emerge. This week, we meet Jim Parratt, professor emeritus in physiology and a longtime fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Jim lives with his wife Pam in Bearsden, Glasgow.
11 October 2026
Jim wrote to us earlier in the year to say how much he and Pam enjoy our Bible Reflections for Older People.
Jim is, however, bemused. ‘There are a few things that cause chuckles within the family,’ he wrote. ‘It looks as if “older” people are getting younger. Like the age of your contributors. Is 60 or 70 really “old”? 80 is, in our experience, perhaps slowly getting there.’ In their 80s, Jim and Pam were still travelling to see family in Australia, and, after a long career involving academic writing, Jim turned to Christian writing. He says:
The older years are rich spiritually and certainly bring us closer to the Lord. Your books help; we use them for family prayers. Carry on the good work! God bless you and the ministry you serve.
Of course, we wanted to learn more about Jim’s remarkable life.
Jim is bemused: ‘Is 60 or 70 really “old”? 80 is, in our experience, perhaps slowly getting there.’
From Bethnal Green to Bearsden
Jim was born in 1933, in his grandmother’s house on Old Bethnal Green Road, within the sound of Bow Bells, which makes him a true Cockney. His mother’s Jewish family had arrived from Portugal, via Spain and Gibraltar, in the 1860s. His father served in the British Expeditionary Force in France and was evacuated from Dunkirk in June 1940. As a child, Jim experienced some of the worst of the Blitz before moving out of London to a village in Northamptonshire.
It was there, in the village school, that Jim first experienced Christian worship. Something resonated, but when he returned to London at the end of the war he still gave two boys who started a Christian Union at his new school in Hammersmith a ‘hard time’. He is now, however, in close contact with one of them after a chance – or maybe not chance – encounter at a ‘Christians in Science’ conference.
The long series of ‘incidents’ or ‘happenings’ which have shaped Jim’s life began way before he started to see a pattern, which he would later attribute to God’s guiding hand. A failed exam, a football-playing friend, a ‘chance’ meeting with the woman who would become his wife of almost 70 years, an invitation to attend a Christian Union mission event in All Souls Langham place. One speaker was William Nagenda, from the Africa Revival Fellowship.
‘I felt, in those famous words of John Wesley, my heart strangely warmed,’ says Jim. A few days later he went to another mission event, and heard John Stott preach on John 3 in King’s College Chapel. ‘I knew nothing about eternal life, or even what those words meant, but I knew I had to believe and I made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ. It was the greatest decision of my life. One which, quite literally, changed it forever.’
‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’
John 3:11–16 (NRSV)
Jim was born on Old Bethnal Green Road, within the sound of Bow Bells, which makes him a true Cockney.
Photo: Tenement building, Old Bethnal Green Road, E2 by Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
To Nigeria and then Scotland
Jim graduated in pharmacology and married Pam, and they went to Nigeria, where, for the next ten years, he taught physiology at the country’s first medical school. On his return to the UK in 1966 he joined the University of Strathclyde’s department of physiology and pharmacology, and later became professor and then head of the department.
Over the years Jim also travelled extensively in eastern Europe, visiting the region over 40 times at the height of the Communist era. After ‘retirement’ he and Pam lived and worked in Hungary for many years. They have three children. One is an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church in Scotland, one a rural doctor in Australia, and the third a lawyer with Citizens Advice.
Alongside his busy work life, once back in Scotland Jim also became very involved in national church life, serving as chair of UCCF Scotland, chair of Interserve Scotland, and vice-chair of Scripture Union Scotland. Then, in his 80s, he took to Christian writing, an activity he continues to this day, as he cares full-time for his beloved Pam.
Jim taught physiology at Nigeria’s first medical school.
Photo: University College Hospital, Ibadan (circa 1955). Vintage photograph and historical records.
Still writing
Jim’s first book, Marvellously Made: A biblical tour around your body, was quite rare in its day for connecting Christian faith with the wonders of the human body. ‘When people think of science, they tend to think of the universe,’ he says. ‘Hardly anybody, until quite recently, has looked inside the body.’ Jim’s exploration of human physiology and incarnational theology is both fascinating and profound.
Jim’s deep instinct for communication is reflected in every area of his life – teaching, preaching, writing – and now he writes mainly for those closest to him: his children, seven grandchildren, and seven great-children, ‘with the hope that they might follow Jesus’.
His current, ‘and probably final’, project is Jim’s Jottings, an eclectic collection of reflections, on family history, on memory, on ageing, on his love of music, on the denominations that have shaped him, and on ‘Why I am a Christian.’ He’s still working on this key chapter, but his emphatic answer to the question is fourfold:
My personal experience of, and relationship with, Jesus; my lifelong experience of ‘being looked after’; the fact that my faith is ‘reasonable’. It is based on Christ’s resurrection, the evidence for which, for me, as one used to examining evidence, is overpowering. And finally, my experience is not unique. So many others have had a similar personal experience. I am not alone! The history and presence of the church today, under pressure though it is, is further evidence for Christian faith.
At 93, Jim is as busy as ever, though some of his activities have changed or adapted with the years. In Marvellously Made, he makes this plea:
There is still in our churches, and elsewhere in the wider world, the danger of undervaluing older people. They have much to contribute to the life of a vibrant, worshipping church fellowship. How can we promote their ministry and use the experience of life of ‘senior members’ who continue to be radical disciples of Jesus? We need actively to involve those who are ‘ever full of sap and green’ and who continue to declare that the Lord is their rock.
And there is one thing he would say directly to older readers. ‘If Jesus is your Saviour,’ he says, ‘he is also your friend. And even at your age, God has a purpose for you. Simply ask him what he wants you to do.’
