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 (12 in all), taking on assemblies, lessons, support of the Christian Unions, and an occasional Rock Solid. In addition, he is co-ordinating the Bury 'Pray For Schools' initiative, and exploring some exciting opportunities for collaborative work with other local youth leaders and organisations... watch this space!

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 - will they fare better at their new ground this season? - is saving up for a digital SLR (perhaps by the time he's 40 he'll have enough money...), and recently became well and truly old by subscribing 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 for nearly 8 years now, 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...). Three years ago Nicola's role evolved and she has been taking on the challenge of our middle schools work - running Rock Solid lunchtime clubs in five middle schools in Bury (for more details see the calendar), and also taking assemblies. Now officially our part-time Youth Worker, she is very excited about taking the middle schools work to the next level! Recently she has been producing Rock Solid material in an easy to use format for other people to use which has meant that we have been able to start new clubs in two other middle schools.  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.

Dan Goodwin Is the intern here at BCY and also Garland Street Baptist, Dan was volunteering last year with us by going along to St Louis Middle Rock Solid club. At the moment Dan's involvement is helping Nicola out with three Rock Solids and two days in the office. Dan is looking forward to this coming year also loving to see what God has in store for him in the future.

Dan is a very active person - loves to play football, He plays for Sporting 87 Reserves and Coaches Sporting 87 U12's. He is also involved with Great Barton Free Church youth group.

He is a local lad, who has lived in Bury St Edmunds all of his life.

Trustees

There are currently 7 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, and outside of work has a great love of music (Sigur Rós anyone?), seeing bands live, walking, travelling to unusual places, art, enjoys face-painting and acting when time permits.  She is one of the team who plan and run The Zone’s monthly meetings, and would love to hear from anyone who would like to get involved and help see The Zone develop and grow. If that's you, then contact the office!

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)

Vanessa Harrison is the newest addition to the Trustees - joining the board in the Summer term of 09.

The work of BCY is endorsed and encouraged by Christian workers, local church leaders, youth workers, and representatives of Christian associations. We are enormously grateful to them all as they support us with finance, volunteering, prayer and regular encouraging phone calls & emails! These supporters include:

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