Andrew John Nicholson, Priest.
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Andrew John Nicholson, Priest
From the Barwicker No.97
March 2010
Andrew John Nicholson
Andy Nicholson is the new Priest-in-charge of the two
parishes of Barwick-in-Elmet with Scholes and Thorner with
Scarcroft. He was Licensed by James, the Bishop of
Knaresborough on 2nd June 2009 in St. Philip’s Church,
Scholes, in front of a packed congregation of clergy and laity
who thoroughly enjoyed this splendid summer occasion.
Andy lives in the Rectory at Thorner and his wife Debbie
and young sons Ben and Jacob are now well established and
happy in their new home. He has oversight of the two
parishes and has undertaken a very demanding and taxing
job.
He was born in Sheffield in 1969 and his family have
Yorkshire roots. His grandfather was a Freeman of the City
of York and Andy has always felt a tremendous sense of
family unity and purpose. In 1972 he moved to Cheltenham
and attended Cheltenham Grammar School. Andy was drawn
towards Christianity and as a 17 year old student he felt the
need to work full-time in a Christian role. He went to Forest
Hill in London and spent a year as a Voluntary Evangelist
with the London City Mission.
In 1988 he began a four year degree course in Theology and
English at the College of Ripon and York St John; he went to
Ripon to be close to his grandparents. Andy’s deep family
commitment considerably influenced his career path and he
considers that his father may have trained for ordination. His
parents are buried in Bilbao and that is one reason he took a
year out in 1990 to teach English as a foreign language in
Spain, returning to College to complete his course in 1993.
Andy’s adventurous spirit took him to China from 1994 to
1996 where he worked for the Amity Organisation, teaching
English to students preparing to teach in secondary schools.
He enjoyed China, particularly his contact with the culture of
village people and he learned to speak Mandarin. There are
fifty two authorised minorities in the country, additionally
there are many cultural sub-sections and he became adept at
communicating with different minorities. He appreciated
religious attitudes experienced both in Spain and China,
absorbing elements of their worship into his charismatic
evangelicalism. Buddhist peace and calm, particularly
appealed to him.
Andy returned to England in 1996 and spent two years
completing a Master’s degree in Theology. He has a strong
interest in film and visual art and for his dissertation he wrote
about Chinese Christian Art. He is interested in the interplay
between Christianity and Culture and how Christianity can
be made more relevant through artistic and film images.
In 1998 he returned to China, coming home two years later
to begin the process of discerning for ordination. Andy’s stay
in China re-affirmed his evangelical, charismatic interests in
Christianity.
In 2001 he took a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in
Education) to become a teacher and had teaching practice in
Thirsk and Pateley Bridge. He then taught religious
education in a Bradford secondary school for a year, before
studying for two years at St John’s Theological College in
Nottingham. Andy served as a curate for four years from
2005 in the East Richmond Team Ministry where he and
three other clergy were responsible for fifteen churches.
Thus Andy Nicholson is very well qualified and has a wide
variety of excellent experience which will be invaluable to
him as he works in our two parishes, each with differing
emphases and traditions reflecting the interests and needs of
the parishioners. There are evangelical, charismatic,
traditional, Anglo-Catholic and strong choral and musical
traditions at work within Scholes, Barwick and Thorner; at
Scarcroft a service is held in the Village Hall once a quarter
supported by members from local congregations.
Andy believes in the importance of effective consultation
and communication with parishioners and his most difficult
decision so far has been to plan to alter church service times
in order to allow him to be present in each church every
Sunday. Scholes will be most affected as it moves from a
morning to an evening service time after Easter 2010.
Parish changes are set against a backdrop of unique
circumstances where the traditional historical model of each
parish having its own stipendiary priest, has been broken
forever. There is no going back. Falling church attendances
nationally, the credit crunch, increased life expectancy, a
multi-million pound clergy pensions shortfall, a shortage of
ordinands, the rising costs of church maintenance and
increased financial pressure on regular church attenders to
contribute more, all exacerbate the problem.
The Church of England estimates that there will be an 8.3%
reduction in paid clergy in the next four years, representing a
22.5% decrease since 2000. If this trend continues it is
thought that in fifty years there will be no full-time clergy
left in 13,000 English parishes. It appears that the future lies
with Team Ministries covering increasing numbers of
churches, the use of volunteer part-time staff and the closure
or amalgamation of churches that have lost their
congregations. We are witnessing changes to some churches
which have been operating successfully for centuries, some
going back to pre Norman times. As the poster in Aberford
reads about the village church, ‘Use it or lose it.’
Andy is in the invidious position of introducing controversial
changes to service times, which some people resent, but he
and members of the PCC are the only ones with an informed
overview of the true position. If some of the dire predictions
about falling numbers of clergy prove correct, then in the
future this could well be seen as a late halcyon period in
church history.
Andy is an optimist and thinks that we need to celebrate our
gifts and look to the future to chart a course successfully
through the maelstrom of modern life. We all wish him God
speed!
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