My story starts when I was five years old. I lost my Dad to bowel cancer, which was heartbreaking and horrendous in all the ways you can imagine. But strangely, one of my abiding memories from that season was being obsessed with an old worship song called ‘Father God I Wonder’. No one had sat me down and tried to explain the theological intricacies of God as my heavenly father, but in his grace he drew near to me when I needed him most and spoke that life-defining truth deep into my spirit. I just knew that he was there, that he loved me, and that he was for me. And, growing up, even as a young teenager I was excited about having a family, about being a Dad. I was excited about getting to relate to people in ways that weirdly I had both experienced and lacked at the same time. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it then, but I just had the sneaking suspicion that my destiny was connected to my history, and that it had a lot to do with being a Father. 

I was first conscious of the call to ministry when I was 15 when, at a Methodist event called Easter People, I felt an urge to study Theology at uni drop into my head seemingly out of nowhere. The following year, at the same event, I found myself standing at the front of the venue alongside a number of other kids who had been grabbed by the story of Timothy that we’d been unpacking and were responding to a call to be commissioned into the path of Christian leadership. A little over two years later I arrived at Manchester University, enrolled on the BA in Religions & Theology and started telling people I’d probably go to an actual bible college one day because I wanted to be a church leader - though I had no idea what kind!

It was church though, much more than my degree, that became the most significant part of my journey. For the first time I found myself surrounded by peers who weren’t my sisters (though also included my sisters as well, as it happens) and role models who were also becoming my closest friends; teenagers and young adults hungry for God and sold out for the cause of his kingdom. I was inspired by those just a few steps further ahead of me and flourished as people noticed me and invested in me. I had always had a grid for encountering God, but it was during these uni years that it became much more of a home than an occasional visiting spot. As I abandoned myself to foolishness in times of worship, as I stepped out and took risks in exercising spiritual gifts that I had always hoped for but had also assumed might pass me by, and as I took my first steps in leadership I saw more of who God was and more of who I was supposed to be in the light of that. 

I had experienced just how significant the uni years could be for myself, and it has been in the lives of those connected to campus that God has been using me ever since. It’s been such a joy to see students meet God in new ways, to see them start to see themselves as he has also known them, to see them catch a vision for his kingdom and throw their whole lives behind it. And as I start to get a little older, the bumps and bruises from a decade plus of ministry starting to ripen into the beginnings of some hard-won maturity, I absolutely love any opportunity to get alongside those who also feel called to lead on campus and to try to give them the best of what I have to share. 

Leadership in my mind is about taking people to places they wouldn’t have gone without you. And as God’s kingdom is a family not a business, my framework for that leadership is so much more about being a Dad rather than a CEO.  For me, being a parent is mostly about what can’t be easily measured or seen. It’s the spaces that you create, the experiences and connections that you facilitate without people really realising it. The insight you get to share, the gentle nudges and challenges you get to bring. It’s about absorbing some hits so that others don’t have to, sparing the next generation some much needed strength to fight the battles of their own. It’s about bringing people together, about making plans and dreaming dreams - seeing what could be and being prepared to do some of the hard yards to inch a little further in the right direction, even if the destination isn’t yours to reach. Nearly 15 years later it’s for these kinds of things that I’m still here - still living in streets full of students and still leading a university ministry. To be a Dad. To play whatever part God would have me play in training a generation. To give whatever I have to give to help students step into their God-given design: releasing his kingdom on campus and seeing the world around them look more like it was always intended to be.