This month’s Director’s Chair is retiring COO, Graham

The ‘Golden Thread’

This morning (10^th September 2025) I handed back my laptop and keys after 10 years in a paid role at The Door, having had my 11^th set of annual accounts signed off.

As I reflect on this change, I find myself in the midst of a tenuous door-related analogy, standing on a threshold, looking back at the roller coaster ride I’ve just got off and turning round to look with nervous anticipation of the one ahead that others will be piloting. 

Looking back I’m really grateful for God’s pretty miraculous provision of resources over the years, and the stories associated with it. There was the amazing online auction of 26 Gloucester Street during COVID whe n The Door was at serious risk of going under (you may remember the Keep The Door Open campaign) and no bid had met the reserve price at the time the auction was due to end.  There was the unexpected prompting I received last October to check the terms of our lease just in time for us to break it and put in motion our escape across the road from leaky, mouldy and gloomy offices to the bright, airy space we now occupy.  It was great that a number of you were able to join us at our recent official opening and experience it for yourselves.

And then there was the hunt for my successor, and somebody who hit our website looking for a job for a friend, stumbled across an advert for this role with a very esoteric job description, found out that she ticked every single box, and applied.  I’m really pleased that Mary Boitz has taken it on – I’ve had the great pleasure of working with Mary during our handover, and when I turn round and look forward it’s a great comfort to know that the nuts and bolts of The Door are in exceptionally good hands.  I’m sure you’ll be hearing from Mary in future newsletters.

These stories remind me of the memoir written by Brendan Conboy, who led The Door for 23 years after co-founding it back in 1991.  He called it The Golden Thread, referring to the influence of God’s Holy Spirit as a continuous sustaining thread running through the story of all the highs and lows of his own roller coaster ride.

Looking forward I see many challenges, the most pressing of which are our resourcing and our culture.  The resourcing issue is massive, and many local charities are currently facing existential crises as trust funding continues to be more limited and massively oversubscribed, and public funding is being reduced and redirected in the wake of health and social care changes and in anticipation of local government reorganisation.  We are right in the mix of this too.

Also the culture of The Door is in constant tension.  We took the step three years ago of trying to define it – from its Christian foundations in the ‘fruits of the Holy Spirit’ (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control) to a resulting code of behaviour – in a document called The Keys (yes, it’s another tenuous door-related analogy) to which all our staff of any faith or none subscribe.  The challenge is to turn this from a sterile code to which some merely pay lip service into the vibrant beating heart of the organisation, in which the deep peace of God, and attitudes of integrity, humility and sacrificial giving, prevail over self-righteous calling out and superficial virtue signalling, and ensure that we always seek to restore and not to cancel.

So I now move back to where I started over 30 years ago – supporting this great charity as a volunteer.  It’s a charity which is as much needed as it ever has been – the stats record that we positively impacted the lives of 1,441 service users just over the last year.

Now we really need all your support.  We really need my support.  And most of all we really need God’s support, sewing it all together with his Golden Thread. 

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