Find out about a Chaplain – Angie Baldwin

My name is Angie Baldwin. I have lived aboard my narrow boat for nearly two years, along with my two spaniels, on the Chesterfield Canal. I’ve been a Reader in the Church of England for several years and also a Street Pastor in my former diocese. I have also been a Diagnostic Radiographer, a Smallholder, a School Librarian, Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Leader, Youth Leader and Horse Riding Instructor and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up! I have three adult children, two of whom have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the other is a solicitor. I’m inordinately proud of all of them and of my two young grandsons.

My Waterways Chaplaincy ministry on the Chesterfield Canal involves a good deal of dog walking which is a great ice breaker with folk on the canal. I also spend a lot of time just listening; and by ‘just’ I don’t mean to devalue the importance of listening and attending to people as they talk. I truly feel that one of the most valuable things you can give someone is your time and attention. I also do a lot of praying for folk- not so much with them as for them as there is a reluctance to share prayer on the towpath. Boaters and towpath users alike know that I’m available to them and seem to be grateful for that. The peace and tranquillity that I find so spiritually uplifting is, I know, isolating and depressing for some and I do my best to empathise and be a friend to them. In all I try to remember that we are God’s hands and feet, that I have been called to reach out in faith to all.

Angie Baldwin being commissioned as a Waterways Chaplain

Click here if you would like to find out more about being a Waterways Chaplain.

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