THE next Suffragan Bishop of Southampton, in Winchester diocese, is to be the Ven. Rhiannon King, currently the Archdeacon of Ipswich, in St Edmundsbury & Ipswich diocese, Downing Street announced on Friday.

She succeeds the Rt Revd Debbie Sellin, who has been translated to Peterborough (News, 29 September 2023). The Rt Revd Geoff Annas has been Acting Bishop of Southampton since last November.

Archdeaon King trained for the ministry at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and was ordained priest in 2001. She served her title in the Huntingdon Team Ministry, in Ely diocese, and was subsequently the Rector of Fulbourn and the Wilbrahams in the same diocese. She moved to Birmingham diocese in 2010, where she was Transforming Church Co-ordinator until 2014, and then Director of Mission until 2019, when she took up her present appointment. She is also director of the six-year church-growth initiative Inspiring Ipswich, a trustee of the project Leading your Church into Growth, and leader of the project Reaching the Nones (Comment, 25 March 2022).

Archdeacon King said on Friday that she was “delighted and humbled to respond to this call to be the next Bishop of Southampton”.

She continued: “Over the years, I have especially loved working with local parish churches, helping them to grow generally, and, in particular, to ‘grow younger’ as they reach out to their communities. I also enjoy helping individuals and churches to start new worshipping communities of all shapes and sizes, and in the last decade have grown a special passion for estates, inner-urban ministry, and work with asylum-seekers and refugees.”

The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen, said that Archdeacon King “brings an abundance of helpful experience in parish ministry and in diocesan leadership, not least in a highly successful programme for the revitalisation of the church in Ipswich. More than that, however, she brings with her a self-evident passion for people, for God’s Church and its mission — and for our God himself.”

Archdeacon King is married to Philip, a physicist and photographer.

She will be consecrated on 18 October.