GoHealth Podcast

In this episode of the GoHealth podcast, Gillian Straine speaks with Rev Canon Timothy Goode, priest, theologian, author, and Canon for Congregational Discipleship and Nurture at York Minster, about disability, ableism, healing, vulnerability, and the church’s imagination. 

Drawing on Tim’s personal story of cancer, paralysis, rehabilitation, ordination, and daily prayer with Psalm 139, the conversation explores what it means to be “fearfully and wonderfully made” at every stage and in every condition of life. 

Tim challenges the church to move beyond access as a matter of ramps and compliance, and towards a richer theology of agency, belonging, and the risen body of Christ: scarred, storied, limited, and gloriously held in God. Together, Gillian and Tim consider how healing ministry can honour the whole person without trying to erase pain, disability, history, or vulnerability. 

In this episode 

Links:
Breaking, Not Broken by Rev Canon Timothy Goode 
GoHealth’s Everyday Healing course 

A transcript of this episode is available here.

In this special episode, Wendy Lloyd is joined by David Pott, pilgrimage consultant, founder of pilgrimage routes, and one of the Walks4Life Collective, to explore the extraordinary healing potential of pilgrimage, and to introduce GoHealth's exciting new partnership with Walks4Life.

David shares his remarkable journey: from devising the Two Saints Way and six Northern Saints Trails in the northeast of England (two of which featured in the recent BBC Two pilgrimage series), to a personal experience of depression healed through a single day's walk, to a profound and moving encounter that became the catalyst for Walks4Life.

At the heart of the conversation is the story of Joshua, an eighteen-year-old who died by suicide after being blackmailed online, and how his father's grief, and David's walking alongside him, ignited the vision for Walks4Life as a structured, embodied response to the mental health crisis.

David introduces the four Cs that underpin Walks4Life, Creation, Community, Creativity, and Creator,  and reflects on how pilgrimage uniquely holds all four together, offering something that a walk alone cannot: intention, meaning, and encounter.

As David prepares to set out on a 135 mile sponsored pilgrimage along the North Wales Pilgrims Way to mark his eightieth birthday, raising funds to get Walks4Life properly underway, this conversation captures both the personal and the prophetic dimensions of what it means to walk with God.

In this episode:

A note before listening: This episode contains David's own story of depression and healing through pilgrimage, and also a story related to suicide. Please take care of yourself as you listen. Timestamps for these sections are included in the episode. There is no suggestion in this conversation that pilgrimage should replace medication or professional medical advice.

BBC Two Pilgrimage programme:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09w7lc0
 
To follow David's pilgrimage journey and support Walks4Life, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/walks4life-pilgrimage

To find out more about GoHealth, visit gohealth.org.uk

In this episode, Gillian Straine is joined by Graham Fender-Allison, a long-standing member of the GoHealth team with a background in facilitation, creative worship, and work with the Church of Scotland. Graham shares his personal faith journey — from a restless teenager in Glasgow encountering God in unexpected places, to finding deep healing through embodied worship and honest community. Together, Gillian and Graham explore what worship really is, how it heals us, where it can go wrong, and why the church can be one of the most profound places for human flourishing.

Graham opens up about coming to faith in his late teens, drawn in by watching his mother change, and by an unexpected encounter with a street preacher and a tract that set something stirring in him he couldn't quite name. He reflects on the formative influence of Renfield St Stephen's Church in Glasgow, with its remarkable breadth of worship styles, and how a diverse community held his many questions without trying to control his answers.

Gillian and Graham dig into the relationship between worship and identity, exploring how liturgy, embodied ritual and community can help us find out who God made and meant us to be. Graham reflects on how a driving anxiety around salvation gradually gave way, not through theological study alone, but through an inward journey toward seeing himself the way God sees him.

The conversation moves into the heart of GoHealth's work: what it means to create worship and training spaces that are genuinely healing — embodied, relational, multivalent, and safe for pain. Graham shares a powerful story from the Church of Scotland's National Youth Assembly, where a simple pilgrimage and stone-laying liturgy brought profound healing to a young couple who had experienced a miscarriage, and touched the lives of over 200 young people in completely different but equally real ways.

They also address the harder question of when healing ministry causes harm — and how good theology, listening, humility, and team-based ministry are essential safeguards.

Key Themes

In this episode, Gillian Straine speaks with Clare Whitney, a lay chaplain at Birmingham Women's and Children's Hospital and member of the GoHealth Community, currently training for ordination in the Church of England.

Clare's journey into chaplaincy began in a deeply personal moment — finding herself at her child's hospital bedside and encountering the ministry of chaplaincy first-hand. That experience of vulnerability became the seed of a vocation.

Together, Gillian and Clare explore what it really means to be a hospital chaplain: navigating busy wards, not always knowing whether someone wants to talk, and learning to come with what Clare describes as empty hands — offering presence rather than answers, in the liminal spaces where people find themselves when life has been turned upside down.

They reflect on the ministry of listening and story — how faith equips chaplains to help people make sense of their experiences — and on the particular challenge of living with the unfinished: rarely knowing how the story ends once someone leaves hospital.

The conversation also touches on the reality of ministering in contexts of profound loss, including pregnancy loss and the funerals of very young children, and on how chaplains care for themselves in a demanding and often unseen ministry.

Clare reflects on what the wider church might learn from chaplaincy — including a ministry of presence that resists the pressure to measure success in numbers and outcomes.

Content note: This episode touches on themes of pregnancy loss.

In this episode:

Sonnet 4.6

In this episode of the GoHealth Podcast, Gillian Straine, CEO of GoHealth, steps into a different kind of conversation. Rather than interviewing a guest, Gillian joins organisational consultant Wendy Ball for an honest, searching dialogue about what it means to lead well in a time of deep instability, in the church, in our organisations, and in the world.

Wendy Ball works with impact networks and charities to strengthen their identity, shared vision and partnerships. Her work has been described as being ‘a life coach for organisations’ — accompanying leaders and teams as they give attention to relational culture and strategic intent. 

Together, Gillian and Wendy explore:

The full transcript of the podcast can be found here.

People & Resources Mentioned

About GoHealth

GoHealth is an organization with a vision to enable churches and individual Christians to be a healing presence in the world. The GoHealth Community offers online courses, monthly gatherings, and a supportive space to explore how to connect faith and health.

Connect with GoHealth:

In this deeply moving conversation, Trystan Owain Hughes shares his journey of undertaking a 140-mile pilgrimage across North Wales while living with chronic pain, and the unexpected second pilgrimage that followed when his back injury worsened dramatically. Drawing from his latest book "To Hell's Mouth and Back: Pilgrimage, Suffering, and Hope," Trystan explores how vulnerability in leadership, finding meaning in suffering, and noticing "God winks" in everyday moments can transform our understanding of healing and hope. 

Key Topics Discussed

The Physical Pilgrimage

Resources Mentioned

Books:

Other references:

About GoHealth

GoHealth is an organization with a vision to enable churches and individual Christians to be a healing presence in the world. The GoHealth Community offers online courses, monthly gatherings, and a supportive space to explore how to connect faith and health.

Connect with GoHealth: