Sandy Millar

Prebendary John Alexander Kirkpatrick Millar, known as Sandy Millar (born 13 November 1939), is an Anglican bishop appointed by the Church of Uganda as a Bishop in Mission to London, UK, in November 2005 in a joint initiative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Uganda. He was later commissioned by the Church of England as an honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of London at St Paul's Cathedral on 9 February 2006. He serves as priest-in-charge at St Mark’s, Tollington Park, in North London.

Millar was born into an upper class Scottish family (his father was a major general) and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1962. He practised as a barrister for ten years. He subsequently obtained a Diploma in Theology from the University of Durham. He was ordained deacon in 1976 and priest in 1977 at the age of 37.

He was the vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton from 1985 to 2005 and was responsible for the development of the Alpha course. During this period, Millar started a strategy of church planting across London, making it possible for dying churches to start up again with new congregations and clergy sent from Holy Trinity - all in close association with the London bishops. 'Plants' included:

1985: St Barnabas, Addison Road, West Kensington.1987: St Mark's, Battersea Rise.1989: St Paul's, Onslow Square.1994: St Stephen's, Westbourne Park.2000: St Paul's, Hammersmith.2002: St George the Martyr, Queen Square, Bloomsbury.2005: St Paul's, Shadwell

Millar also fostered development of The Marriage Course and The Marriage Preparation Course, which are now running throughout the UK and in many other countries. He was responsible for the reopening of the redundant church of St Paul's Onslow Square, which was also in his parish. In 2005 a book containing an assortment of his writings, All I Want Is You, was published.

The present Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has described him as "someone whose skill in communicating the gospel is bound up with being supremely and happily himself. God be thanked for him." Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, has described him as "one of the great Christian leaders of our time".

He has been a prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral since 1997.

In 2005, at the age of 65, he was consecrated a bishop by the Church in Uganda and made an assistant bishop (Bishop in Mission) by the Diocese of London in 2006. He is on the Charismatic Evangelical wing of the Church of England, but has usually concentrated on local mission and not on participation in controversies in the wider Anglican Communion. However, in October 2007, he was reported to have said to an American church congregation that "there is a war on for the very soul of the church" and to have told the congregation, which had left the Episcopal Church of the United States of America in protest at its acceptance of homosexuality, "your steadfastness in the face of a new and speciously sophisticated manifestation of evil has won you many admirers all over the world." [http://babybluecafe.blogspot.com/2007/10/transcript-full-text-of-bishop-sandy.html] . These comments were publicised on the internet, but not by him. [http://babybluecafe.blogspot.com/2007/10/transcript-full-text-of-bishop-sandy.html] .