Meet our newest deacon
On Easter Sunday afternoon, Jim Cheshire will be ordained deacon in Bangor Parish where he will serve as curate. We wish him every blessing as he embarks on this new chapter of his ministry, for, as he tells us below, it’s been an unconventional journey!
Meet Jim
My name is Jim Cheshire and I am married to Diane. We have two children – Eva who is 11 and Ethan who is 9. Although I have been in full time Christian ministry for my entire adult working life, my journey to ordination in the Church of Ireland has been somewhat of a ‘long and winding road’.
I grew up in Florida, where my father was the pastor of an Evangelical Free Church. After coming to faith in Christ as a young child, I first felt God’s call to full time Christian ministry as a teen, although I didn’t understand what that necessarily would look like. Having been encouraged to pursue this call, I went to Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary just north of Boston, where I received a Master of Divinity degree. It was near the end of my time there that I married Diane, from Coleraine, and moved to Northern Ireland the Christmas of 1999.
Since then, God has led me to minister in various settings, including West Presbyterian Church, Bangor, Strandtown Baptist Church, Belfast, and more recently, Holywood Parish Church. It was while I was in Holywood that, to my surprise, I found my heart ‘strangely warmed’ and opened to a future in the Church of Ireland in a way I had not expected, but could not avoid.
Over this past year, I have been blessed by the opportunity to train at CITI in Dublin, which has allowed me both to become further acquainted with our Anglican heritage, and to experience and enjoy life and community together with future colleagues and friends. As this Easter Sunday and my ordination approaches, I look forward to all that God has in store for me and my family as we embark on this new chapter of life and ministry as curate of Bangor Parish.