The PCC has agreed to adopt the Revd Jane Shaw as a Mission Partner when she goes to Pakistan with CMS early next year.
Jane plans to work in Raiwind Diocese, near Lahore. She sees this as a chance to support, through offering ordained ministry, Christians who are a minority with relatively few resources, and often forgotten by their more affluent brothers and sisters in the West. "It’s an exciting prospect, if sometimes a bit scary!", she says.
"God’s call to mission service was rather unexpected," says Jane, "but on reflection, coming to work with CMS seems a very natural develop-ment." She has known CMS and its mission partners for 15 years and, currently living in Leeds, is an active member of Yorkshire CMS.
Jane has always been happy working overseas and indeed spent much of her early life in East Africa and Asia, as part of an army family.
After graduating from Cambridge in Classics, she trained with the National Health Service in hospital management. She held posts in six different NHS authorities over the next 20 years, both in operational hospital management and in planning. It was during the last of these posts that she worshipped as a regular member and bellringer with us at St Peter’s.
In 1989 Jane fulfilled a long-held ambition and began work overseas with Save the Children, first at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, and then with a World Bank family health project in Peshawar, Pakistan. She came to know several CMS mission partners in Uganda, and before going to Pakistan became a member of CMS’ Salt programme, which provides a network for Christian professionals working abroad.
Returning to the UK to be near elderly parents, Jane secured the post of lecturer in hospital management at Leeds University, teaching on Master’s courses for health professionals from developing countries. The work also entails research and consultancy in developing health systems, so Jane has been able to keep in touch with many alumni in person while visiting their countries.
She is still in this post, but additionally, in 2001 she was ordained in the Church of England and now serves as (non-stipendiary) assistant curate at St John’s Church, Moor Allerton, in a team ministry in north Leeds. She completes this training appointment later this year, and plans to leave the university in September, when she will undertake three months of CMS training before leaving for Pakistan early in 2006.
When not at work or undertaking ministry, Jane enjoys bellringing, choral singing, gardening, dressmaking and reading.
It is good to know that our regular giving to CMS from PCC funds will support someone we know, who can keep us in touch in a personal way with another part of the worldwide church. On behalf of all of us, Paul will sign up to the scheme at the Annual Parochial Church Meeting on April 28th.
Mary Paterson