In my seventieth year it seems a good time to say goodbye to my media work after a lifetime of championing marginalised Christians and “telling a truer story” about the still very hidden mission of the church.
I shall be closing down this website, and the archive it holds, at the end of May.
Long before Substack offered alternative readership, it provided a shop window for some of the issues I care about. And it has served as the archive for Lapido Media which I founded and ran for twelve years to “speak up” for the forgotten church overseas.
I am reverting to what was my first love: garden design, a career that had to take second place to the chance I was offered in my twenties to work in newspapers.
As newspapers are replaced by online media – which cannot compare – I can only feel profound thankfulness that I made the decision I did. No one can take from me the memories of the people and places I met here and abroad, or the unparallelled satisfaction of working in newsprint, and later, in mission.
That story and their connections are written up in my book Saving Journalism.
But I no longer even want to write! I just want to work in the soil, with plants and plantspeople, nurturing life and giving joy.
A huge thank you therefore to everyone who was part of that life – those who helped and even those who hindered. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
And if you want to be in touch, please do so via the Kirby Laing Institute, where I remain an Associate Fellow.
jenny@kirbylainginstitute.co.uk