A Baptist pastor is going without a basic daily comfort - shoes - for 40 days.

Andy Fitchet, who leads Whitchurch Baptist Church and the Thin Place church plant in Andover, is hoping to raise awareness of global poverty. Andy is undertaking the challenge alongside Victoria Ashdown, the curate in All Hallows, Whitchurch.

‘We wanted to do something over Lent that would be fairly radical and could be very missional at the same time,’ he explained.

‘So after excluding the idea of feet washing, Victoria mentioned the idea of going barefoot. Interestingly this was something that God had spoken to me about a few years earlier, but I had ignored!

‘The idea is that we are giving up a very basic and daily comfort to raise awareness of global poverty, and also to cultivate the idea of ‘take off your shoes, for where you stand is holy ground’.’

There is a section on the church website: www.whitchurchbc.org.uk as well as a twitter feed (@barefootlent) to chronicle the experiences.

‘We will be blogging and tweeting our painful way through Lent so people can keep up to date with what is going on,’ added Andy.

His first tweet suggested it could be a long period. ‘Owch. The only word to describe my first outing into town!’