By Rachel Bayne and Sam Creighton
The new vicar at St Barnabas Church, Homerton, says his experience as a missionary in Africa will help him in his new post.
Over 100 people gathered last week to welcome Reverend Clive Main as the new Team Rector of the Parish of Hackney Marsh. St Barnabas had been without a vicar for 10 months.
Main, 59, spent 10 years in Africa, working in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and Botswana, and he believes his time there will allow him to serve his new parish better: “There’s a lot of Africa in me and an understanding of how some African cultures work.
“Over here it’s a black majority church, very strong Afro-Caribbean and African, so that’s quite different from my last church,” he said.
The vicar moved to St Barnabas with his wife and two children after 12 years in St Augustine’s Church, Highbury. The Bishop of Stepney described Clive as having an “open and honest approach to who he is” and that he works with “great humility”.
Speaking to the Hackney Post, Main said that he needs time to settle into his new parish before thinking about plans for the future: “I think you have to be very careful about coming in to a new place that you’re not familiar with, with a great grand plan to do this or the other.”
However, Main’s experience of life in the Congo under the crippling rule of President Mobutu is sure to have an influence.
He said: “I’m amazed at how people in the Congo live and hope and plan and muddle through. It’s helpful to understand that, it helped my understanding of ethnic groups in my church before and I think it will continue to help me here.”
