In this episode of the GoHealth podcast, Gillian Straine speaks with Rev Canon Timothy Goode, priest, theologian, author, and Canon for Congregational Discipleship and Nurture at York Minster, about disability, ableism, healing, vulnerability, and the church’s imagination.

Drawing on Tim’s personal story of cancer, paralysis, rehabilitation, ordination, and daily prayer with Psalm 139, the conversation explores what it means to be “fearfully and wonderfully made” at every stage and in every condition of life.

Tim challenges the church to move beyond access as a matter of ramps and compliance, and towards a richer theology of agency, belonging, and the risen body of Christ: scarred, storied, limited, and gloriously held in God. Together, Gillian and Tim consider how healing ministry can honour the whole person without trying to erase pain, disability, history, or vulnerability.

In this episode

• Tim’s lived experience of disability, cancer, paralysis, rehabilitation, and ministry
• Why ableism is about more than disability, and how it shapes church culture
• The difference between access as compliance and access as agency
• Why “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” can become a daily act of truth-telling
• How buildings, pulpits, welcome teams, and worship spaces “preach” who is imagined and who is not
• The danger of idealising strength, independence, and the “perfect” body
• Why the risen body of Christ offers a better Christian anthropology: scarred, storied, and imaginative
• How healing ministry can centre consent, dignity, story, and belonging
• Why vulnerability and limits are not failures, but sources of imagination and transformation

Links:
Breaking, Not Broken by Rev Canon Timothy Goode
GoHealth’s Everyday Healing course

A transcript of this episode is available here.

In this special episode, Wendy Lloyd is joined by David Pott, pilgrimage consultant, founder of pilgrimage routes, and one of the Walks4Life Collective, to explore the extraordinary healing potential of pilgrimage, and to introduce GoHealth's exciting new partnership with Walks4Life.

David shares his remarkable journey: from devising the Two Saints Way and six Northern Saints Trails in the northeast of England (two of which featured in the recent BBC Two pilgrimage series), to a personal experience of depression healed through a single day's walk, to a profound and moving encounter that became the catalyst for Walks4Life.

At the heart of the conversation is the story of Joshua, an eighteen-year-old who died by suicide after being blackmailed online, and how his father's grief, and David's walking alongside him, ignited the vision for Walks4Life as a structured, embodied response to the mental health crisis.

David introduces the four Cs that underpin Walks4Life, Creation, Community, Creativity, and Creator, and reflects on how pilgrimage uniquely holds all four together, offering something that a walk alone cannot: intention, meaning, and encounter.

As David prepares to set out on a 135 mile sponsored pilgrimage along the North Wales Pilgrims Way to mark his eightieth birthday, raising funds to get Walks4Life properly underway, this conversation captures both the personal and the prophetic dimensions of what it means to walk with God.

In this episode:

• How David became a pilgrimage consultant (and what one actually does)
• The Northern Saints Trails and the BBC Two pilgrimage series
• Walking as healing: solvitur ambulando — it is solved by walking
• The story of Joshua, and how it catalysed Walks4Life
• The four Cs of mental health and pilgrimage
• The GoHealth and Walks4Life partnership
• David's 138-mile birthday pilgrimage on the North Wales Pilgrims Way

A note before listening: This episode contains David's own story of depression and healing through pilgrimage, and also a story related to suicide. Please take care of yourself as you listen. Timestamps for these sections are included in the episode. There is no suggestion in this conversation that pilgrimage should replace medication or professional medical advice.

BBC Two Pilgrimage programme:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09w7lc0

To follow David's pilgrimage journey and support Walks4Life, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/walks4life-pilgrimage

To find out more about GoHealth, visit gohealth.org.uk

In this episode, Gillian Straine is joined by Graham Fender-Allison, a long-standing member of the GoHealth team with a background in facilitation, creative worship, and work with the Church of Scotland. Graham shares his personal faith journey — from a restless teenager in Glasgow encountering God in unexpected places, to finding deep healing through embodied worship and honest community. Together, Gillian and Graham explore what worship really is, how it heals us, where it can go wrong, and why the church can be one of the most profound places for human flourishing.

Graham opens up about coming to faith in his late teens, drawn in by watching his mother change, and by an unexpected encounter with a street preacher and a tract that set something stirring in him he couldn't quite name. He reflects on the formative influence of Renfield St Stephen's Church in Glasgow, with its remarkable breadth of worship styles, and how a diverse community held his many questions without trying to control his answers.

Gillian and Graham dig into the relationship between worship and identity, exploring how liturgy, embodied ritual and community can help us find out who God made and meant us to be. Graham reflects on how a driving anxiety around salvation gradually gave way, not through theological study alone, but through an inward journey toward seeing himself the way God sees him.

The conversation moves into the heart of GoHealth's work: what it means to create worship and training spaces that are genuinely healing — embodied, relational, multivalent, and safe for pain. Graham shares a powerful story from the Church of Scotland's National Youth Assembly, where a simple pilgrimage and stone-laying liturgy brought profound healing to a young couple who had experienced a miscarriage, and touched the lives of over 200 young people in completely different but equally real ways.

They also address the harder question of when healing ministry causes harm — and how good theology, listening, humility, and team-based ministry are essential safeguards.

Key Themes

• How faith begins: unexpected encounters, curious questions, and the gift of community
• Worship as the place where we discover who God made us to be
• Embodied liturgy and symbolic action as pathways to healing
• Why worship must be multivalent — speaking differently to each person present
• The risks of healing ministry done badly, and how to spot the signs
• Worship as a safe place for pain — and for joy

• Sounding like yourself. This self-led online course, drawn from a lecture by Dr Doug Gay, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Glasgow, explores the profound connections between healing and human flourishing.

In this episode, Gillian Straine speaks with Clare Whitney, a lay chaplain at Birmingham Women's and Children's Hospital and member of the GoHealth Community, currently training for ordination in the Church of England.

Clare's journey into chaplaincy began in a deeply personal moment — finding herself at her child's hospital bedside and encountering the ministry of chaplaincy first-hand. That experience of vulnerability became the seed of a vocation.

Together, Gillian and Clare explore what it really means to be a hospital chaplain: navigating busy wards, not always knowing whether someone wants to talk, and learning to come with what Clare describes as empty hands — offering presence rather than answers, in the liminal spaces where people find themselves when life has been turned upside down.

They reflect on the ministry of listening and story — how faith equips chaplains to help people make sense of their experiences — and on the particular challenge of living with the unfinished: rarely knowing how the story ends once someone leaves hospital.

The conversation also touches on the reality of ministering in contexts of profound loss, including pregnancy loss and the funerals of very young children, and on how chaplains care for themselves in a demanding and often unseen ministry.

Clare reflects on what the wider church might learn from chaplaincy — including a ministry of presence that resists the pressure to measure success in numbers and outcomes.

Content note: This episode touches on themes of pregnancy loss.

In this episode:

• How Clare came to chaplaincy through her own experience as a hospital parent
• What a typical day looks like as a hospital chaplain
• The ministry of "empty hands" and presence in liminal spaces
• Listening to people's stories and helping them find meaning
• Living with the unfinished — when you don't get to know how it ends
• Self-care and trauma awareness in chaplaincy ministry
• What the church can learn from chaplains

• The Chaplaincy Course: Healing and Presence — GoHealth's new online course exploring the ministry of presence, the theology of healing, loss and lament, and the science of pastoral ministry. Available from mid-April at gohealth.org.uk

Sonnet 4.6

In this episode of the GoHealth Podcast, Gillian Straine, CEO of GoHealth, steps into a different kind of conversation. Rather than interviewing a guest, Gillian joins organisational consultant Wendy Ball for an honest, searching dialogue about what it means to lead well in a time of deep instability, in the church, in our organisations, and in the world.

Wendy Ball works with impact networks and charities to strengthen their identity, shared vision and partnerships. Her work has been described as being ‘a life coach for organisations’ — accompanying leaders and teams as they give attention to relational culture and strategic intent.

Together, Gillian and Wendy explore:

• The strain and burnout that leaders across sectors are experiencing.
• What ‘sane leadership’ looks like.
• Personal wellbeing rooted in theology.
• The value of good practical systems.
• Gillian’s personal leadership journey.
• The qualities of grounded, resilient leadership — including the courage to ask for help
• Wendy’s vision of ‘lovefare’: organising effectively for connection, justice and the common good.

The full transcript of the podcast can be found here.

People & Resources Mentioned

• Margaret Wheatley — Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity
• Simon Sinek — Start With Why (concept of beginning with purpose)
• Professor Jim McManus — Head of Public Health and Wellbeing for Wales, former President of GoHealth
• Tucker Miller — participatory leadership practitioner; quoted on asking for help as a quality of trustworthy leadership
• Martin Luther King — ‘Those who love peace must learn to organise as effectively as those who love war’
• Wendy Ball’s work — find her via linktr.ee and sign up to her mailing list to learn more about her lovefare work.

About GoHealth

GoHealth is an organization with a vision to enable churches and individual Christians to be a healing presence in the world. The GoHealth Community offers online courses, monthly gatherings, and a supportive space to explore how to connect faith and health.

Connect with GoHealth:

• Join the GoHealth Community
• Join the conversation about vulnerability and impactful leadership

In this deeply moving conversation, Trystan Owain Hughes shares his journey of undertaking a 140-mile pilgrimage across North Wales while living with chronic pain, and the unexpected second pilgrimage that followed when his back injury worsened dramatically. Drawing from his latest book "To Hell's Mouth and Back: Pilgrimage, Suffering, and Hope," Trystan explores how vulnerability in leadership, finding meaning in suffering, and noticing "God winks" in everyday moments can transform our understanding of healing and hope.

Key Topics Discussed

The Physical Pilgrimage

• The Pilgrim's Way: 140 miles across North Wales to Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli)
• Undertaken eight years after major back surgery (titanium bolt between vertebrae)
• Challenges included knee injury, getting lost, bad weather, and ongoing chronic pain
• Five elements that define pilgrimage: suffering, wonder of nature, friendship, dependence on God and others, and signs from God

• Extreme back pain returned the day after completing the walk
• Spent a month largely confined to a red sofa
• Explores the "pilgrimage mindset" - finding the same sources of hope whether on a 140-mile walk or a 30-yard walk to a lake
• Viktor Frankl's insight: suffering expands to fill whatever space we're in, regardless of size

• The goldfinch as a traditional Christian symbol of healing
• "God winks" - moments when God prompts, directs, or comforts us
• Carl Jung on synchronicity: "People don't see God in their lives because they don't look long enough"
• Scientific backing from neuroscientist Tara Swart and the concept of spiritual intelligence

• The healing shrine of St. Winifred at Holywell
• Remote churches, healing wells, and crosses along the route
• Welsh concepts: Heddwch (outer peace) vs. Tangnefedd (inner peace)
• R.S. Thomas's "confetti moments" - small instances where hope, love, and joy break through

• Why Trystan chose to share his personal story after seven previous books
• The challenge of being defined by disability rather than seen as a whole person
• New criteria for Church in Wales ministry that emphasizes vulnerability and weakness as strengths
• "We don't want Superman in our churches. We want Lois Lane's, Clark Kent's - real people who are vulnerable, open, and compassionate"

Resources Mentioned

Books:

• "To Hell's Mouth and Back: Pilgrimage, Suffering, and Hope" by Trystan Owain Hughes
• "Finding Hope and Meaning in Suffering" by Trystan Owain Hughes

Other references:

• "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl
• "The Signs" by Tara Swart
• Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood"
• Carl Jung's work on synchronicity
• Edith Eger (Holocaust survivor and psychologist)
• David Gray's album "Life in Slow Motion"

About GoHealth

GoHealth is an organization with a vision to enable churches and individual Christians to be a healing presence in the world. The GoHealth Community offers online courses, monthly gatherings, and a supportive space to explore how to connect faith and health.

Connect with GoHealth:

• Join the GoHealth Community
• Join the conversation about vulnerability and impactful leadership

• Bishop Sarah’s reflections on saying “yes” to the call to be Archbishop of Cantebury and discerning vocation.
• How her nursing background shapes her ministry and leadership style.
• The importance of holistic health and rhythms of wellbeing for clergy and leaders.
• Servant leadership in practice—and its challenges in a culture of power.
• Cultural change in safeguarding and creating safe spaces in the church.
• Practical ways churches can engage in social prescribing and community health.
• Bishop Sarah’s hopes for the church and the nation as she steps into her new role.

• Dance as expression: Rachel discovered early on that movement can express what words can’t.
• From stage to healing: She shifted from professional dance to dance movement psychotherapy, helping others connect body, mind and spirit.
• Healing through movement: Gentle awareness of posture, breath and gesture helps release emotion and restore balance.
• Working with trauma: Movement can safely unlock feelings held in the body, bringing freedom and integration.
• Embodied prayer: Rachel links movement and Scripture — especially Psalm 139 — to explore the body as a place of encounter with God.
• Rediscovering the body in faith: Many Christians learn to ignore the body; Rachel invites us to see it as sacred and central to prayer.
• Faith meets science: The conversation celebrates how research on spirituality and neuroscience echoes ancient Christian wisdom about embodied prayer.