John Harvey - Life Member

I joined the Craighead Institute staff in 1995, at the end of a seven-year appointment as Leader of the Iona Community. As a Church of Scotland minister, it was a whole new experience for me to become involved in the wide ecumenical range of the Institute's activities at that time – helping to deliver Life and Faith courses to Catholic and Protestant congregations in deprived West of Scotland areas, working with Religious Orders, travelling to help deliver courses in Lithuania and Croatia, and generally helping to promote the Institute's mission in Scotland and further afield. It was an immensely fulfilling role, which I greatly enjoyed for the nearly five years I was on the staff.

I left at the end of 1999 to work for the Ministries Council of the Church of Scotland as an Interim Minister, serving in congregations who had run into various sorts of trouble – and my experience with the Institute was extremely helpful here.

I retired in 2003, and since then my wife and I have been involved in a voluntary capacity with our own church in Gorbals in Glasgow, with the Iona Community as members, and among other things with the Poverty Truth Commission, and with the Faith in Community Scotland project of the churches here in Scotland.

I've been very pleased to remain loosely connected to the Institute, through these recent challenging years, and am honoured to remain a Life Member.