Jason Lawton will be ordained deacon by the Bishop of Manchester on Sunday 3 July and begin his ordained ministry in Bury, Roch Valley.
"Although not from a churchgoing family, when I was about nine years old my best friend joined the choir at the local Anglican church, so I joined too, and from that time was immersed in the liturgy and whole worship experience, though with little real understanding of faith or scripture. Two years later my parents divorced, and I was uprooted and moved to another part of the country. The latter part of my childhood and teenage years were, as a result, completely secular. In my later teens, however, my mother began attending a local Baptist church and, thorough her, I came back to faith aged 18.
"Soon afterwards I felt that God was calling me to share my faith and in my mid-20s I worked and saved money to study Arabic, and then spent over 20 years working with a mission agency in West Africa.
"I am passionate about seeing the lives of people improved. I ran a number of development projects in Africa, including a feeding programme for malnourished children and a project that improves the livelihoods of farmers living in poverty. I found the Muslim people I worked alongside were very open to talking about God, and saw some people come to faith in Jesus.
"While in Africa I met and married my wife and we started a family. I began to sense a calling to the Anglican ministry, and after returning to England followed a call to work for the Antioch Network that plants new, small Anglican churches in the Diocese of Manchester. We launched a small home-based fellowship in Gorton in late 2019, along with an addiction recovery group, but the lockdowns made progress difficult. Since last summer, however, the church-plant has grown, and is set to grow further.
"I began the formal discernment process to explore the possibility of ordained ministry and am looking forward to being ordained deacon on 3 July.
"My ordination represents another step on the road that God called me to travel more than three decades ago, to teach and nurture others in the Christian faith. For me, the importance of ordination is that it adds a public dimension of visibility and accountability. It means that my calling has been recognised and that trust is placed in me by the Church to serve the community, and it means I will be able to come alongside people in need in a recognised and trusted role. As a family we are thrilled to be moving to Roch Valley, Bury and to be given this opportunity and sacred trust to serve in parish ministry."