After thirty-one years in the USA we found ourselves back in our native land in 2007, called to serve at Ridley Hall, that I am tempted to say is, at the moment, the Church of England’s leading theological colleges. The call to be Development Director came unexpectedly and has put us in a very strategic place at a very difficult time in world history.

Although licensed to minister in the Diocese of Ely, I remain canonically resident in Tennessee, the diocese where I served for nearly quarter of a century. During my American years I was a parish priest, was involved in the launch of the South American Missionary Society and the early years of SPCK in the USA, as well as a variety of other roles and ministries. If I have specialities in ministry they are start-up and pick-up, for those seem to have been the settings where the Lord has deigned to use me.

Who am I? A sinner redeemed by grace, one who longs to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ but consistently stumbles, falls, and by that same grace is lifted from the mire by our loving Lord. The family into which I was born seldom darkened a church door. My being grasped by God came as something of a shock, and ordination was definitely not in their plans for me, and was a disappointment my parents carried to the grave.

This background makes me sensitive toward those engulfed in the culture, finding the Christian faith in general and the Anglican way in particular hard to understand and countenance. Because of this I recognize that the present rending of the church is placing huge barriers to the Kingdom before those upon whom it is dawning that life is about more than accumulating good and consuming services.

I was ordained in 1969, have a loving wife, two grown daughters and sons-in-law of whom I am proud, and the joy of our lives are Hannah, our granddaughter, and Robin, our grandson, and a bump that at the moment is known only as ‘The Rookie.’ We share our home with Freddy, a feisty Silky Terrier, and Lady Jane Grey, a Maine Coon Cat whose name matches her coloring.

I am unapologetically creedal, and incurably Anglican. However, in these recent years I have come to realize how much orthodoxy is more than just getting the theology right, but means reflecting in all we are, how we act and behave, the wholeness and love that is found in Christ. Heralds of the Kingdom require lives that reflect their citizenship. Such convictions have forced me to realize that finding a godly way forward in this crisis means getting out of confrontational ruts and working creatively for a faithful solution–even if this takes several generations to unfold.