Ichthus founder Roger Forster (1933-2024): Passionate preacher, evangelist and intellectual.
By Graham Kendrick, 
By Henry George19 January 2024.
- The founder of Ichthus Fellowship, Roger Forster, has died at the age of 90. Roger was widely considered to be one of the most prominent figures in the UK evangelical church. The worship leader Graham Kendrick, and current Ichthus leader Henry George pay tribute to him
A confident and good-looking young man stepped briskly to the mic and proceeded to explain the gospel with a clarity, fluency, passion, and rapidity the likes of which I (Graham) had never heard before.
He seemed to have the ability to knock down every counter argument to the Gospel just before you thought of it, as well as several you never knew existed. It was apologetics on steroids, but he was clearly not there just to win arguments, I could tell he was out to win hearts and make disciples for Jesus.
The scene was an outreach coffee bar in Kingston Upon Thames, and the preacher was Roger Forster, then in his mid-30s. I was about 19 years old and present because our band (or should I say ‘Beat Group’) was the warm-up for him. I could not have guessed that 15 years later I would join the church movement he founded and belong there with my family for 20 years.
EARLY LIFE
Roger became a Christian as a student at Cambridge, where he graduated in Maths and Theology. After National Service in the RAF, Roger worked as an itinerant evangelist until 1974, when he and his wife Faith first gathered a group of 14 in their home as Ichthus Christian Fellowship.
Their vision was simple – to be a church where believers in Christ became disciples of Christ, right to the very fullness (Ephesians 4:13), living like the book of Acts. Their home was open to people who needed to stay and be discipled into the fullness of freedom in Jesus. PC.
