We are delighted to extend our support to include a new voluntary role of Coordinator for Financial Wellbeing.
Chris Sheldon has been appointed to the role and has already started work, acting as a confidential sounding board who will help our clergy and licensed lay leaders find the right professional advice, walking alongside each individual, wherever helpful.
Chris has recently retired from the position of Chief Executive of Kingdom Bank, a bank specialising in services to churches and Christians. He has more than 40 years’ experience in many banking roles, initially with NatWest. In recent years he has contributed to work on Biblical teaching on money as well as developing specialist mortgage products for church workers. For the past seven years he has been a trustee of the
Leicester Diocesan Board of Finance. Married to Helen they worship together at Emmanuel Loughborough.
Bishop Guli, who has been leading a working group on extending our counselling and wellbeing work, said: “I’m delighted about Chris’s appointment. He brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the role. His creative and broad-reaching approach to financial management mean that he’s well placed both to support and guide clergy and lay ministers in times of particular challenge but also to help develop an understanding of good stewardship and ‘future planning’ as essential to wellbeing.”
Chris said: “For those for whom this title of Financial Wellbeing Coordinator may be new, it encompasses all aspects of personal finances to help clergy feel at peace with their short and long-term arrangements. It maybe that you are having trouble making ends meet monthly or it maybe you are concerned about your long-term housing needs into retirement. As Charles Dickens wrote in David Copperfield ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.’”
Clergy, licensed lay leaders and their families can contact Chris confidentially at chris@sheldonhouse.co.uk or call him on 07779 273705. You can read about other Wellbeing support on our web page here.
