"The God we worship in our churches is the God who is at work in the world" Archdeacon in waiting Peter Robinson talks to Link editor Sue Scott.

IN becoming Archdeacon of Lindisfarne, Peter Robinson takes over an ancient title which evokes the Christian heritage of Holy Island and the Kingdom of Northumbria, but which now involves not only church administration and the spiritual oversight of numerous parish churches, but also partnership working with secular authorities and voluntary organisations.

It's a role he's amply qualified to take over and develop. As priest in charge of St. Martin's in Byker, he and his development team have had to work with national and local government organisations, voluntary bodies, community groups and church people, holding all together and emerging in 2006 with a pounds 1.8m refashioned church and community facility.

The people of Byker have seen St. Martin's transformed from a dilapidated building with a perilous future into a community centre, children's facility and worship space recently visited by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. At the same time, St. Michael's parish church has become a focus for cultural events while St. Silas, also in Byker, has opened its doors to community organisations working with the homeless. "The God we worship in our churches is the God who is at work in the world," Peter Robinson says. "Our mission is to join in that work and align ourselves with what's going on, with God's activity in every part of his creation."

This is the manifesto that he will take with him to his new job as Archdeacon of Lindisfarne - a job which sees the boundaries of his territory expanded as part of the reorganisation of the two Newcastle archdeaconries.

"The Church seeks to have a voice in the kind of society, the kind of region, we want to be," he says, "And to do that we have to work in partnership with others. In the globalising economy - which unites us and fragments us at the same time - no one organisation can handle the emerging complexity on its own. We all need each other." Peter Robinson grew up in New Maiden, Surrey, and first came to the North-east in 1985 as a salesman for the oil industry. With a degree in natural sciences from Cambridge he - seemed set for a high-flying career, but instead he became a priest, I being sponsored by the Oxford Diocese and training at Cranford Hall, Durham before being ordained to a curacy in the North Shields team.

He has led the Urban Ministry and Theology Project in Byker since 1999, working closely with lay and ordained colleagues on the church's engagement with a rapidly changing social, economic and cultural context. Currently he represents the voluntary and community sector on the Walker Riverside Partnership Board, and as a theological educator he is also involved in the emerging Regional Training Partnership for the north east. Nationally, he is taking part in the follow-up to the Church of England's Faithful Cites report, both leading contextual theology workshops and writing on urban mission. He cites one of his most important moments in Byker as the time when St. Michael's parishioners, with their church roof leaking onto them, moved into the old bakery in Raby Cross for their services.

"One of the community co-ordinators told us that we'd made the place feel human again." he said. "That wasnt our explicit intention - we simply needed somewhere to meet - but by being church in that place we had brought life and hope. That sums up what we're all about." Now Peter Robinson plans to use the lessons from Byker in the wider community of Northumberland, listening carefully and seeking to position the Church as a key player in debates about regeneration, development and changing environments, "standing alongside the people who struggle most with those processes." With his wife Sarah, who teaches adults in North Tyneside, and his teenage sons Charles and Richard, Peter will be making his home in Mor-peth.

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ABOVE The regenerated St. Martin's Church in Byker and inset left Canon Peter Robinson, who becomes the new Archdeacon of Lindisfarne