Peter Ball (bishop) - Bishop of Lewes

Bishop of Lewes

Ball was sought out as a preacher. In his book, A Smile on the Face of God (Hodder & Stoughton 1988), Adrian Plass wrote of an analogy Ball offered in one sermon:

The priest was a violin that must be played by the master, because only the master’s tune would resonate properly with everyone and everything else. Each string of the violin... must contain precisely the right tension. And the tension existed and was set up by the difference between what the people wanted from their priest, and what God wanted from him. Jesus was the one with the bow. He must be the one who made the music, because he played so delicately and would not break the strings.

Another powerful story Ball retold was from Ernest Gordon's autobiographical account in the book Miracle on the River Kwai, of a POW who accepted torture and death at the hands of his captors over the theft of a shovel that was later found never to have been missing.

While Ball was the Bishop of Lewes, consistent with the principles of the religious order he earlier co-founded, he initiated a "Caring and Sharing" scheme based on the following two simple ideas. First, by making a small sacrifice (perhaps chocolates or coffee, to the value of only a £1 a week) people can begin to turn away from materialistic values of the western world. Second, they can share comparative wealth by sending the savings from this small sacrifice directly to projects in poor countries that help provide the basic needs of life (all administrative costs being met separately by special donations). Caring and Sharing projects are generally done by a group: a church, village, or circle of friends. Millions of pounds have been collected in this way by the scheme. Ball said that even if all the donations that were made by Caring and Sharing had been somehow lost, just the goodness that flowed from the self-sacrifices of the donors would have more than made up for this.

In 1984, Ball contributed to Mowbray’s "Communicating the Faith Today" series with a leaflet on evangelism. In 1987 he was asked by Archbishop Robert Runcie to chair the committee drawing up the new catechism which was produced in 1990.

Ball was only the second Anglican bishop since the English Reformation to be consecrated as a member of a religious order in a monastic habit. Archbishop Donald Coggan presided at the service on the feast of Saint Luke, 1977.

In his pastoral care of the clergy in his largely rural diocese, Ball averaged 30,000 miles a year. Brushing aside fears of overwork, he generated a massive output of written correspondence—always replying to his mail by return of post. Ball extended compassion and personal care to the widowed victims of two Irish Republican Army bombings in Sussex. Eschewing the large residence normally accorded to bishops, Ball resided in a small cottage, where he slept on an old mattress on the floor. Summarizing Ball's integrity, dedication, and charisma, The Sunday Telegraph wrote, ‘he lived on the knife edge of spiritual risk’

In Join the Company, Adrian Plass wrote that Ball was "regarded by many as one of the wisest and most godly men in the Christian Church."