Revd Kesari Godfrey

From South East India to Bridlington

“Priory Church’s new curate,” begins a newspaper report, “is settling into life in a new seaside town. Revd Kesari Godfrey is a long way from his South East Indian roots - but he’s loving it.”

Given his background, Godfrey would be the last to have thought he would be serving a curacy in Bridlington; yet here he is having completed a theology degree in India and a PhD in Birmingham.

“When I started my studies,” he says, reflecting on his calling to ministry, “one of my friends asked me, ‘Why don’t you think about ministry in England?’ In fact at that time I didn’t take it seriously - but God was talking to me for about three years.”

Originally, he planned to become a teacher of theology in India - but things have worked out quite differently.

“It was when I was trained, precisely in the final year, I had a specific call to enter into ministry,” he continues. “I had a health problem and many helped me to get out of it so that is when I really knew that the best thing I can do is to help people who suffer, and the best opportunity is to do it through church.”

In Bridlington, he has really fitted into his parish: “People are friendly, they accommodate values of others, they listen to me, and I listen to them.”

Just one year into his curacy, it is much too soon for Godfrey to know exactly where God will take him when the time comes to move on.

“When I was young,” he laughs, “I used to plan things for myself but it doesn’t work that way so now I leave it to God and just think of the present and I know God will lead me in the future.”

One story that makes him smile, looking back, shares the words of his father, a retired bishop in the Church of South India: “When I said I want to study theology he was very pleased and that’s the first time he said, ‘I knew somehow God would being you here.’”

You can hear this interview now by clicking here