Struggles have become a strength for our man in Guernsey
Published on 24 September 2026 2 minutes read
Even though he has been a minister of the Church of Scotland for eight years, Rev Justin Taylor admits he struggles with institutional religion.
However, this struggle has become one of his strengths in ministry, as he reveals in our latest Talking Ministry interview.
Justin, the minister of St Andrew's in the Grange, the Church of Scotland's congregation on Guernsey, said: "I can speak to people who say they don't get church and understand them.
"When you ask what people want to see to make the world better, they talk about justice, care, love. Well, that's what we are trying to be. We are trying to live differently in the world. That is what church is for me."
His approach to religion was also shaped by his "schizophrenic" education growing up in South Africa, which spanned the final years of apartheid and the birth of the new democratic "Rainbow Nation".
"That really started my curiosity about Christianity because apartheid was a religious system before it was a government system," Justin said.
"How do you have a position where you use the Bible to justify that belief system, when others read the same Bible and were against apartheid?"
That led him to study theology at the University of Pretoria, though with a view to becoming an academic rather than a minister.
"I dipped into the Dutch Reformed Church classes, but because I am English-speaking and not Afrikaans-speaking, I also joined the Black Presbyterian students who were by far my biggest teachers," Justin continued.
"Sitting with people who I had spent my whole life learning to fear opened so many doors and helped me to understand apartheid in a far deeper sense."
As the minister in Guernsey, Justin leads one of the Church of Scotland's two congregations in the Channel Islands and also serves as Moderator for the Presbytery of England and the Channel Islands.
Making his voice heard in a community with 50 churches has been hard, he acknowledges, but two years on from his induction, Justin and his family – wife Lesley and children Emily, Francis and Joy – love living on the island.
"Guernsey is not what people assume, and I have a deep sense of love and affection for the people here. They are amazing and incredibly generous," he said.
You can read the whole interview on our Talking Ministry page.