Our Minister

Rev Andrew Longshaw

Hello, my name is Andrew, and I am the Methodist minister for Crewkerne, South Petherton Netherhay, and Kingsbury Episcopi Methodist Churches, in the South Petherton and Crewkerne Circuit. 

I have been a Presbyteral Minister for twenty-two 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, in Oxford. I mainly worked in the area of Constitutional and Administrative law and undertook appeals procedures, regarding cases to do with social welfare 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 standardexpectation, 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 has Parkinson’s and dementia and who lives in Oxfordshire.

I am a kind and caring minister and therefore 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 wonderous places around the world. More recently we have seen the Northern Lights in Finland, travelled around the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific and been on an adventure cruise to the high Arctic, travelling up the Norwegian coast to Svalbard, in the Arctic Ocean. 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 serve. 

Blessings

Rev Andrew.