Methodist leader respected for his wisdom and eloquence
In the early 1980s, after the rejection by the Church of England of yet another unity proposal, the Rev Kenneth Greet led the Methodist team at the final meeting of the Churches Council for Covenanting. Some Anglicans around the table wanted to try one more time to bring the churches together. Kenneth told them, "You have asked us to march our Methodist people to the top of the hill and down again once. By the grace of God we have done it a second time. But do not ask us to do it a third time, for they will not follow." Such was Kenneth's character that, while he would have left his hearers in no doubt as to his seriousness, frustration and annoyance, he would also have been politeness personified.
For 30 years, Kenneth, who has died aged 95, was at the heart of church life in Britain and abroad. His public persona, particularly as the secretary of the Methodist Conference, was that of an ultra-efficient ecclesiastical civil servant, but he was much more than that. He believed organisation is essential to the effective ordering of the life of the church, but preaching and the pastoral dimension of his work preserved his sense of vocation.
Although he never achieved the prominence of an archbishop of Canterbury or Westminster, Kenneth moved effectively within this level of leadership. He was born in Bristol to staunchly Methodist parents of liberal leanings. His father was a conscientious objector in the first world war, who then went into a family dental business where, Kenneth believed, he was "not treated very fairly". This early concern for what was right continued throughout Kenneth's life.
He attended the local grammar school in Cotham and did well. His family could not afford to send him to university, and so he began work as a clerk for Bristol corporation, where he handled customers' complaints and learnt the tact and firmness that he needed in later life.
In 1939, Kenneth registered as a conscientious objector. By this time he had decided to enter the Methodist ministry, but the theological colleges were closed for the war. He therefore went as a lay pastor to a rural church near Hereford where he found the conservative approach of his congregation frustrating, and the congregation decided he was a heretic because he did not believe the bible "cover to cover". In 1942, he moved to a coal mining community in South Wales, where the people were more liberal; Kenneth found them a joy.
After the war, he trained at Handsworth College in Birmingham, and in 1947 was sent to Tonypandy Central Hall, where he met George Thomas, the MP for Cardiff West and later Speaker of the House of Commons. Thomas remarked on Kenneth's preaching attire: "We are plain people down here in Wales; we don't go in for gowns and things." Years later, when Kenneth and his wife were guests at a dinner in Speaker's House, they reminded Thomas of this comment, as he stood before them in his ceremonial breeches, lace cuffs and regalia.
In the same year, Kenneth was ordained, and at long last married, to Mary Edbrooke; at that time probationer ministers could not marry. At the beginning of their relationship, and knowing that he and Mary would have to wait seven years, Kenneth with typical graciousness told his love that she could "withdraw from the relationship". Kenneth kept the rules, though later said: "The church was wrong to require it."
The move into the central administration of Methodism came in 1954, when Kenneth became a secretary in the Department of Christian Citizenship, where he specialised in issues concerning temperance (he was always a teetotaller), gambling (including the introduction of premium bonds in 1956), sex, marriage and the family.
Never the prude, Kenneth once commented with dry humour that he had stayed at a hotel in America and slept in the same bed as that year's Miss World, "but only after a decent period of time had elapsed since she had left it". He was invited to join the national executive of the Family Planning Association in 1956, at a time when the use of contraception had yet to become respectable.
He chaired two working parties on sex, marriage and the family for the British Council of Churches in 1962 and 1966. The report on the second, Sex and Morality, made headlines, some papers claiming that the churches were abandoning traditional teaching. Kenneth argued that the report had simply questioned some of the easy assumptions often made.
From 1971 to 1984, he was secretary of the conference for the Methodist church, its highest governing body. Each year he was responsible for the agenda, and from the platform he used all of his eloquence, charm and quiet determination to guide the conference through its business, and to try to ensure it made decisions of which he approved. He was also elected its president (1980-81).
Kenneth loved his Methodism, but was also an ecumenist. He believed church unity was right and inevitable, even though the path to it would be tortuous and slow. From 1971 to 1975, he was a member of the central committee of the World Council of Churches. He also had a long involvement with the World Methodist Council (WMC), where he was respected for his wisdom and eloquence; he chaired the WMC executive committee from 1976 to 1981.
In retirement, Kenneth remained active within the peace movement. He became vice-president of the World Disarmament Campaign in 1994, and president of the Methodist Peace Fellowship in 1999; he was a regular protester at anti-war demonstrations.
Adept at all the skills of institutional politics, he could sometimes be a bit grand. Nevertheless, a middle-ranking church official who stayed with Kenneth when he was in his mid-80s found him utterly gracious: "He greeted me as if I could have been the most important person in Christendom." Every church needs someone like Kenneth Greet. He was God's orderly gentleman.
Mary died in 2013. Kenneth is survived by their daughters, Susan and Elizabeth, and his brother, the Rev Brian Greet.
• Kenneth Gerald Greet, cleric, born 17 November 1918; died 11 February 2014