Who’s Tim? (if you are asking this, you are not on Facebook!)
Tim has over 30 years’ experience in youth and community work. He has MAs in Community Organization & Advocacy, and Youth Ministry & Theological Education. So he’s not just a pretty face.
He’s an experienced leader – Chief Exec of ‘Worth Unlimited’ for 19 years specialising in working with disadvantaged and marginalised young people and communities.
He’s committed to local living. For 20 years he has lived intentionally on an estate in east Birmingham developing youth work, and as part of his local Anglican church helped initiate and manage intergenerational community building using an asset-based community development approach. He’s part of Nurture Development and Loconomy and runs his own training, coaching and consultancy company, Curating Connections.
Sally says “Tim has had more Chairs than Ikea” – over years serving the charity and voluntary sector. He’s also “Mr. ABCD” training churches, charities and individuals in Asset-Based approaches to building community. He’s great at socials – a natural energiser of groups, online and in person. All of which sounds great for RLC’s online presence and networking!
And we’ve connected with Tim for many years. Tim co-founded and helps lead Change Makers – the local leaders training course endorsed by Red Letter Christians UK. They invest in the self-awareness and capacities of local people in neighbourhoods to be able to make change through community building, enterprise and campaigning.
Tim and his wife Ria have been foster carers for 22 years, have two daughters and a dog. Tim’s an active chap, enjoying cycling, tennis, squash and (painfully) being an England cricket and Fulham football club supporter!’
We asked Tim about his faith –
‘I became a Jesus follower when I was at University. Immediately I started volunteering with Student Community Action on the estates that surrounded the city where I went to University. I volunteered with Gingerbread supporting single parents by providing some respite activities for their children, Kids Away where we took local children and young people who wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity away for residential weekends, and detached youth work where we built relationships with local young people. I was completely struck by and offended by the differences in life chances and opportunities between my life and these young people even though we actually lived within a few miles of each other. I didn’t have the tools I really needed, but I did discover that lifelong passion for seeking justice and transformation in the world as a follower of Jesus.
Hopefully, I have developed some of those tools in practical people skills, organisational development skills, sociological, psychological and theological understanding, along the way since those early days. I am really looking forward to joining the Red Letter Christians movement and co-directing with my good friend Sally, focusing on Jesus and Justice, and helping the movement grow. My hope is that we can connect, amplify and equip a movement of people, churches, projects and organisations in the spiritual, theological, campaigning, practice-based skills and capacities to seek justice and transformation. Red Letter Christians is part of the ecology of justice seekers and people of good will and so my hope is to bring a number of connections and potential partnerships to grow the impact that we can have together.’
What about Dave and Faith?
After 2 years sharing the Co-Director role, they circle back into the RLCUK Core Team – helping discern and direct our movement. They have done amazing work for us, all unpaid, and we are so happy that they’ll still be around. That’s how Red Letter Christians UK runs – a Core Team meet to discern what the Spirit is up to and how our movement can join in. We appoint a couple of us to take the reins and give our projects impetus for a season.
Please pray for us as we meet as a Team on 24 July… we’ll announce exciting new plans and projects after our time together.