Iris Ford of Vancouver Island is a retired minister of the Presbyterian Church who started as a deaconess before her faith permitted the ordination of women. She grew up in Bermuda. As a youth, Ford took piano lessons at the Toronto Conservatory of Music and now helps out her church’s organist every once in a while. She traces her family back to the poet Robert Browning’s father.

Her self-published book My Life’s Labyrinth: A Journey Through Life with Jesus (Trafford 2011) is Ford’s appeal to readers to embrace Christianity, not just as a belief system but as a personal walk with Christ. “When we just know Christianity as a certain belief standard, or the behavior which our parents adhered to – a standard of spiritual thought or of a certain theological basis – we miss the tremendous power in the Christian religion – power to walk through each day and make a difference as Jesus did.”