Meet the chaplain who keeps Black Country's bus drivers smiling

From worries about a new rota pattern to questioning life in the face of suffering, Wolverhampton garage chaplain John Welsby is always available for a chat.

And his work has been especially valuable during the pandemic.

John said: "It’s been the most challenging - but most rewarding - time to be a chaplain."

Chaplaincy has been a part of the military and the railway for hundreds of years, but started on the buses in the Black Country ten years ago.

John said: "As chaplains, we have the time to wait for people to go beyond day-to-day chat about the weather, the bus routes, the football. I chatted about nothing in particular with one driver for a whole year.

"Then one day, we were in the canteen and he suddenly opened up about the thing he really wanted to talk about. You have to be ready for a conversation to go deeper. You never know what people are going through in their lives.”

Never has this been more true than during the last two years. Covid brought a change in working for the chaplaincy team - there were periods when they couldn’t go into the garages.

John Bradley, from Birmingham Central garage, said: "Since Covid, conversations have become more meaningful. People are so conscious of life and death now. We have sadly experienced a few deaths of National Express employees, and some serious illnesses - not just from Covid. We’ve been to see people in hospital, and visited bereaved relatives.”

John Welsby says that at the start, drivers were suspicious. They would ask: “Are management paying you to spy on us?” despite the fact that being a chaplain is an unpaid volunteer role.

John also believes many people these days don’t have links with any religion since school. So sometimes chaplains will be the only spiritual person they come across.

"If people do have faith, they will often explore what that means - to be a Christian bus driver, to run a happy bus, to care for their customers by keeping them safe," he said.

"It may be that for some passengers, the bus driver could be the only person they’ve spoken to all day."

This week has been described as the "most depressing of the year" and is why National Express decided to celebrate their chaplains.