YOUTH club founder Andrew Calvert is due this weekend to take over as the leader of a church he has attended since being a schoolboy.

Pastor Calvert, aged 39, is set to be inducted as senior pastor of the Congleton Pentecostal Church in Cross Street on Saturday.

Mr Calvert, from Hawthorne Close, Congleton, first attended the church, then based in Nursery Lane, when a pupil at Sandbach School.

While studying for a theology degree at Nottingham University he did voluntary work at a centre for released prisoners, drug addicts and others with social problems.

On leaving university he worked for six years at the Congleton branch of the National Children's Home as a residential social worker, and has also founded five clubs for children and young people in Congleton.

His wife Karen is a teacher at Daven Primary School in Congleton, and the couple have three daughters.

He will be only the third pastor at the church since it was formed in 1959, and will be inducted by Pastor Alan Hewitt from Newtown, a senior figure in the Pentecostal movement.

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