There was a packed congregation as he delivered a sermon concerned with the church being at the centre of the community, serving believers and non-believers alike. He spoke of being called to serve and how he believed that his calling required him to involve and make provision for all members of his parish.
That provision included youth work, both a church youth club and more open youth work. I know all of this because I was his youth worker. And he was the chairman of the trustees of the youth and community centre, to whom I was accountable. There were many times when we had our private disagreements, usually as he stood between the more punitive and judgemental stances of some trustees and my own attempt to sustain a commitment to even the most wayward and recalcitrant young people. Sometimes even his own understanding and tolerance of open youth work was pushed to the limit because he was the one writing endless funding applications for modest sums of money and I was the one using it to repair frequent accidental and occasionally malicious damage.
Not that his faith in the value of open youth work ever really wavered. He had acquired a legendary reputation among local young people for having once commandeered one young person's small motorcycle and ridden it in circles round the car park - dressed in his clerical robes. He never missed an opportunity to engage directly with young people.
For me, however, he was the umbrella under which I could pursue the youth work in which I believed. Even when he was privately critical of elements of my practice, he saw its broader worth and defended me. He ensured I was able to sustain that practice without becoming overburdened by bureaucratic demands and expectations.
We worked together for 25 years and used to joke, when the external pressures of local government or funding bodies were exerted, that no-one could compete with our joint 50 years of experience in youth work. Together we fought back when we considered the pressures to be absurd and against the tide of what we were trying to achieve.
Long ago, in a paper called Strategies for Intervention, I suggested that the clergy were well placed to serve as neutral umbrellas for the pursuance of effective local youth work practice. At the time, I did not know that I would be the direct recipient of what I had then preached.
Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan, and a member of the Youth Justice Board. Email howard.williamson@haymarket.com.
