SHE is a Team Vicar in the
Dronfield with Holmesfield Team Ministry in Derby
diocese, and she is also an authorised Methodist minister, and a
minister in the United Reformed Church. When the Revd Ruth Turner
(centre) was recently licensed by the Bishop of Repton,
the Rt Revd Humphrey Southern, to her new post, where she will have
special responsibility for St Andrew's, Dronfield Woodhouse, also
present were the Moderator of the East Midland Synod of the URC,
the Revd Peter Meek, and the chairman of the Sheffield District of
the Methodist Church, the Revd Vernon Marsh.
For her diverse ministry,
Miss Turner has a varied background. She trained as a musician, and
as a teacher, and was music director in churches in Derby, Oxford,
and Wollongong, in Australia. She taught music in London for a few
years, and for a further year in Canada.
For the past three years,
she has been a curate in Chesterfield. She follows in a family
tradition (above): her father, Peter, and her
sister-in-law, Val, are both ordained. She is now coming to terms
with St Andrew's, which has not only 40 Anglicans, a handful of URC
members, and a score of Methodists, but also Pentecostalists, and
quite a number from other denominations.
"In fact, there are five
different demarcations in the congregation," she told me, which is
something that matters when it comes to money. As for services, she
had been there less than three weeks when I spoke to her, and she
told me that, on the first Sunday, she conducted a communion
service according to the Methodist liturgy, and, on the second, it
was a "loose morning prayer". There is a music group - something
that she is well used to - and an organ for the hymns.
She has already found that it is a strong community that is
"warm towards the church".