Most people do a double-take when they hear Reverend Vernon Lidstone is a powerlifter.

The Stroud man, from Gloucestershire, England, has a personal best of 182.5 kilograms and will try to beat it at Crazy Strength Gym in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on Saturday to raise the £40,000 needed to replace the heating system at St Peter’s Church in Framilode, Gloucestershire.

Lidstone said: “I started the ordinary fitness class at 70, and then I started powerlifting only a year ago, so it’s possible for everybody.”

He was previously a chaplain for HMP Leyhill near Wotton-under-Edge, and the honorary assistant priest for Severnside South Benefice.

Lidstone said his fitness started 12 years ago, when he heard Patrick Ansley, a fitness instructor “who was really passionate about making seniors strong”, on BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

“I got in touch with him and, to cut a long story short, eventually he came over and [he now] conducts the fitness class in the church twice a week for seniors with this passion for making us strong.”

Lidstone trains three times a week, twice in the church fitness class and once with Gloucester Powerlifters.

“They’re a gang of powerlifters who have been wonderfully supportive,” he said.

“They’re all young. I’m definitely the oldest amongst them but they all encourage me and support me.”

He is taking on the challenge after finding the vestry floor in the church was wet because the oil-fired boiler had stopped working.

It cannot be repaired, so he hopes to raise enough money to “make the church warm and much more energy efficient” by replacing the broken boiler with a clean air-source heat-pump system.

“The challenge symbolises staying active in later life, caring for the environment, and keeping faith at the heart of local life,” he said, adding that the church had been “very supportive”.

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