A former regional press journalist who left the newsroom for a new career as a Methodist minister has told how he is now using his journalism skills to help spread the message of the church.

For the past three years Gareth Hill (pictured) has been working as a full-time Methodist minister in Wadebridge, North Cornwall, with responsibility for five churches, and as the district communications officer for the Methodist Church in Cornwall.

But before that he had spent 28 years in journalism, starting out on his home town newspaper The Free Press of Monmouthshire, in Pontypool, which he later went on to edit.

He also worked as a sports writer for the South Essex Recorders and as a sub-editor and deputy features editor on the South Wales Echo before becoming head of journalism at Cornwall College.

And since taking on his current role he has been working hard to get the message of the church across in a simple, jargon free way.

Gareth, (48), said: “In a lot of places the church has lost the capability to speak normally and uses a lot of insider jargon. My passion is to make the church make sense outside the church.

“There are lots of families who aren’t involved with the church and don’t naturally understand the way it works.

“And you can’t assume that people know things like the Lord’s Prayer, education is much more multi-cultural these days, and rightly so.”

Having been a preacher since the age of 17, and a college lecturer for ten years, Gareth is vastly experienced in standing up in front of groups of people and holding their attention.

And in a bid to make his sermons as accessible as possible, he tries to draw on technologies such as the Internet and DVDs as much as possible.

Gareth said: “I try to use PowerPoint as often as I can as well, often adding visuals. We naturally operate on four different levels at a time, so I use different methods to hold people’s attention.

“I love what I’m doing and feel I was called to do this.

“It’s very different from newspapers and I definitely miss the buzz, but I still do my own thing on a low level, producing the Cornwall Methodist Church newsletter and writing news releases.

“On a different tack I have also developed my hymn-writing since joining the ministry full-time, and have had about a dozen published on the American Methodist website and a vague interest from publishers.”

So could Gareth see himself making a return to the newsroom?

“I’d never say never,” he said, “I don’t make it long-term plans in that way. When I was appointed it was for a minimum of five years, which takes me to 2006, and we’ll probably start talking about that in a year’s time, at which point there could be an invitation to stay or to move to another post within the church.

“There is also a growing network of communications officers for Methodism and the role of communicating through the media is something the Methodist church takes very seriously.”

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