Metcalf was educated at Chefoo School, the Inland Mission school in Yantai, Shandong Province.
While in this Prisoner Of War camp, Metcalf made a Christian commitment. In September 1943 the Temple Hill civilian internment camp was closed and the internees moved to another camp at Weihsien (Weifang), Shandong Province. Just prior to his death Liddell gave Metcalf, a keen runner, his running shoes.
Metcalf was a coffin bearer at Liddell’s funeral in the camp in February 1945 and at the ceremony committed himself to serve as a missionary in The Weihsien civilian internment camp was liberated on 17 August 1945.
In 1945 Metcalf relocated to in November 1945 and trained at Melbourne Bible College. He was accepted by OMF International as a missionary to in 1952.
Metcalf arrived in in November 1952 and entered the OMF International language school at Karuizawa, Honshu. In 1953 he was designated to work in Aomori Prefecture, planting new churches.
They have five children, four boys and one girl.
They were responsible for the successful establishing and consolidation of new churches in several towns of Aomori Prefecture, in Otaru (Hokkaido), Hachinohe (Honshu), Sendai (Honshu) and Urayasu city, Tokyo. The Metcalfs retired from missionary service in in August 1990, with over seventy years of service between them. In retirement Metcalf served in ministry with the Christian Fellowship, London, for a further fifteen years.
In 2005 he delivered the Eric Liddell Memorial Speech at the sixtieth anniversary of liberation of the Weishien civilian internment camp.
He has been the subject of two biographies – Take the Torch Shining in the Dark, published 2005 in ese, and In the Crickets Cry, published 2010 – and has featured in television programmes and documentaries about Eric Liddell.
At Weihsien, Metcalf was befriended by Eric Liddell, the Olympic medallist, and greatly influenced by Liddell’s attitude to the ese to pray for his captors.