Peter Rouch

Travellers Tales

For a decade he was a branch manager for Barclays, and loved being alongside his customers at points of crisis and helping them sort things out – a pastoral approach which led to ordination, and to a Manchester parish with a dye works at its centre, the waste products of which meant that people’s washing, and even the pigeons, turned blue!

But he loved it there, and it was a transformative time…coming to understand so much more of what life on the margins feels like, and how people need, more than anything, to know that they’re loved by the God who made them and thinks they are supremely precious.

His first few months at Church Army have been a bit of a whirl of travelling the country, visiting some of its huge breadth of projects, focussing on homelessness, social isolation, mental health, mentoring…all helping to empower individuals and communities. He says: ‘the pandemic has affected those on the margins disproportionately, and that’s where Church Army is….able to live our faith, build Christian community, in highly relatable ways’