Articles - From the Vicar

During my time at St. Ed's I have sometimes used the list of incumbents, given on a board near the font, as a focus for prayer. The names there have enabled me to give thanks for the ministry of those who have served as Vicar before me and to keep a sense of perspective about my own ministry: whatever I have been able to do has been possible only because I have, for a time, been entrusted with a community that has been lovingly and prayerfully nurtured for over a hundred years. It is humbling to know that my name will be added to the list of my predecessors.

Between marrying in 1986 and arriving at St. Edmund's in 1996, Anne and I (with a gradually increasing number of children) moved five times. The last eleven years, by contrast, have been marked by stability in our family and working lives. Now that the time has come, once again, for us to move on we do so, as you may imagine, with very mixed feelings. We have been immensely fortunate at St. Edmund's to have been part of a community of children, women and men whose lives are marked by a deep commitment to serve Christ by serving both each other and the wider parish and world in which we are set. To have had the privilege of having been called to serve in a position of leadership in this community is something for which I shall always give great thanks to God.

My final services at St. Edmund's are to be at 8am and 10am on Sunday 29th July. If you have not begun your Summer holiday by then, I hope that you will be able to join us for worship on that day so that I can say good-bye personally to as many people as possible and so that, together, we can give thanks for the life and witness of St. Edmund's and for the ministries to which we are all called as members of Christ's Body. Please be assured of my continuing prayer for you all, and of my immense gratitude for your prayerful support of me and of Anne, Felicity, Faith and Chad over the past eleven years.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay