Helllo! My name is James Handley, and I am an Asssociate Minister at St Mark’s Church, Harrogate, in the Diocese of Leeds. I am a Self Supporting Minister, or SSM, (which just means I don’t get paid!!). I also have a paid job four days a week as a Software Developer. I am going to use this blog to as a space for theological reflection, and hopefully also to share some of the Good News about Jesus.

A little more background: I grew up in London, studied computing at Imperial College, then worked for a bit, before moving to Yorkshire in 2000. I did some more study/work in computing at the University of Leeds, before moving into commercial software development. In 2014 I started ordination training at St Hild, and in 2017 I was ordained Deacon in the Church of England, and took up my title post at St Mark’s. In 2018 I was ordained Priest, and I completed my curacy in 2021.

I am passionate about discipleship, prayer, and worship, I love God and the Bible, and am also a bit partial to photography, cooking, and rock-climbing. You may notice that each time you load a new page you get a different image at the top – these are from a selection of the photos I’ve taken over the past 6 years, and I’m planning to keep rotating and refreshing these.

I am married, and we have two school-age boys. If you want to find out any more about my background, or have a look at the some my culinary exploits or photography, I have a personal website over at eutony.net. (I registered this domain before I’d heard of the complementary therapy of the same name – in my case it’s derived from the greek eu meaning ‘good’ and tonos meaning ‘sound’ or ‘music’ – thus “make a joyful noise unto the Lord!”)