We are a church for the Swiss community who live all across London so it’s not like we see each other in the neighborhoods or in the local shops. If we can’t meet at the church twice a month we don’t see each other but there is a strong feeling that we’ve really kept the community going and in some ways have grown closer.

Over 50% of our income is generated through commercial hirings of the church which completely stopped, so one of our first concerns was about how we could keep everyone in employment. We tried to find other funding streams that both serve the community and bring in revenue.

Currently we are working with a charity called Camden Giving on it’s Pathways into Employment scheme. A young Camden resident aged 21 is on an internship with us which is his first paid work placement to learn about general business administration. Youth unemployment is going up, and a lot of the usual stepping stone jobs in hospitality are now gone.

My primary focus is the Chinese congregation who commute here from all across London because we do services in Cantonese and Mandarin.

I lived in Britain for many years before wearing a clerical collar and since the pandemic began, it’s the first time I’ve been racially abused by strangers which for me is unprecedented because I’ve integrated into this country very well. I went to school here and I see myself as British too, so I never would have imagined my Chinese identity would be exposed and abused in that way.

The word “crisis” in Chinese is written in two parts. The first part means danger and the second word is possibility. When there’s a crisis, there’s also hope.

After my own experience having Covid, I spend a lot of time informing my congregation of how important it is that we all have the vaccine.

God puts these experiences to us for a reason and mine is that I can actually speak to people about how truly awful it felt and why having the virus is much worse than any side effect the vaccine can give us. I mention it in my sermons telling people that if we don’t have it we’ll be at the same point next year, missing another Easter and another Lent and just having it all on Zoom.

I can’t wait until we can actually be here in church together, even if we have to keep social distancing and still wear masks.

Live-streaming on a phone with a microphone plugged in gives you such good quality without any of the complexity.

I just stand up and preach like I would on a normal Sunday which I think gives the sense of being gathered together during the services, even if we aren’t physically together in the building.

From March to July, when we were properly locked down, I was broadcasting services from the vicarage. My wife and I had my four teenage children at home who all appeared on video at various points which actually was one of the lovely things about that period of time.

Quite a lot of people have told me since that seeing the vicar and his family together in the same situation as them was actually really significant. This idea that although everything seemed to be falling apart, there was a consistency.

The airport is my life, it’s my parish. You build up relationships, you get to see people regularly and over 18 years here, I’ve done baptisms, weddings and sadly, funerals.

We have a passing congregation except for our “regular irregulars” who we only see two or three times a year, and there are currently fewer people coming into the chapel for worship, but the pastoral care hasn’t gone.

I’m still walking around and chatting to anybody at any time but our passenger numbers have massively depleted.

The wonderful thing is that the staff have got a little more time, they’re not so rushed or pressurised and you can pick up more of an in-depth conversation. Like with the cleaners, there was one lad who came up to me and said: “Can I have a chat?”. I’ve not met him before but wallop, it all came out.

Soho only ever falls quiet on Christmas Eve and Christmas night and it was like that for months. It was utterly silent and felt like being in a different place. I live above the church and likened it to living on a film set where the crew had all wrapped and gone home and I’d woken up and thought, should I be here?

There were several people that I didn’t know who contacted me for help because they didn’t know who else to turn to. I was asked by the local pharmacy if I could help with deliveries to people who were self isolating and I would always do it in my collar, not that your medicines come with an extra blessing or anything, but it’s engraved on the doors outside ‘The Church of England serving the community’.

Pre-pandemic there would be days when I would ‘hop on/hop off’ the line as far as High Barnet making contact with staff. When there are fatalities we are called upon by the British Transport Police and have to respond within 24 hours so we can offer support to the witnesses or those who have attended a fatality.

For me our motto is ‘love and support’. The support is for everyone regardless of background or faith; I never even ask about religious beliefs. All I want to see is that someones mental state and well being is good and to make sure they aren’t depressed or frustrated.

I’ve found talking to be very therapeutic and healing even if I don’t offer a solution. A staff member called me on the phone recently and told me exactly what he was going through and I just listened. When he finished, he started crying and thanking me saying that he had needed this to come out of him but he didn’t want to tell his mum. It was so fulfilling for me that I could be on the other end of the phone.

How do you provide comfort and solace to guys who are stuck behind doors for a ridiculous amount of time?

I’ve found that if you make the time, the people you speak to are more open now and there’s more opportunity for that conversation to get deeper and be more meaningful.

It’s been less about just wanting an excuse to get out of the cell, it’s almost like they’ve treated it as a gift and they’ve decided that if I can engage with them, they will engage with me too.

You can come across some truly broken and desperate cases, it’s really heartbreaking sometimes. There are a lot of people in prison for criminal reasons and there are a lot of people in prison because society has been criminal to them.

The Haven + London is a charity that looks after the mental health, well-being and spirituality of artists and creatives. We’ve always been on the front line dealing with individuals coming through severe anxiety but when Covid hit, the amount of calls quadrupled. We were having a number of calls from creatives who had lost jobs, some of whom had become homeless- there was complete devastation in the creative sector.

For The Wilderness Project exhibition we put a call out based on the narrative of Jesus in the desert which is a religious Christian text, yet we had over 150 people submitting their artwork, the majority of whom have no connection with Christianity. It’s been such a joy to connect with the artists and talk about their work and experiences.

Using art to explore experiences of the pandemic is powerful because art can hold all these difficult feelings without offering an answer, yet there’s a healing experience in just holding them- none of the work in the exhibition is offering an easy answer. In theological studies that notion can sometimes be forgotten and it’s been liberating to be reminded that there isn’t always an answer. There is faith in doubt.

The moment you’re born, your days are numbered and there’s no avoiding it- we just have to deal with it in the most healthy way possible. Until now as a society we haven’t been good at that and I anticipate that we will have more conversation on that in the near future. We hit the pause button for a year and people will have to get closure on all of this. I’m sure part of that closure will have to be through addressing the issue of death and how life is so fragile.

My view of church is to not only do services on a Sunday; putting on a nice show but then nothing changes in everyday life. What’s the point of saying we’ll pray for you but then we’re unable to sit down with that person and see what we can do for them? I’ve really tried to be available to meet people’s needs and spot pockets of poverty and deprivation within the congregation.

The role of a football club chaplain isn’t necessarily about religion, it’s about being available and making relationships so that if anybody feels like they could do with some pastoral support, which is outside of the context of football and outside of the context of the club, they know where to go.

On a matchday I would usually get here about three hours before kick off just to make myself visible because the more integrated I am, the more effective my role is.

Due to the restrictions that have allowed the football season to go ahead this year, I’ve not been able to get down to the training ground since March 2020 and in football that might as well be 50 years.

Watching American politics over the last four years has been stressful for the whole world because it’s been so volatile and xenophobic. We recognize that in an international, interracial, multicultural church like ours people sitting in the pews, might have different views but as faith leaders our role is to promote unity and provide a space for people to talk honestly with one another.

When we realised Christmas wasn’t going to happen in the same way this year we walked across London delivering small bags with advent candles in to the families in our congregation with young children. Between us, calculated by our phones and our little step counters, we walked almost 170,000 steps in about a week.

For a lot of people, it meant the world that someone was thinking about them and cared enough about their children to bring them this really simple, inexpensive bag of things to help make the season meaningful.