Tell us your story
We would love to hear from you. Your story is really important to us and will help guide others' journeys. If you want to share your journey with Holy Habits, please contact us.
Minister in the Methodist Church
Peter Clarke is a minister in the Methodist Church, previously in active circuit work for 34 years. He retired from active ministry – ‘though never from ministry’ – in 2017 and returned to live in Kinver, where he’d been minister from 1990 to 2006. It’s a large village on the very southern tip of Staffordshire, and it’s also home to Holy Habits founder, Andrew Roberts...
Member of Queensferry Parish Church (Church of Scotland)
In a new initiative during lockdown, two HOLY HABITS groups met online, giving participants from all over the country the opportunity to experience real-time fellowship and learning. The first HOLY HABITS online home group met to study Sharing Resources in the summer of 2020 and a second group met in the spring of 2021, to study the Holy Habits Lent book: Holy Habits: Following Jesus...
Member of Methodist Church’s Learning Network
Sara ‘Siggy’ Parratt-Halbert works for the Methodist Church’s Learning Network and is based in Sheffield. She is part of a team working across the whole of the Yorkshire Plus Region, helping circuits and districts on their learning journey...
Liz Townsend
Children’s and Families’ Worker at St Mark’s United Church, Great Tattenhams.
Liz Townsend is the Children’s and Families’ Worker at St Mark’s United Church, Great Tattenhams. A joint Anglican–Methodist church near Epsom Downs, St Mark’s has a strong commitment to building wider community relationships. Liz left nursing to go to Bible college mid-career and has been at St Mark’s for over eleven years...
Lynn Goslin
Member of All Saints' Church in Kirkbymoorside
Lynn Goslin lives in a small village near the North Yorkshire market town of Kirkbymoorside, where she’s a member of All Saints’ Church. On the edge of the moors, it’s a farming community with a little light industry, but most of the local economy is tourism-based. A bell-ringer and home group leader, Lynn retired from her work as a speech and language therapist in the spring of 2019. There are three home groups in a benefice of five churches. Each group has a different focus and a different mix of members (including a denominational mix), but they have all been pioneering users of the new HOLY HABITS group study materials...
Susan Stevens
URC rep - Womborne
Susan Stevens is a retired bio-medical scientist who now spends most of her time volunteering on a range of committees and leading Walking for Health groups in ‘the very large village’ of Womborne, near Wolverhampton. She is the URC rep on the local parish magazine committee and contacted BRF when she was writing a report on the HOLYHABITS fellowship group she joined a year ago.
Kate Cook
Superintendent Minister in Telford Methodist Circuit
Kate Cook has been Superintendent Minister in Telford Methodist Circuit since 2016. A professional classical singer and music teacher by background, she began training as a local preacher but ‘suddenly felt a very strong call to presbyteral ministry’ and was ordained eight years ago. She has been instrumental in Telford’s circuit-wide HOLYHABITS journey, which began when Andrew Roberts went to talk to the circuit team about the original Holy Habits book.
Bulwell URC
Bulwell United Reformed Church
Bulwell United Reformed Church in north Nottingham marked the halfway point in its two-year HOLYHABITS journey with a special celebration in July 2019. Minister Colin Bones and youth, children and families leader Eleanor Rice are both members of the church’s HOLYHABITS planning team and are delighted with the changes they’re already seeing. With just under 100 members, the average Sunday congregation is about 60, including about 20 young people.
Helen Laird
Messy Church Regional Coordinator for Worcestershire
Helen Laird is Messy Church Regional Coordinator for Worcestershire. She has been involved with Messy Church for many years, coordinated a Messy Church at her own church, inspired others to set them up and has written for the Get Messy! magazine. Helen has been a children’s and family worker for over ten years and is currently employed by the Diocese of Worcester as a Mission Enabler. Her home church is Bromyard Road Methodist Church in Worcester. Helen sees important connections between HOLYHABITS and Messy Church.
Gareth Hill
Methodist minister since 1999 and former newspaper journalist.
Gareth Hill has been a Methodist minister since 1999 and before that was a newspaper journalist. Much of his ministry has been involved in Fresh Expressions and in the early 2000s he started the Surfers Church in Polzeath, Cornwall, known as Tubestation. In 2015 he moved to Romsey, with perfect timing for a new project…
Andrew Walker
Secretary to the Central Readers’ Council
Andrew Walker is a retired chartered accountant, who spent over 35 years working in public practice. He was licensed as a Reader in 1989 in Werrington, Peterborough, and has been Secretary to the Central Readers’ Council since 2017. He was invited to join a group charged with revitalising small groups in his parish. That group studied HOLYHABITS together, recognising that this was exactly what was needed to revive the small groups and, perhaps, the whole church. The journey has started, but still has some way to go.
Jessica Bullett
Children and Families Worker
Jessica Bullett is the Children and Families Worker at Grangewood Methodist Church in Nottingham. She met her husband, Michael, while interning with Christian Aid and has been at Grangewood for four and a half years. She’s convinced of the value of Holy Habits, across the generations....