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 now the Co-Superintendent Minister for the Heart of Wessex Circuit.

I have been a Presbyteral Minister for twenty-seven years and for 18 years of that I

have been a Superintendent. I have worked in; Birmingham, Newcastle-under-Lyme,

North Liverpool, North Cumbria (Carlisle), and Wakefield, in West Yorkshire.

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 field of

Constitutional and Administrative law and undertook appeals procedures, regarding

cases to do with social welfare, and human/equal rights legislation. Then, everything

changed when God called me to the ministry. 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 deteriorating health and needing to be close to her. Mum died during the first

Lockdown, from vascular dementia, which she had for over fourteen years.

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. To that end I

have had many community chaplaincies; hospice, hospital, prison, Padre to a RAF

base, and to a Rugby League club and for 15 years to the Royal British Legion.

Lizzy and I love music and the arts. I like reading but realise that I need to be taking

more exercise following my heart problems and surgery. We have been very blessed

in that our other great love is travelling and to that end we have been to wonderous

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 in Canada, where I met

some of my birth family (I was adopted as a baby). 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 “HoW” Circuit, and churches I serve before I eventually retire.

Blessings

Rev Andrew Longshaw.