John's Story: A Ministry Under Construction

Since meeting John Watson my perspective on life has changed. I now see the whole world as a building site.

In John’s experience building sites are dangerous, dusty and dirty places. They are overcrowded and noisy. In the middle of the apparent mess and confusion the forces of creation are being harnessed in a constant movement of change and transformation.
Building sites are very special places to John Watson. They are where he makes his living and they are the context where he works out his theology and applies his faith.

John began his working life as a joiner in the same Wearside shipyard that had employed his father. It wasn’t long before the decline of heavy industry in the North East stimulated John to explore opportunities for further study at Northumbria University, where he graduated with a degree in Construction Management. His first major project was as part of the team that built North Tyneside General hospital. He was involved from the ground up.
“There is nothing more exciting and creative than to stand in an empty field with only a theodolite and a few stakes and to end up 3 years later with a fully equipped health service facility ready to do its work. It was a fantastic opportunity for me and quite rare in construction to see a whole project through from beginning to end”.

Using the experience gained in construction site management, John soon went into a small construction project management consultancy and has worked there as a Director for the past 12 years. John leads the business which has developed an expertise in building multiplex cinemas from Maidenhead to Inverness, as well as managing a huge variety of urban construction projects. “In the construction industry teamwork is everything,” remarked John, “there is nothing that you can do on your own, you are completely dependent on the relationships that you build and how you bring your skills to work alongside others.” As in life, work relationships are everything.

The sheer delight that John so obviously gets from exercising his natural gifts for managing construction projects is not limited to his work. His skills are also put to work in support of high profile community development projects. He has been involved as a Governor of both successful and challenging schools and served four years as a local councillor on South Tyneside Council. It is the ambitious project at Primrose Village in Jarrow, however, that has absorbed John’s commitment and energy in the past few years. John’s guided tour of the project demonstrated not only his professional familiarity with every physical aspect of the project but a deep empathy of the life and learning that goes on within the space.

“The really important thing to realise, said John, is that the completion of the construction phase of a project is not the end but is the beginning. Inhabiting the space that has been created is where the real life changing experiences start.” He draws the parallel with the creation stories that are compressed into a very brief section of Genesis. “What I like about Genesis and creation is its busyness, its drive, its immediacy, almost chaos; everything happening at the same time and to a timescale. Often we don’t harness this. In life real delivery programs take much longer.

The whole of the rest of the Bible is about the struggle of inhabiting God’s world, learning and living. It requires the same ethos of working together but different skills and a different approach and much more patience.”

This insight came clearer to John while he was strengthening the foundations for his own faith. “I didn’t have any real church background. I had been baptised but hadn’t been to church on any regular basis for years.” What caused John to step over the threshold into his local church in Jarrow was his search for a code of living that could help him to bring out the best of himself in the adversarial environment that so often dominates industries, such as construction or even local community projects.

“I looked around and it seemed that people of faith had something that made them different.” John discovered what he was looking for and over the past few years has applied the same focus and energy to his faith development as he applies to the rest of his life and work.

Within a few years he was confirmed, attended the Bishop’s Faith and Life course and has just completed the Living Theology Today course. His hunger for learning is unabated. He has changed too. He now finds himself much more thoughtful, reflective and open to listening to others, even though he appreciates that in his industry this may not always be good for business!

Most importantly John has encountered the Jesus who was himself deeply involved in the construction industry. In his day he was probably engaged in a vast programme of urban expansion that was going on at that time in Jerusalem and Galilee. “The Jerusalem that Jesus enters, and in which he dies, is a building site.” John readily identifies with God’s down-to-earth engagement with the hard aspects of life that he finds in the life and work of Jesus. But even more exciting is the continuing work of Christ in the ongoing work of building his kingdom on earth. And it is in this respect that John sees the whole earth as a construction site in which we are each called to take our part in work of the church in the world.

What exactly John’s role is to be in this God inspired project is still to be fully discerned. He clearly recognises that his gifts and faith are to be worked out in hard places where his gentle steeliness can be put to work in a ministry of building communities of hope, pride and new beginnings.