Rev Marc Pattern, minister at six Methodist Churches in the Worth Valley, officially retires this weekend after 40 years as a clergyman. Tributes to his work and ministry will be paid on Sunday evening at the church at Marsh, Oxenhope, at a farewell service for the Keighley and Worth Valley Circuit.

Lincolnshire-born Mr Pattern worked as a journalist from the ages of 18 to 20 before beginning his ministerial training at Handsworth College, Birmingham, now Queens Ecumenical College.

On completion of his training he married Olive and the couple celebrated their ruby wedding anniversary earlier this year. They have three sons.

Following ordination Mr Pattern became minister in South Shields where he worked in shipyards and collieries.

Later he moved to High Wycombe, where he was also chaplain to RAF Bomber Command at nearby Naphill and in the 1970s to Hatfield, where he was a member of a team ministry shared with Anglicans and United Reformed Church clergy and worked as a student chaplain.

In 1976 he moved to King Cross, Halifax, the church where he had been ordained, where there were numerous community activities. Six years later Mr Pattern became superintendent minister at Great Horton, Bradford, where a day shelter for homeless people was begun.

Then followed five years as superintendent at Brig-house, where the church was refurbished following an arson attack, before the move to Keighley and Worth Valley in 1991 as a circuit minister and a lay preacher tutor.

Mr Pattern has also served the church's West Yorkshire District as Home Missions Secretary, press and information officer and advisor on TV and radio.

In the Worth Valley he will be succeeded in September by Rev Margaret Christ-opher, who is currently serving in the Upper Calder Circuit.

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