Farewell Rev Bob Mayo

Rev Bob Mayo

The Reverend Bob Mayo, who has been vicar of St Stephen's and St Thomas church on the Uxbridge Rd since 2005, is to leave us in February.

On December 2nd, Bob announced that he and his wife Sylvie will be leaving St Stephen’s. Bob will be moving to Rochester in Kent to take up the post of Chaplain at Rochester Prison, a detention centre for young offenders, formerly known as Borstal Prison.

We asked Bob to talk about his experience of life in Shepherd's Bush over the past twelve years, how the neighbourhood has changed, and about the challenges of his new journey.

St Stephen's & St Thomas, Uxbridge Rd

"Shepherd's Bush is a community of communities. It is the exciting and isolating, vibrant and lonely place that I have been proud to call my home since 2005, as the priest of St Stephen's and St Thomas Shepherds Bush with St Michael and St George White City.

Shepherd's Bush combines a residential population of 39,000, with a footfall of a million people in a week. Shepherd's Bush thrives on the Uxbridge Road, the longest residential road in Europe with the most languages spoken. At the same time, the area identifies 38% of her houses as single occupancy. There are five underground stations, one over ground station and a bus station all within a short distance of each other.

There is a liquid base to the community which means that people can move in and out of the area freely. It means that Shepherd's Bush has a proud history of inclusivity and welcome. When the Ayam Zaman Restaurant decided to use our church hall for Iftar meals during Ramadan they emulsion whitewashed the walls of the hall for free and described it to us as a gift from the community.

We have to read newspapers to understand Brexit because it makes so little sense to us in our cross-cultural, multi-racial many-faith life together. In the 1960s it was in Shepherd's Bush that Caribbean families were first made welcome. St Stephen's Church even set up the Shepherds Bush Housing Association to ensure that this was so.

When we arrived in the parish a Polish family parked their car in our drive for a month and lived out of their car while they looked for work. They were wonderful people and came back that Christmas with a Christmas card and a bottle of wine.  A homeless man came to the vicarage every evening for five years and taught me to see the world through the eyes of the poor and dispossessed; eventually he left for a flat in Earls Court.

The vicarage became a safe-haven for vulnerable people on crowded London streets.  People would knock on the door after they had been released from Wormwood Scrubs with nowhere to stay.  I would sit late into the night on the steps of the church and talk with them.  One Saturday I sat with a concert goer and talked through the night about why he should not commit suicide.  I was in church, a few hours later, preaching about the love of God in Christ Jesus.

I have seen the Westfield Shopping Centre open and develop a doughnut economy with all the jam at the centre and little effect on the local communities of Shepherd's Bush and White City.  It is still the case that life expectancy in Hammersmith and Fulham is three years shorter than that of Kensington and Chelsea.

HM Prison, Rochester

I am leaving after twelve happy years in Shepherd's Bush to become Chaplain at Rochester Prison and work with young offenders.

My last service at St Stephen's will be at 10am on Sunday February 3rd.  I will leave with Shepherd's Bush in my heart to carry on what the area does so well, which is to draw people from the edges of society back into the centre.

70% of young offenders re-offend once they have left prison. I will come with a listening ear, a loving heart and a determined mind, and try to help prisoners to understand that there are different ways of living out their future.

My challenge for this next period of my life is to answer a comment made by Mother Theresa. She said that “the greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There is a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”

Therein is my task: to meet the hunger for love and for God that lies within people from inside our prisons."

To see more about Bob, read this article at the official LBHF Site.

The Shepherd's Bush Blog offers a personal view on life in Shepherd's Bush. If you would like to contribute a story about our neighbourhood, email us at shepherdsbushblog@gmail.com