From Rev Richard Washington October 2025

Rev Richard Washington
Team Vicar, Great Yarmouth Parish

By the time you read this, it will have been a year since I joined the Parish as Team Vicar on 26 September 2024. I have been reflecting on my year here and my experience of getting to know this community, both inside and outside of church. It has been an extraordinary journey of joys and challenges. It has been characterised by much kindness and support from all of you, for which I am very grateful
 
Having moved around rather a lot in my life, I have learned that to really get to know a place takes much longer than you might imagine
 
Of course, at first, you are mainly occupied with just trying to find your way around, which is utterly absorbing, sometimes bewildering and often a lot of fun. More complicated and demanding is adapting to the unique characteristics of a place or institution, characteristics which may seem obvious to those for which they have been a part of life for many years, but which are often hard to understand and negotiate for those who are new. It is a fascinating joy to explore these kinds of things, but it can also be hard as you try to avoid disrupting and upsetting the rhythms of those around you
 
And then of course, the greater joy, but also the greater challenge, is the process of forming relationships in and for Christ within a church community and beyond. This takes time, and care, and love and demands a difficult balance between boundaries and openness, which can leave you vulnerable, but which can also lead to profound connection and growth
 
Even after a year of attempting to do these things, experience tells me, that to get to the heart of a place and to really make a difference takes longer. I am really looking forward to the next years of getting closer to the heart of what we are as a community and closer to what God is calling us to for the future. Thank you for the journey so far
                                            Fr Richard

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