Canon Alan Harding writes:

WHEN, in the late 1960s, Rodney Nicholson was accepted for ordination training, he wrote to tell me the news and expressed his awe at the privilege of being called in this way to the service of Almighty God. That humble sense of the honour of ordination never left him. It also inspired me, years later, when I followed the same path.

Rodney, who died on 13 May, was born in Lancaster in 1945, and educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School, before going up to Merton College, Oxford. Here, he took the four-year degree course known as Mods and Greats (classical languages and literature, ancient history, and philosophy). He never flaunted his knowledge of Greek, but it became one of the tools that he used to enhance the integrity of his preaching. In the judgement of another Oxford contemporary, Rodney’s tutors at Merton taught him the skill to detect when other people were talking nonsense, and gave him a quiet confidence in his own judgement. At Oxford, he was actively involved in the Oxford Pastorate, centred on St Aldate’s Church, in the days of the great Keith de Berry. It was there that our paths first crossed.

After a brief spell in teaching, Rodney trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He served two curacies, in Colne and then at St John’s, Blackpool, under Hugo de Waal, before moving to his first incumbency at St Bartholomew’s, Ewood. One of the features of his ministry there was the establishment of youth camps at Calder Vale, and it was a great joy for him over the years to meet young people from those camps who were still active in their local churches. It was also at Ewood that Rodney met Kathleen who was then a health visitor in Blackburn. They were married in 1985, and were to have two much loved children, Rachel and Richard.

In 1990, Rodney moved to St Paul’s, Clitheroe, where he served for 25 years, latterly taking added responsibility for the rural parishes of Chatburn and Downham. At Clitheroe, he was able to advance many of the causes that were close to his heart. He inspired people to use Fairtrade tea and coffee, and made it the norm at all church events. He raised his congregation’s awareness of the Church Mission Society (CMS), not least by hosting extended visits to the parish for students from the CMS college in Birmingham. He encouraged support for the Leprosy Society, and for the Children’s Society, in the case of the latter by organising an annual door-to-door collection, together with an annual fund-raising lasagne supper. (He made the lasagne himself.)

He was an active supporter of Amnesty International, devoting much effort to lobbying on behalf of individual political prisoners. He also raised funds for Christian Aid, an activity that he continued as part of his decade-long retirement ministry, centred on his and Kathleen’s new home in Market Weighton, in Yorkshire. He raised several thousand pounds each year by door-to-door collections, largely single-handed. (I recall an occasion, in the course of his cancer, when he calculated that he could fit in one more Christian Aid collection, before the progress of his illness would make any more impossible.)

Rodney was alert to need and responded to it with practical action. A few years ago, he saw a television programme highlighting the shortage of kidneys for transfer, and so volunteered to go through the significant surgical procedure to donate one of his own kidneys to the donor bank. He never knew who received his transplanted kidney, but he did know that the operation was successful.

Rodney was also involved with the Accrington Night Shelter, a place where homeless young men could get a bed for the night: Rodney joined the rota for Night Attendants, who would be present through the night, both for security and to provide any help they could with the problems their clients might have. He also supported a scheme to bring children from Chernobyl, after the nuclear disaster, for respite stays in the UK.

Rodney was active in the study, as well as outside. For some years, he edited the Blackburn diocesan magazine, and in both his parishes, and on retirement to Market Weighton, he wrote, edited, printed, and collated a monthly parish magazine. He had a gift for drawing people out in interview, and the articles that he wrote in the light of those interviews became popular magazine pieces.

In 2006, Rodney was offered an honorary canonry of Blackburn Cathedral. Characteristically, he felt himself unworthy, and it took some persuasion to get him to accept.

If the above list of causes and activities implies a priest who had turned his back on the spiritual aspects of the gospel, then nothing could be further from the truth. Rodney was a dedicated parish priest to his fingertips. This was no doubt why he appeared as active a priest in retirement as before. Priests are called, in the words of the Ordinal, “to search for God’s children in the wilderness of the world’s temptations, and to guide them through its confusions, that they may be saved through Christ for ever”. That was at the heart and soul of Rodney’s calling, and of his obedience to it. And many — from his congregations in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and those of us fortunate enough to have been part of his friendship circle — give thanks to God for it.

I believe that it was said by (or possibly of) the hermit and martyr Charles de Foucauld: “If that is what the servants are like, how I long to meet the Master.” Faithfully, consistently — and smilingly — Rodney was that loyal servant who helped so many of us to look forward in hope to meeting our Master.