- Mark Broadway joins the lifeboat crews in Porthcawl as well as his religious duties
A pastor who visited wards during the pandemic is now saving souls both in church and at sea in lifeboats.
Mark Broadway, who trained as a minister and volunteered as a Covid chaplain, now spends his spare time volunteering for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).
Mr Broadway, 36, joins the lifeboat crew at Porthcrawl on the Welsh coast when he receives a call to rescue someone in danger at sea, in addition to his regular religious duties.
He said: ‘I’m there as a volunteer, as a crew member and that means I’m not there as a pastor, but as me.’
But he revealed that one crew member, now his friend, initially “feared” the thought of having a pastor on board.
Vicar Mark Broadway now spends his spare time saving lives at sea as a volunteer for the RNLI
Mr Broadway volunteered as a Covid chaplain during the pandemic
SUPERHERO VICAR: Mark at sea with his lifeboat crew
‘He confided to me that when he first heard that the minister was joining the crew, he thought, ‘Oh no, this is going to be terrible, he’s going to be mad at us and tell us what to do.’
“I think the fact that we have become such good friends is proof that clergy are people too. I think it does something to dispel some of the images of what we think clergy are and who we think clergy are.”
Mr Broadway’s physical lifesaving has become so important that his own wedding was interrupted by a call for rescue, with his fellow crew members suddenly having to leave the ceremony.
He said: ‘The person who did the wedding was a good friend of mine and Jess and he joked at the start of the service, ‘Everyone needs to turn their phones off unless you’re in the lifeboat and you’re expecting the pager’ and everyone chuckled .
‘We didn’t know that twenty minutes later the pagers actually went off. It was really crazy.
‘It’s a nice memory for the day. What’s really nice is that the cry was successful, the victims were found unharmed and everyone got back in time for dinner!’.
The vicar now joins the lifeboat crew in Porthcawl when there is a call to save someone in danger
Pictured: Mark Broadway ministers to three churches near Porthcawl, South Wales
Mr. Broadway explained his decision to swap his cassock for a dry suit WalesOnline that sometimes God calls you to do something different.
The pastor was the youngest of six children, five brothers and a sister, and grew up in a non-religious family.
He started working in property law in Cardiff, before deciding to train at St Michael’s in Llandaff to become a vicar.
He was subsequently appointed to three churches around Porthcawl in August 2020.
Last November he released his first book, entitled ‘Journey with God in the Wilderness’.
But looking for something more ‘physical’ and outdoors, he was encouraged by the manager of a local gym to join the RNLI.
He added that volunteering as a lifeguard gave him substance for his sermons and a “perspective on the things that matter.”