Chrissie Chevasutt

Chrissie Chevasutt has been our ‘Outreach and Development Worker with the Transgender, Intersex and Non-binary Community’ since January 2022.

At the age of 21, Chrissie came to faith whilst begging and homeless, as an opium addict, in Old Delhi, India, in 1981, after a summer wandering and searching for love, truth and life’s meaning, in the Himalaya. Encountering Christ Jesus, resulted in the transformation of her life, as she realised Christ’s love was effecting deep and lasting change in her inner life.

Shamed as a child, and then again when she fell into the church, for her femininity, Chrissie buried who she really was, and prayed God would heal her. After thirty-four years as a stumbling disciple of Jesus, a second breakdown left her facing death, or walking into the light, and revealing her true self. Since 2014, Chrissie has lived as ‘transfemme’.

In ‘coming out’ as transgender, she has found true spiritual freedom from the crushing rules and dictates of religion, and since then, has loved, served, and pastored extensively within the LGBTQIA+ community.

For most of her life of faith, within both church and professional contexts she had worked with the homeless, the marginalised, with addicts, and alcoholics, with ex-offenders, and those on the edges of church. They have been her greatest teachers and friends. She finds Christ in the face of friends and strangers, and creating relationships of intimacy and trust, is her life-long calling. To love, serve, empower, and equip others to become all they were meant to be is her life passion. 

Chrissie is married to Pam, they have two beautiful daughters, aged 26 and 28. Cycling is central to Chrissie’s spiritual life, and her saddle is her prayer seat. 

Chrissie is a spiritual mongrel, having lived and worked in most of the mainstream denominations in this country, as both a Pastor, and missionary. Chrissie understands discipleship not as a process or means of converting people to religion, but of allowing God’s love to work from within us, and reveal Christ in us, and to us.

Chrissie’s story, ‘Heaven Come Down, The Story of a Transgender Disciple’, was published by DLT Publishers in 2021.

Holly Taylor-Zuntz

Holly joined the team at St. Columba's in Autumn 2023, to lighten Chrissie's load.  Although hired as 'admin and IT support', her role has blossomed into creative collaboration. She and Chrissie are pioneering Oxford's inaugural poetry festival for diverse voices in November 2024, and she will lead a singing workshop for transgender voices at the Transgender Theology Conference in September 2024. 

The rest of Holly's life revolves around singing leading. She leads community choirs and open access singing workshops in Oxford, as well as nationally and internationally. Her specialism is traditional harmony songs from the country of Georgia. You can read more about Holly's music work on her website.  Holly holds a BA Hons in European Theatre Arts from Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.