Chris Leech - Northern Ireland

Chris has been married to Debbie for over 25 years and they have 3 amazing children. A Pastor in Emmanuel Church Portadown, he is passionate about the church’s role in bringing Kingdom transformation to the community. Chris believes that Christian involvement in effective community development must come from informed best practice and through a lens of biblical justice. Chris and his wife Debbie moved from Belfast in 2006 to plant a Vineyard Church in Portadown. Setting up their church building as a centre for the community on the site of a former army base, they established several community engagement projects. Passionate about the environment and how Christians engage with creation care, Chris established a community allotment in 2012 on an unused plot of land. His team carried out a number of food growing projects as part of their community engagement strategy. Chris is an anti-poverty campaigner and the Chairman of Craigavon Area Food Bank. Having established a food project during the recession of 2008, this evolved into a regional inter-church food bank in 2012. Chris has been involved in strategic community development with his local district council over the past 8 years, working with various community stakeholders to develop strategic outcomes for tackling poverty in urban and rural communities. He has also been involved in poverty advocacy work with the UK government at regional and national levels. When he is not talking about injustice and the damage that Neoliberal ideas have done to society, he loves road cycling and making frequent coffee stops. Keen to learn from the expertise of others, Chris has spent the last 3 years at the University of Ulster studying for a BSc in Community Development.

Blog: https://medium.com/@chrisleechni