Obituary: Malcolm Goldsmith, rector

Malcolm Goldsmith was a Yorkshireman who never lost his Doncaster accent nor support for Doncaster Rovers. His father worked as a railway clerk and his mother felt it her duty to stay at home to look after her two children.

Good A-Levels in English, History and Geography were his passport to leave home in 1957 to read sociology at Birmingham University. Malcolm experienced both loss and excitement at leaving home to enter the university world, but sought to retain some of his identity by playing trumpet in the university jazz band and espousing radical politics. In one sense, Malcolm just "fell" into the church, drawn by significant friends who challenged him to change the world.

After attending Ripon Hall Theological College Oxford, he was ordained in 1962 by Leonard Wilson, the Bishop of Birmingham, to serve in the Birmingham diocese. The challenge for Malcolm was to embrace the mixed congregation of "working-class Brummies" and recently arrived West Indians, while planning to integrate his work with the many Indians, Sikhs, Pakistanis and Irish. To do this, he set up the Balsall Heath Association which, with help from the social services and other voluntary organisations, became the focal point in what was a very rundown part of the city.

No house was provided for him in the parish and so he set up a small commune comprising like-minded people eager to change the world for the better. This was the time of the publication of Honest to God, and Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. They were heady days.

The traditional teaching of the church was getting a battering and linguistic analysis and exciting forms of mission led to a resurgence of church vitality in some of the inner cities. Impressed particularly by Bruce Kenrick's Come out the Wilderness, Malcolm applied to work with Kenrick in East Harlem, but accepted instead the role of Anglican Chaplain at Aston University, Birmingham.

Here he set up the Martin Luther King Foundation and found himself on the European Committee for University Chaplains where he made a significant contribution to the programme to combat racism and the periodical Third World First.

In 1967 he married Jane Humphries, who gave birth to their son Tom in 1969 and to daughter Kate in 1971. By this time the Goldsmiths had moved to Handsworth but the Bishop of Southwell, Denis Wakeling wanted him to be his adviser on industrial society, and so the family moved to Nottingham. Here with the Rev Eric Foreshaw he created The Southwell Papers on Industrial Society, a monthly magazine.He chaired a New Board for Social Responsibility, and became chaplain to the local hospice .

In his spare time he invented and designed with Michael Kindred a number of board games for Waddingtons and Spears which sold in more than 20 countries.

Malcolm was now on a number of bishops' "wanted" lists and in 1979 he accepted the post of rector of St Peter's Nottingham. In church terms he was very successful and was well loved. There was a cost, however. At home his marriage was disintegrating. He resigned with no job, signing on each week as unemployed.

He did accept the post of General Secretary of IVS (International Voluntary Service) which was in turmoil, but running an organisation and travel was not his metier.

After a six-week visit to West Africa he realised that the job was not for him and he resigned after being in post for three and a half years. By this time his marriage had broken. The Bishop of Bradford, the Rt Rev Roy Williams, wanted Malcolm to be his personal executive assistant. Malcolm accepted.

It was a wonderful role which sparked a great friendship and enabled Malcolm to make decisions on the bishop's behalf and to be creative within the diocese. He wrote books on the Myers Briggs Personality type indicator: Knowing me Knowing you and Knowing me knowing God.

In 1990, Bishop Roy was invited to be bishop of Southwark. He wanted Malcolm to join him but circumstances suggested that Malcolm join a long-standing friend of 30 years, the Rev Neville Chamberlain, at St John's Episcopal Church on Princes Street, Edinburgh. This he did in 1993, and thus began a whole new chapter in his life.

He began to work with people who suffered from dementia, about whom he wrote several books. He married Marion, and became rector of St Cuthbert's, Colinton, Edinburgh, in 1994.

Having resisted suburban parish ministry for 40 years, he accepted with a renewed vigour, and discovered a great harvest of love which he reciprocated.

After eight hugely creative years at Colinton, at the age of 63, his heart gave way. He had a triple heart bypass and was forced to retire. After a short retirement in North Berwick, he returned to Colinton, via the New Town, as a simple retiree.

However, not a man to put his feet up, he wrote a first published novel. He proved to be a sellable painter. He took the lead in setting up a national organisation, FIOP (Faith In Older People) raising more than 300,000 for its future success.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 and found himself not only playing the trumpet once more, but taking on the role of chairman of the Edinburgh and Lothian prostate cancer support group.

During these years he carried on with the major love of his later life: writing about the care of people with dementia.This led to him writing Hearing the Voice of People with Dementia, which was shortlisted for Age Concern's Seebohm Trophy "for the book which best promotes the well-being and understanding of older people".

His last major book on the subject was In a Strange Land…People with Dementia and the Local Church. This is a minor classic handbook on the subject which led him to write and lecture on spirituality and ageing in countries as far away as Australia and New Zealand.

After the recent inauguration in Edinburgh of the Malcolm Goldsmith Annual Lecture, John Swinton, professor of practical theology and pastoral care at the University of Aberdeen, wrote: "His work with people who have dementia has changed and improved many lives, and his contribution to the good of human beings is immense".

Malcolm died in the Marie Curie Hospice, Fairmilehead, Edinburgh, on 28 July. He leaves wife Marion, children Tom and Kate, two stepdaughters, Emma and Lucy, and six grandchildren as well as a sister, Annette, .