Pastor Christian Weaver

Q: You open by stressing “it’s your health, most importantly.” What sits behind that emphasis?

Health for me is holistic. It’s body, mind, and spirit working in concert. When I say “health,” I don’t just mean a blood pressure reading; I mean the spiritual steadiness that lets a person learn from life without being broken by it. None of us is perfect—I certainly am not—but we can aim to be better. Mistakes are part of being human; the only real mistake is refusing to learn from them. My faith tells me God hasn’t “come down” to do it all for us; God works with us and among us while we strive to become better people. That’s the health I’m talking about—a whole life oriented to growth.

Q: Can you give an example of how learning from mistakes figures in your pastoral work?

People confide difficult things. One man told me he’d had an affair at thirty-five; it cost him his marriage. Two years later, he felt God nudging him to stop running from the truth. He wrote to his former wife: “I can do better this time.” They reconciled and have been figuring it out—imperfectly but faithfully—ever since. That’s the pattern I recognize: confession, learning, and a renewed attempt to live rightly. As a pastor I try not to sit in judgment. I sit alongside people in that learning.

Q: What did you imagine your life might become when you were young?

I didn’t have a tidy plan. What I had were strong examples and a love for drawing and painting. My mother was a widow very young. She decided she would steer her own life and taught me that dignity. People respected her in our community in Jamaica. I started painting as a boy—flowers on glass for Christmas, small decorative jobs for shops. Older artists noticed and sometimes paid me to help. I had skill in my hand and joy in the making.

Q: You once explored a very different calling—policing.

Briefly. As a teenager I thought about becoming a police officer, but I was underage when I first tried. By the time I could apply, my heart was elsewhere. I wanted to work with people, not police them. Looking back, that intuition led me toward social work and then the ministry.

Q: When did you arrive in the UK, and how did you experience those first years?

I came in 1960. There was racism—overt and ordinary. Some jobs I could do with excellence and still be treated as if I shouldn’t be there. My mother’s voice steadied me: “You are inferior to nobody, and nobody is superior to you.” I carried that into shops, buses, churches. I lived in Birmingham for a time, went to public talks, kept painting—I have pieces from 1962. It wasn’t easy, but I chose to keep my dignity and not be defined by someone else’s smallness.

Q: How did you discern a call to ministry?

Slowly, through service. I trained in social work and youth work and realized my deepest work was spiritual—helping people stitch their lives back together. I moved to Nottingham to take up a post and, alongside my wife, began holding small gatherings—home meetings, music and prayer, open-air sessions in the Old Market Square. That was the seed that became our church community.

Q: You co-founded Pilgrim Church. When?

1965. We met wherever we could—school halls, borrowed rooms, people’s living rooms. My wife is a gifted musician; she led worship from a piano we managed to install with permission. Those years were about presence: being visible in the city, making room for people to belong.

Q: Your painting practice runs through your story. How do art and faith meet for you?

They’re inseparable. There’s a painting I made for the church—Christ, a Black man, carrying the cross. It carries two messages. First, theological: the incarnation meets us in our skin and history. Second, social: Black and white, we carry burdens together; dignity belongs to all. After one service, a teenager said, “My eyes were opened when I saw that painting.” Art spoke where a sermon might not. I’ve also painted community scenes—Black, white, Asian neighbours together—to witness that humanity is one family. For me, art is a sacrament of seeing.

Q: You established supplementary education alongside the church. Why?

Because too many of our young people were being pushed to the margins—excluded for behaviour, written off as “low ability,” or quietly set apart because they were Black. I knew the children. I heard them. I knew the teachers, too. The problem wasn’t capacity; it was expectation. We set up a supplementary school we called Calabash—named for the gourd that carries nourishment. Volunteers from our congregation and other local churches taught literacy and numeracy, but also drama and art. We took trips; we encouraged voice and confidence. We invited teachers and police trainees to observe joint sessions so that Black and white professionals learned side by side and saw our children’s potential with their own eyes.

Q: Do you still have materials from those programmes?

Yes—photos, handouts, videos. I’ve promised to share them for archiving and exhibition. These memories shouldn’t sit in a box. They belong to the community’s living history.

Q: Beyond Calabash, what forms did your anti-racist work take?

Everyday presence—accompanying parents to schools, speaking with headteachers, organizing youth activities so streets weren’t the only option. Sometimes it meant demonstrations or public meetings. Often it meant pastoral work that the newspapers never see: visiting a family facing homelessness, writing a reference, sitting with someone in court. Anti-racism isn’t a single tactic; it’s a posture of solidarity in daily life.

Q: Your wife appears throughout your story.

She’s my best partner in life and ministry. She comes from a musical family, and music has always been her gift to the church—choirs, youth groups, community celebrations. She played until late into her illness, and even then the muscle memory of worship remained. Many of the best things we did, we did together.

Q: You mentioned the importance of archiving. What would you like to see happen?

A proper community archive—digitized photographs, recordings, pamphlets—so the next generation can see what was built before them. Not to enshrine the past, but to equip the future. We’ve talked about working with local partners to house materials and curate exhibitions. I’m eager to help. An archive is a covenant: “We were here. This is what we learned. Now take it further.”

Q: How have aging and caregiving shaped you?

Profoundly. Years ago, I dislocated my shoulder—clumsy moment in a stairwell—and had it set in hospital. Later, my wife developed dementia. “In sickness and in health” stopped being words and became our daily life. Caregiving drew me into a different kind of ministry—quiet, repetitive, patient. You learn that illness is not an enemy to be “conquered” but a teacher that slows you down and reveals what love actually does. There is grief in it, yes, and there is grace. Faith, for me, became less about certainty and more about presence—God’s with us, and our being with one another.

Q: How did you approach leadership development in the church?

Intentionally and early. I put young people in real roles—leading, organizing, learning by doing. I encouraged them toward further study and made space for their gifts to grow. Many I dedicated as infants I later welcomed into leadership as adults. That is one of the joys of staying put long enough: you see seeds become branches. Today, I can step back in peace because others have stepped forward.

Q: You also speak about family expanding through ministry.

Yes. We “adopted” a daughter through church work—someone who came because of children’s ministry and stayed as family. She became a teacher, a community person, a lover of art. That’s the fruit I care about—lives that cross race and class boundaries and build real kinship.

Q: Are you still making art?

I want to be back at the easel more. Over the decades, many paintings went into people’s homes; others were gifts. My own style has changed—some would say it’s become “more English,” though the Caribbean colours still live in me. I’m sketching toward a small exhibition and considering a conversation with local galleries about showing work. Not for vanity, but because art still gathers people into hard and hopeful conversations.

Q: You described how one painting functioned as theology. Are there other images that have had that impact?

We once hung a series showing Black and white figures building together, singing together, carrying each other’s burdens. During a birthday celebration, a young person told me, “My eyes were opened today.” That’s the gift of an image: it can slip past defence and plant a seed of recognition. The Gospel is not just words. It’s bread, song, touch, and sometimes paint on the wall.

Q: Looking back, what would you say actually “worked” in your community practice?

Three things. First, presence: showing up consistently—in homes, schools, hospitals—so people know where to find you. Second, participation: not doing for people what they can do with you—co-creating programmes like Calabash so dignity grows alongside skill. Third, passing-on: developing younger leaders early so the work belongs to the generation that will carry it. If you do those three, the rest—grants, buildings, events—find their proper place.

Q: Has institutional life caught up with the values you’ve preached?

Somewhat. There are more Black councillors, more diverse workforces, more public statements of equality. Yet subtle forms of exclusion persist—low expectations, polite avoidance, opportunities that never quite reach the people who need them. That is why community-based work remains crucial. Systems change, but slowly; people need support now. The church, if it is true to its call, lives in that space—alongside the wounded and persistent.

Q: What counsel would you offer younger people who want to do what you’ve done—build communities, make art, live their faith?

Start with listening. People are not projects; they are teachers. Build on what already exists—neighbourhood strengths, aunties and uncles who’ve held things together for years. Keep your integrity; don’t bend your purpose to every new fashion. Use your creativity not only on canvas or stage but in how you solve problems—how you raise funds, share space, and welcome difference. Treat mistakes as mentors. Rest when it is time to rest. And remember: the work is generational. Plant trees whose fruit your grandchildren will taste.

Q: Where do you locate joy these days?

In gatherings where the music lifts before a word is spoken. In seeing a child I baptized chairing a meeting with calm. In my wife’s hands finding a melody she learned as a girl. In sitting quietly with someone who thinks they’ve ruined their life and watching hope return to their face. In birthdays that turn into surprise parties because people insist on gratitude. Joy is not noise; it’s recognition: God has not left us alone.

Q: What sustains you now?

A simple prayer: “Thank you.” I wake with it and I go to bed with it. Gratitude doesn’t erase suffering; it anchors me in reality. I’m grateful for the elders who shaped me, for the youth who surpass me, for art that still surprises me, and for the chance—every day—to be of some use. If I can keep saying “thank you,” I can keep saying “yes” to the next task.

Q: What’s next?

Two strands. First, archive and share—work with partners to preserve the materials from Calabash and the church so others can build from them. Second, make and mentor—paint again, and keep encouraging young people into leadership. The motto in my head is simple: leave the work better than you found it.

Q: If you could leave one line above the door of every community space in the city, what would it say?

 “We belong to one another.” That’s the whole story: health, art, justice, worship—it all begins there.