Hello belovèds! My name is Praise, my pronouns are they/them, and I believe that God has called me to be a friend and companion to others on their walk with Christ. What this means is that my life's work is to encourage and hold space for others to doubt, question, wrestle and fall in love with God, and to connect meaningfully and bravely within communities of others believers.

I currently serve in leadership at a church where we make the conscious choice to honour where each individual is at on their journey with God. We don't tell each other what to feel, what to believe, what to do... we emphasise the primacy of God's love for all his children, and our autonomy to be who we are: eternally and indiscriminately cared for, and made in the image of God.

This year my community voted unanimously to affirm my sense of calling to become an ordained minister, and I was nominated to Northern Baptist College for the Alternative Formation Track (AFT) towards ordained ministry. This was one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life, one that I will never forget. I am really delighted to say that I have been offered a place on the programme, with a provisional start date of September.

The cost of training is approximately £4500 per academic year, for a three-year training programme (i.e.. 3x £4500 = £13,500, plus other expenses including travel, books, residentials, materials). To be vulnerable and frank—and pretty uncomfortable tbh—I can only meet a fraction of the cost of study myself. This means I need to ask for the love and help of individuals and organisations who support me as a person, and who share my vision of church being reflective of the incredible diversity of gender, race and neurosparkliness and all the many other gorgeous manifestations that are evident in God's design. I believe this starts with qualifying people from excluded or disadvantaged groups as ministers—such as myself as a member of the trans community—and disrupting the culture of exclusion that has let so many believers and would-be's down.

If you can help respond to God's call in any way, then I would be deeply humbled and grateful.

With Love,

Praise

(they/them)