InterviewBlog | In conversation with Sharon Townsend
In conversation with Sharon Townsend
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 17.09.21
Sharon Marcia Townsend is Senior Pastor at the Junction Community Church, Wandsworth, London, a branch of the New Testament Assembly. She has been a qualified counsellor for over 25 years, providing individual and group counselling across a wide range of subjects. As an NHS Mental Health Chaplain, she provides pastoral and spiritual encouragement to patients staying on the wards. Sharon is co-founder of the Living Loss organisation.
LL Can you tell us about your faith background and how you came to know God? As early as I can remember, about aged seven and eight, mum sent us to an Anglican church and a Pentecostal, so you could imagine having to switch between the different dynamics: we found the Anglican church quite creative, then the Pentecostal had a lot of jumping up and dancing and as kids you would love that. But my faith was stretched in the Pentecostal church and I gave my heart to the Lord when I was 16 – and I haven’t looked back since!
I now belong to the New Testament Assembly and I pastor a branch in Wandsworth. Our place for services is in a hall, so we’re still on Zoom. It’s going pretty well.
My congregation grew double on Zoom and some of the new people are outside the borough – from Kent, from near Heathrow, and near Gatwick. We’ve talked about continuing their pastoral care when we go back to church, we’re thinking of all sorts of technology, and hopefully by September we should be back in with everything up and running.
We do record our service on a Sunday and email it to those not on Zoom and I do make sure that I have regular contact with them. We had a mental health well-being day and a few of the new ones were able to get involved and set it up so that was good.
I’m really concerned about losing them – if the church has to pay for new technology, we want to resource that. Because of what people have been through this year, if they’ve found a church in the ministry they’re comfortable with, they don’t want to move on at this stage.
Have you lost people to Covid?
Not any members, though one member lost a brother through Covid and I’ve been giving support, others have suffered and survived it. But in the community a lot of work has come through because of Covid and – because I’m also a psychodynamic counsellor – I’ve been seeing a lot of clients one-to one about the things that Covid and lockdown have triggered.
I also run the Living Loss service with a colleague Dorothy Dwyer, and we’ve been running groups on Zoom which we found worked and brought a lot of comfort to those that attended.
