In just a few weeks time I am stepping down from all my roles at St John the Evangelist, Brownswood Park, the small, scrappy, welcoming, wonderful and slightly weird church I love so much. It's for the very best of reasons: I am going away to theological college to train for ordained ministry.

As is so often the case at smaller or under-resourced churches, we have only been able to keep things going by capable volunteers taking on too many roles each. By this spring I was working for 16 to 20 hours a week on an entirely voluntary basis. The last few months have involved some scrambling to make sure all the important stuff is covered, but it just won't be possible for our existing PCC and congregation to do everything -- and if it were, I would have delegated sooner! Similarly, our finances are pretty dire -- the majority of our congregation are soup kitchen guests -- so paying people to take on tasks I was previously doing for free isn't straightforward. And while some of my roles will simply not continue -- St John's can bump along without a pastoral assistant well enough -- we haven't found anyone with capacity to replace me as churchwarden.

Read that again: after I leave, St John's will not have a churchwarden.

As a parting gift to this community that has nurtured my vocation and shared my joys and sorrows I would love to raise a decent wodge of cash so that some of the administrative and building maintenance tasks can be paid for, with a bit more wiggle room than would otherwise be the case.

Along the way I would love to show you a bit more of St John's and some of the work I have been doing there. My assistant in this will be Dilemma, this Highland Coo who turned up in the churchyard to visit us for a week:

How is a Highland Coo going to make any difference?

For every £250 raised, I will post here (and on Bluesky) at least one picture of Dilemma helping, or attempting to help with, parish tasks.

There will be puns. You have been warned.

Any money that we don't spend on administrative and caretaking support will, of course, be used to keep our church open and safe for our congregation and Soup Kitchen guests.

---

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.