Greetings from our new Reverend David Paton-Williams

Greetings!  I realise that this newsletter goes to far more people than just the congregations of St John's and Holy Innocents, so as the new House for Duty Priest, I thought it might be worth starting by saying a bit about myself and Jenny, and also what that role title means.
 
I was born in Hull but, from the age of five, was brought up in Lymm, Cheshire, just south west of Manchester. After leaving school at sixteen and working for Barclays Bank for three years, I returned to education, ending up at Warwick University, studying Philosophy and  Sociology. While there, I met Jenny and we got married in September 1982 at St Just-in- Roseland, Cornwall, near the farm where Jenny grew up. While at Warwick, both Jenny and I returned to the Christian faith in which we had grown up and it wasn't long before I started exploring the possibility of ordination. In 1984, I began training at Ridley Hall Cambridge and was ordained in Durham Cathedral in 1987. After six years in the Durham Diocese (South Shields and Newton Aycliffe), and with our sons Ed and George, we moved south when I was appointed Chaplain of Ripon and York St John and Minor Canon at Ripon Cathedral. After further posts at Bedale, Leeming and Thornton Watlass, and St Edmund's Roundhay in Leeds, we moved to St Columba's by the Castle, Edinburgh in 2016 from where I "retired" last October. 
 
Jenny also "retired" the same time. Over the years, she has worked as a teaching assistant in a primary school and with adults with learning difficulties, though in the main she has been a mother and home maker. We have always worked together as a team in our approach to ministry and, while in Leeds, Jenny was licensed as Reader. Her ministry has been expressed predominantly in preaching, community and environmental engagement. 
 
After retiring we moved to Gloucestershire to be nearer to our sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren (who live near Watford and in Southampton). We imagined that we would never ever move again. and yet after nine months, through a strange sequence of events, it became blindingly obvious that we were being called to come back north, to take up this post.
 
"House for Duty" is a role without a stipend but, in return for Sundays and two days a week, we are provided with a house and things like council tax, water rates, repairs etc taken care of. The main challenge of the role is going to be learning how to do ministry on a part time basis when my DNA, laid down over many years, is to do it full-time.
 
However the gift of this role is to allow us to be part of a wonderful, inclusive, hospitable, caring and prayerful community, in a lovely parish, on the edge of a city we are very fond of, in an area of natural beauty that we love dearly. The gift also allows me time to reconnect with friends from the past spread across the region; to be a four-time grandparent (albeit with more travelling); to continue to work on my second murder mystery novel; and just to take things a bit easier as anno domini hurry by.
 
Jenny and I are delighted to be back in North Yorkshire and are so grateful to the Diocese for their work on the house (which was in need of quite a bit of TLC) and to the people of the two churches for their warm and generous welcome. 
 
I would like to end by echoing words from Dag Hammarskjöld, one time Secretary General of the United Nations: "For all that has been "Thanks!"; to all that will be "Yes!"
 
David
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