THE Rev DAVID E Fletcher has been welcomed as the new Priest-in-Charge for churches within the Waggoners and Woldsburn benefices.
Mr Fletcher 58, moved to Pulham Lane in Wetwang with his wife Pat from Halifax on November 18 last year, and was licensed on Novemeber 28, just in time for the advent period.
Before becoming ordained as a priest in 2002, Mr Fletcher served as a primary school teacher for 23 years.
He has also served as Head Teacher at schools in Calderdale and Bradford. The priest and his wife, Pat, who met at teacher training college in the 1970s, decided to move to East Yorkshire following Pat’s retirement from teaching science in secondary schools in 2011.
Mr Fletcher said: “East Yorkshire is always somewhere we’ve wanted to go, so when I saw this job was available I applied and was accepted.”
After spending 10 years as both a curate and a vicar in his previous parish in Halifax, Mr Flethcher is relishing the challenge of taking on a rural parish.
He said: “Taking on a rural parish as opposed to an urban parish is a challenge but very exciting.”
He will be ministering to 12 parishes within The Waggoners and Woldsburn Benefices - Fridaythorpe, Thixendale, Fimber, Sledmere, Cowlam and Wetwang, Garton, Bainton, North Dalton, Middleton, Kilwick and Kirkburn.
He said: “Twelve parishes is daunting, but then I feel a sense of excitement.
“As a youngster I collected stamps, my mother always taught me to go for the best and biggest collection but I never thought as an adult I would be collecting church wardens”.
With two retired ministers, two self supporting ministers, three lay readers and a host of church wardens to aid him in tending to all 12 of his parishes, Mr Fletcher has plans to expand congregations and reach out into the wide communities of his parishes.
Mr Fletcher said: “One of the reasons I applied, although 12 churches sounds daunting, is that the profiles noted that each congregation was looking to grow and reach out into the local community - I want to bring new ideas to enable that to happen and to support things that are going well and to build on that.”
Mr Fletcher has one grown up daughter, Emma, a son-in-law, Dan, and three grandchildren, Jacob 13, Molly 11 and Charlotte 7.