Kerrier Deanery’s new pioneer minister, the Reverend Susie Templeton performed her first Cornish service on Sunday, September 24 within the Church of St Winwaloe – identified regionally because the church of the storms – out on the windswept Lizard coast.
The medieval church stands on a web site the place Christian worship has taken place for fifteen hundred years.
“It’s a gorgeous place,” she says. “There’s something quite special there. There’s a real spirituality about the place.”
Born right into a naval household in Portsmouth, she’s lived, labored and studied as far afield as Indonesia, Australia, South Africa and Brazil.
She was six when her father’s latest posting took the household to Brunei for a few years – on the finish of which, they spent six weeks travelling home as a way to see a little bit of the world.
“It was quite formative for me – to have experienced such an adventure at such a young age,” she says.
A decade later, when she’d completed faculty, she went to Borneo to work on a coral reef conservation challenge, the place she realized to scuba dive.
“Those beautiful reefs,” she recollects. “I absolutely fell in love with it.”
Dreaming of a profession as a marine biologist, she went on to review Biology with Science Communication at Royal Holloway in London. But when she accomplished her diploma, she realised that such tropical dream jobs had been few and much between, and she or he didn’t a lot fancy working in a laboratory for the remainder of her life.
So, she selected to pursue the media facet of her expertise, and for some time took momentary work and travelled loads.
At the tip of her research, she’d labored for the church as a pupil employee, and had taken a bunch of scholars on a visit to Brazil. She later accomplished an internship with a wildlife filmmaking firm in Cape Town.
She’d at all times been a person of religion, having been introduced up attending the naval church in Portsmouth after which becoming a member of an area church youth group when she was twelve.
“That was when I really started to understand my faith for myself,” she recollects.
She’d been concerned within the church whereas at college, and remembers having a dialog along with her curate about whether or not she felt known as to ministry.
“But it wasn’t the right time – I wanted to explore the world some more,” she says. “My twenties had been a bit hectic – a bit chaotic however stuffed with actually enriching experiences – experiencing issues outdoors my consolation zone, seeing issues by different individuals’s eyes.
“I became really passionate about mission and about cross-cultural connections and what we could learn from each other – about coming with open hands rather than coming with all the solutions. I think that set me up well for pioneering ministry.”
In 2008, she travelled to Australia to take a discipleship course, which was adopted by an outreach part working with a youth group in Indonesia.
Returning to the UK, she took work for a charity based mostly in Southampton making movies serving to church buildings interact with the media, whereas additionally finishing a part-time Master’s programme in documentary filmmaking again at Royal Holloway.
“But I realised I wasn’t really cut out to do that kind of work,” she says. “It sucked the joy out of it for me.”
In 2011, again in Portsmouth, she received a job with the Methodist Church as a part of the chaplaincy crew at HMS Gosport, supporting the work of a espresso lounge connected to the chaplaincy.
“It was good fun,” she says. “And we also did some quite inventive ministry.”
One day, one of many chaplains sat her down and advised her to cease messing round and get ordained.
She began coaching at Cuddesdon theological faculty in 2015 and was ordained three years later in Oxford. The following yr, she grew to become a priest in Reading, and served her curacy simply outdoors the city.
She then spent two years as an interim minister, taking care of a neighbouring parish that was in emptiness.
“I was there to provide some stability,” she explains. “It was good. It wasn’t what I’d anticipated to be doing, nevertheless it taught me loads. Having that grounding in parish work has enhanced my potential to minister as a pioneer.
“It wasn’t always easy, but we really invested in families and young people. We found ways of involving the kids in our services. And we started Wild Church once a month on Sunday afternoons. Lots of families came to that. There were opportunities to engage that gave their kids space to be kids.”
And her subsequent cease was Cornwall.
“I’m really excited to be here,” she says. “It’s a big move and it’s a big job. It’s a big area and a lot of churches. We have to be more creative about how we engage and what we want church to look like.”
