The appointment of Lesley aims to strengthen our links with churches across the world and our formal Diocesan partnerships with the Diocese of Aru and Boga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and with the Diocese of Melanesia. Other partnerships between churches in the Diocese with churches in other cultures, abroad or even in this country will also be celebrated and recognised.
Lesley comes to this role, having retired from stipendiary ministry as Director of Ministry for the Diocese of Lichfield and latterly as interim Team Rector for the Mid-Trent benefice. In Lichfield she was involved in the diocesan link with Matlosane, in South Africa, preaching at the 25th anniversary of the Diocese and taking a group of curates to visit parishes there. She has volunteered with the African NGO Hands at Work in Africa and is currently at the point of submitting a PhD thesis having researched cross-cultural partnerships and short-term mission visits as a way of fulfilling God’s call of the whole people of God to mission. Now living in the village of Church Minshull, she spends some of her free time hedge laying, a traditional rural craft that regenerates our hedge rows, making them all the more hospitable to wildlife.
Speaking of her motivation for taking on the role, Lesley says, "The Apostle Paul writes about us having ‘strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth’ of God’s love. We need all cultures to help us understand the depth of God’s love and to really comprehend the nature of God’s Kingdom. We all too easily think that our understanding of faith is correct when sometimes our belief is based on our cultural norms rather than really being about our faith. For many years we have understood our role as engaging in mission to others who need to learn faith from us or need help from us. Partners in World Mission means there is another message. As churches, we need to learn from each other and to share. That may mean that as Christians we help to fund a school or an aid programme overseas but it can equally mean that we learn about faith and God’s Kingdom from churches in areas of the world that have suffered as a result of being in an area of conflict or are struggling to get the world to take seriously the effects of climate change. "