Our Minister

September 2025 Circuit Link Letter
from Rev Deborah Kirk, Superintendent Minister

3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1 : 3-6

Dear friends

I hope that you have had a wonderful summer and found time for some relaxation and refreshment. I know that some of our dear ones have been battling ill health and time in hospital – our prayers are with them, and those who support them.

This time last year, our District had just completed a long process of joining with the Cornwall District. We have had one year as the new SW Peninsula District, and alongside the challenges of greater distances and keeping connected as a unit over such a large area, we have found many benefits in the sharing of ideas, expertise, and personnel. Instrumental to this has been the positivity of our District leadership, and the care that has been taken to make sure that everyone is as informed and involved as possible.

We have also negotiated some local changes over the last few months, in that two pairs of our Circuit churches have moved into partnerships with one another. This is in response to a ruling by the Charity Commission to relieve some of the pressures on small Trustee bodies.

We are very grateful for the positivity of each of the churches in these two partnerships: Bridgwater with Middlezoy, and Lisieux Way with North Curry and Curland. The Church Councils and congregations have each explored separately and together what a ‘united church on two sites’ might look like, and have been prepared to prayerfully work through the questions and possibilities. These explorations have been conducted with respect and care for one another, valuing the work that is already taking place, and the reimagined mission for the future. This is not about ‘managing decline’ or asking ‘What’s in it for us?’ – it’s about committing to a relationship which demonstrates mutual prayer, serving, and working together for the sake of the Gospel. Even though each of these churches will continue to give us news of their own work and programmes in The Link, the two pairs of churches will be constitutionally united and they will be looking forward to encouraging and learning from one another into the future.

But our commitment to Connexionalism doesn’t end there. For many years – at least as long as I have been in this Circuit – there have been conversations about joining with one or other of our neighbouring Circuits. But talking about it was as far as it got…until now…

Our neighbouring Circuit of South Petherton and Crewkerne, a Circuit of similar geographical area and 5 churches, has requested that we join together with them. We have had several meetings of our respective CLTs, and conversations with our District Chair, and in November 2024, our Circuit Meeting agreed to explore working together, with a view to being a united Circuit in September 2026.

This is going to be worked out over the next months, and will involve considerable planning and practical preparation towards the best outcomes. I have invited Revd Andrew Longshaw, the Superintendent of South Petherton and Crewkerne Circuit, to introduce himself and his Circuit in this issue of the Link and already our Local Preachers share two meetings a year together, and run exchanges for LWPT Sunday in the Spring. Over the next months, we will include some information in The Link about the 5 churches in the SP&C Circuit, and it would be really good if some us could commit to attend some of their events and services as we can. Several members from SP&C have been attending occasional services in our churches and we have had the opportunity to make them welcome.

We are aware that our plans depend on the gifting and resourcing of God’s Spirit, and we know that both our Circuits have people who are eager to use their Spirit-gifts to serve God through his Church. We will be looking for ways to encourage and enable those gifts to be used and shared – if you are discerning the call of God on your life just now, please come and speak to me or to Annie about how we can help you to answer that call.

This is an exciting time, and we look forward to how God will use the flexibility of our structures and our renewed focus for the growing of his Kingdom in us, through us and around us.

Joy for the journey, Deborah

Introducing Rev Andrew Longshaw

Hello, my name is Andrew, and I am the Methodist minister for Crewkerne, Chard, Ilminster and Broadway Hill, Netherhay, and Kingsbury Episcopi Methodist Churches, and Superintendent Minister for the South Petherton and Crewkerne Circuit.

I have been a Presbyteral Minister for twenty-four years and I have worked in: Birmingham, Newcastle-under-Lyme, North Liverpool, North Cumbria (Carlisle), and Wakefield, in West Yorkshire. So, as you can see, I and my wife Lizzy have moved around the country serving God.

However, that is not all of me; Previously my profession was as a senior lawyer, in the Civil Service. I studied law and sociology at Warwick University, after studying politics and philosophy at Ruskin College, Oxford. I mainly worked in the area of Constitutional and Administrative law and undertook appeals procedures, regarding cases to do with social welfare, equal rights and equal opportunities law. Then, everything changed when God called me to the ministry. After feeling all secure and settled, in a well-paid job, where career and financial progress were the standard expectation, I was cast upon the ocean of God’s will. While Lizzy continued to work as a Senior Library Assistant at Oxford Brookes, I studied theology at Queen’s, in Birmingham. That was a great time in an ecumenical setting, which prepared me for much of my ecumenical work around the country, particularly in Liverpool and Cumbria, where I also served as the District Ecumenical Officer.

Much of the time I have spent in the North and especially the North-West of England because of my mum’s health and needing to be close to her. Mum died during the first Lockdown, from vascular dementia, which she had for over fourteen years. The last twelve of those were in care or nursing homes, in the place she had lived for much of her life, near Warrington. This time, we needed to be nearer to Lizzy’s mother, who had Parkinson’s and dementia and who lived in Oxfordshire. Lizzy’s mother died in August 2022.

People have said that I am a kind and caring minister and therefore I place a great deal of importance on pastoral care. I also like to be actively involved in the communities I serve, and so try to get out and about to meet people. Lizzy and I love music and the arts. I like reading but realise that I need to be taking more exercise (don’t we all). We have been very blessed in that our other great love is travelling and to that end we have been to wondrous places around the world. More recently we have seen the Northern Lights in Finland, travelled around the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, been on an adventure cruise to the high Arctic, and my recent Sabbatical was spent in Canada.

I believe that I am a person who doesn’t like to continually look back at what I have done, or where I have worked but to let that inform and contribute to the work I do now and in preparing for the future of the Circuits and churches I currently serve and will serve in the future.

Blessings, Rev Andrew Longshaw