Meet The Team

Staff

Matt Rushby is the full-time Youth Worker with BCY. He has now been in Bury since 2008, getting stuck in to the thrills and spills of the life of a schools worker, and enjoying every minute! Matt works in the middle and upper schools of the district taking on assemblies, lessons, support of the Christian Unions, and regular Rock Solid clubs at Beyton and Howard Middle Schools. In addition, he heads up our prayer room project, Prayspace.

Besides working with young people, Matt has a real love of all things musical. He plays guitars, writes songs and has spent time with several bands (in and out of church!). He recently realised a teenage ambition and went to see his all-time favourite band, Pearl Jam, when they played the 02 in London. (He also thinks he has the best wife in the world - she got him the tickets for his 30th birthday present!) He likes to keep tabs on Colchester United, has finally saved up enough and bought a digital SLR, and recently became well and truly old by renewing his subscription to National Geographic!

Matt was born and raised in Colchester, Essex, is married to Sarah and they have a son, Amias, born in November 2008

Nicola Bolton has been with BCY since 2003, initially working part-time as our all-knowing, paper-work conquering administrator. What she doesn't know about BCY doesn't exist (or something like that...). In 2008 Nicola's role evolved and she has been taking on the challenge of our middle schools work - running Rock Solid lunchtime clubs in nine middle schools in Bury (for more details see the calendar), and also taking assemblies. She now produces Rock Solid material in an easy to use format for other people to use. In the future, Nicola hopes to be able to develop some of the pastoral opportunities that are coming her way - she is a great listener and has a real heart to show the love of Jesus to all of the pupils she meets through her work in the middle schools.

Nicola is an active lady - she loves hill walking, climbing and cycling - and is a devoted mum to her three children. She also has a strange fondness for various nuts and seeds (it all looks a bit like bird feed to be honest...), has in inordinate amount of milk in her tea and is widely regarded as 'absolutely lovely' by everyone she meets!

Nicola has always lived fairly locally, and is married to Nick.

Sarah Rushby heads up our sex and relationships project, LoveLife, currently on a voluntary basis.

Sarah was born in Halesworth, Suffolk, is married to Matt and they have a son, Amias, born in November 2008

Trustees

There are currently 10 trustees drawn from local churches across the area served by BCY and are both lay and ordained from a mixture of denominations. They all have current or prior experience with young people from being parents, teachers or youth workers.

 

Carla Auger has been a keen supporter of BCY since she moved to Suffolk 14 years ago; both her children went to house parties, etc., and her son, John, played guitar in the BCY band. After working as a retail manager for most of her life, she is now in semi-retirement and recently became a Grandma twice over! Carla is currently serving as interim Treasurer, following the retirement of Mark Wallace (former Treasurer) in July ’09. If you are someone with an accounting background who would like to join the Trustees, Carla will willingly hand over this responsibility to you!

Lesley Norburn is Bury born and bred, and has also been a Trustee of BCY since July ’08 (having done some voluntary minute keeping for the BCY Trustees meetings for a few years prior to Nicola taking over). She has been involved in local Christian youth and children’s work since 1980.  Lesley is married to Andrew, with a Zone-age daughter Harriet, and has been a Reader in the Blackbourne Team of churches since 1998 so has a real passion for supporting youth and children’s work in small rural places. Lesley works full time in IT for the NHS. Outside of work she has a great love of music (Sigur Rós anyone?), seeing bands live, walking, travelling to unusual places and art. She enjoys face-painting and acting when time permits.  

Brian Clarke comes from the North of England and has only recently joined us as a trustee in September 2009. He is a retired engineer, working as a university lecturer for most of his working career. He is married to Joy and they have three children and five grandchildren. He has been involved with children and youth work since he was a teenager. He currently runs ‘Open the Book’ in Bury which takes Bible stories into primary schools throughout the town and surrounding villages every two weeks with a team of about 100 volunteers. This provides an important foundation for the work of BCY in middle and upper schools.

Robert Green has been a trustee of Bury Christian Youth since July '09 and minister of Garland Street Baptist Church since September 2008. He is married to Heather and they have three sons, Adam, Luke and Joel and a daughter Hannah. Prior to moving to Suffolk he spent almost 20 years in Essex at Cranham Baptist Church (near Upminster)

Angus Barnard has lived in Bury since 2011. He was born and raised in Hertfordshire, trained as an architect in Sheffield and worked in London for a number of years. He now works for a small firm of architects in Cambridge and attends Bradfield and Rougham Baptist Church's Moreton Hall congregation. In his free time, he enjoys cycling, football and playing with his two young daughters. He is married to Liz, who he met at church in London in 2003.

Liz Barnard was born and raised in Ipswich and then returned to the county in 2011 after trying out Oxford, Nottingham, Exeter and London and deciding there was no place like home. She is married to Angus and they have 2 daughters, aged 3 and 5. Liz works part-time for Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury Councils as a policy officer. The rest of her time is taken up by the school run and finger painting! She attends Bradfield and Rougham Baptists Church's Moreton Hall congregation where she teaches in the Sunday School and plays the cello. She also enjoys Zumba and making lists.

Vanessa Harrison joined the board of Trustees in 2009 and is currently looks after our Safeguarding. She is married to Steve and they have two daughters, one now married and living in Nottingham and one at University in Ipswich.

She works in Bury as a dispenser and can sometimes be seen driving a taxi. Vanessa worships at Christ Church Moreton Hall and has been involved there since its first days of planting a church on Moreton Hall. She sings and plays guitar in the band there.

And -