New minister arrives to yarn bombing
Colourful welcome for reverend in Barwell
BARWELL could not have given a cheerier welcome to new Methodist minister the Reverend Dave Haseldine, who arrived just as the village centre had been yarn-bombed.
“Brilliant!” was how the newly-arrived preacher described the multi-coloured woollen installations which even found their way into the chippy he visited on one of his first days in his new patch this summer.
Rev Haseldine, 56, follows the Reverend Andy Murphy as minister at Barwell Methodist Church and will also be responsible for Earl Shilton and Newbold Verdon churches, which all fall within Hinckley Methodist Circuit.
A welcome service held at the beginning of the month was led by Hinckley Methodist Church minister the Reverend Wes Hampton and presided over by the chairman the Methodist Northamp- ton District, Reverend Peter Hancock, who previously served on the Hinckley circuit, mainly in Burbage.
Guests included the Mayor of Earl Shilton, Councillor Deborah Almey, the Vicar of Earl Shilton, the Reverend Martin Castle and the Rector of Barwell the Reverend Philip Watson.
Rev Haseldine, who has served in Nottingham, Peterborough, and most recently Shefford in Bedfordshire, said: “We have been made very welcome.”
An engineering graduate from west Birmingham, who hoped to make a positive impact through his work, Rev Haseldine began to follow a path to ministry when opportunities in his preferred alternative technologies and renewables failed to appear.
After working as a local preacher, he trained at Queen’s Theological College in Birmingham and took up his first appointment on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border.
He has been supported throughout by his wife Sarah, with whom he has three children; Ben, who is embarking on a legal career in London, Lucy, who is studying geography at Coventry University, and Emily who has just taken GCSEs and is beginning term at a new sixth form college.
Of the church he has come to serve, he said: “There are a lot of very willing people and that’s great. For me it’s all about teamwork.
“I have my role to play but I am not a dictator.”