Meet the Vicar

The Reverend Graeme Holdsworth, Interim Vicar of Marsden and Slaithwaite with East Scammonden

I’m the Interim Vicar of Marsden and Slaithwaite with East Scammonden, licensed at the beginning of 2020 for three years, to help our Churches grow in the knowledge and love of God and to share the good news of Jesus Christ within our communities. I’m excited to be here in the Colne Valley and have felt warmly welcomed by everyone I’ve met.

grholdsworth@pm.me
Vicars Contact Details: email grholdsworth@pm.me

My background is in Analytical Chemistry and laboratory software systems, having worked for 20 years in different commercial environments before training for ministry in the Church of England. I am not a lifelong Christian, having only came to faith in my thirties… but I believe that God has been caring for me throughout my life, whether I acknowledged it or not.

I feel no conflict between faith and science; for me they are complementary approaches to understanding this beautiful Universe we live in. I believe curiosity is essential for the scientist and healthy for the religious believer: curiosity is what engages our mind in trying to fathom out the complexities of God’s good creation.

It is my hope that I can help our communities to explore their own latent spirituality in a Christian sense: to discover their own expressions of that Christian faith and work out their relationship with the God who loves them dearly. Primarily I would like to communicate the liberating love of God: Christian faith is not about religious observance – it is about liberation of God’s creation from the tyranny of death.

I can be found on instagram & twitter: @fatherhilarious and also on Mastondon as @fatherhilarious@mstdn.social where my opinions are very much my own and you’ll find more photographs of beer, bicycles and the countryside than you will of the inside of church buildings.

Bicycle propped against a stone wall surrounded by fields and overlooking a green valley
Cycling down Marsden Lane

The Benedictus (The Song of Zechariah)

Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel,
who has come to his people and set them free.
He has raised up for us a mighty Saviour,
born of the house of his servant David.
Through his holy prophets God promised of old
to save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all that hate us,
To show mercy to our ancestors,
and to remember his holy covenant.
This was the oath God swore to our father Abraham:
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
Free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.
And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
To give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of all their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and shall be for ever.
Amen.

© The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, 2000-2005
Official Common Worship apps, books and eBooks are available from Church House Publishing.

The Bible readings are from The New Revised Standard Version Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.