12 candidates were ordained over the weekend. 11 will serve in parishes across the Diocese and Brother Michael will continue to serve at Mucknell Abbey.
Six candidates have completed their first year as curates and following their ordination are now able to preside at the Holy Communion. Five were ordained Priest in the Cathedral on Saturday, with Brother Michael being ordained Priest at Mucknell Abbey on Sunday. Six candidates were ordained Deacon on Sunday and are entering their first year of training as a curate.
The ordination services in the Cathedral were led by the Bishop of Worcester, Hugh Nelson. Bishop Olivia Graham, former Bishop of Reading preached at both services having led a pre-ordination retreat for all candidates. Brother Michael was ordained by Bishop Anne Hollinghurst, former Bishop of Aston who is Community Visitor to Mucknell Abbey.
Ordained Deacon:
- Julie Berrow who will serve in Worcester City West
- Mark Cook who will serve in Malvern Link with Cowleigh
- Tristan Mitchell who will serve in The Chase Team in Malvern
- Terry Palmer who will serve in Beoley & Alvechurch, Redditch
- Jonathan Pincher who will serve at St Mary, Kingswinford
- Tracey Skidmore who will serve in Gornal & Sedgley
Ordained Priest:
- Brother Michael Brossard, serving at Mucknell Abbey
- Sue Haywood, serving in Wordsley
- Rob Holdsworth, serving at St Stephen’s Church, Barbourne, Worcester
- Philippa Lowe, serving at Great Malvern Priory
- Tobias Thornes, serving in the Muddy Boots Rural Mission Area (an area of 156 square miles in the West of the Diocese)
- Jon Turner, serving in the Saltway Team, Droitwich
Bishop Hugh said:
“The last week, with the ordination retreat leading us to the ordination services for new deacons and priests, has been overflowing with joy. The 13 newly ordained men and women, each of them very different in background and gifts, will be a blessing to their churches and the wider community they are called to serve. I hope their ordination will inspire others to consider what God might be calling them to.”
See the photos on our Flickr page:
- See the photos of our Deacons being ordained
- See the photos of our Priests being ordained (including Brother Michael at Mucknell Abbey)
Have you thought about what God might be calling you to? If you feel you might have a calling to ordained Ministry, find out more on our website: www.cofe-worcester.org.uk/ordination
Deacons:
Julie Berrow (Worcester City West)
I still cannot quite believe that the time of my ordination has arrived. I think that my whole life has been orientated towards this point and God has been very patient in waiting for me to engage in discernment and training to fulfil his will for me. I am torn between sadness at leaving Ripon College Cuddesdon, where I have spent two brilliant years in study and formation, and excitement at becoming a curate with the new challenges that will bring. I know that everything I have worked at, talked about and agonised over will help me as I continue to find out what God wants me to do and find my place in the Worcester City West team.
Mark Cook (Malvern Link with Cowleigh)
In my twenties, I made several visits to Taizé, and one experience there stayed with me deeply. I left with a clear sense of being called to be a bridge-builder — someone who could connect people from different backgrounds, help them find common ground, and encourage them to recognise the light in themselves and in each other.
Looking back, that sense of calling has shaped much of my life since. In recent years, I’ve found myself exploring it more deeply, especially from the moment I first read about the Auxiliary Pathway and felt an immediate sense of excitement and recognition.
In my work as a lawyer in the public sphere, I’ve tried to live out that calling in practical ways: working for justice, for better lives, and for the care of creation. Exploring priesthood feels like building on that same foundation — becoming more intentionally an ambassador for Christ in the places where I already try to serve.
Now, the next step of becoming a deacon feels both important and hopeful. It offers a new way to share the hope I have found in Jesus with the people I meet every day, whatever their background or beliefs, and to help them know that they are deeply loved by God.
Tristan Mitchell (The Chase Team, Malvern)
I’m excited to start serving as Curate in the Malvern Chase Team following my ordination as Deacon, working alongside the amazing congregations in the three parishes that make up the team. It will be a big change after working in the software industry for over twenty years and I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I had explored ordination sooner. But God’s timing is better than ours and I am learning that everything that has gone before has shaped me into the person I am now.
Studying part-time at Trinity College, Bristol while also working part-time has had its challenges but I’ve loved every minute of my training. It has stretched me and pushed me, but it’s all been for the good. My wife and three daughters have been dedicated in their support throughout our journey, putting up with me disappearing behind a closed door to write essays and complete assignments.
Working with young people in the Chase Team over the last year has helped me to grow a deeper understanding of the challenges that young people face and I hope to be able to build on that work as we seek to serve young adults in the Malvern area and share the good news of Jesus with them.
Terry Palmer (Beoley & Alvechurch, Redditch)
During thirty-two years importing and in distribution in the timber industry, I felt able to live out my career as an expression of my Christian faith, safeguarding the integrity of creation and responding to human need in service of the colleagues I worked with.
God’s beautiful, abundant creation has put food on our family kitchen table for decades and it was at that kitchen table where my wife and I explored in conversation how an industrial vocation might lead to a dedicated calling through ordination someday. That figment of a recurring conversation met with reality five years ago, when the question came, have you thought of ordination?
Ever since I have not stopped marvelling at how God works. If like me, you enjoy outdoor pursuits, hill walking or mountain biking, perhaps like me you feel closer to God in the natural environment and you might relate to how a panorama reveals itself gradually as you take one step at a time towards the summit. Similarly, I’ve never been able to second guess what God has in store for me, and I continue to be wind swept by how he draws us closer to him in unexpected ways, revealing the big picture to us little by little.
I have loved my time at Pershore Abbey as an ordinand. Assisting, leading, serving, bell ringing and volunteering have been wedded perfectly with theological studies at Cuddesdon college. Learning, transformation and formation coupled with placement experiences in workplace chaplaincy and inner-city estates, leave me holding my breath as to what lies over the brow and where might I meet Jesus or feel the spirit moving next.
I can’t wait to see what God has in mind, looking forward to Alvechurch and Beoley is a tremendous feeling. In the meantime, at ordination I'll be celebrating the amazing and mysterious way in which God works in our lives and give thanks for the abundance of his love.
Jonathan Pincher (St Mary, Kingswinford)
What a blessing these last two years have been, a season of theological study and to worship within the ecumenical community of The Queen’s Foundation. Each day I travelled from my home in the Black Country to the leafy suburbs of Birmingham, swapping my carpenter’s toolbox for a laptop and much conversation about all things God. Part of the course included a parish placement in Kingswinford and Wall Heath, which I absolutely loved, and what a gift it is to be returning there to begin my ordained ministry as a deacon in God’s Church. I suppose I’m most looking forward to picking up where the placement left off, not simply to ‘do’ the things deacons do, but to ‘be’ a deacon. I’ll let you know what it looks like to serve as a deacon, in a year’s time!
In 2018 my young family and I joined one of the early diocesan resource projects, Top Church Dudley. It has been, for me, an incredible period of personal growth and deepening relationship with Jesus, as well as a safe place to try my hand at the things vicars do. Yet my original call to ordained ministry began nearly twenty years ago in an ex-Soviet state. I had spent the day travelling round with the local Orthodox priest, a day that moved between worshipping God in church and praying in the home of someone who was dying. It was a beautiful glimpse of how a community calls from within itself someone to help guide the people in their life with God. Since that day I have always sensed God leading me towards the same path, and I cannot wait to join in with God’s work in Kingswinford and Wall Heath.
Tracey Skidmore (Gornal & Sedgley)
If someone had told me fifteen years ago that I would be ordained I would have laughed at them! Until 2014 the only time I went to church was for baptisms, weddings and funerals. It was while we were preparing for my son’s baptism, during one of the pre baptism services that I was attending that something happened, I felt God’s call on my life and honestly, nothing has been the same since!
I soon felt the call to ministry and in 2018 I began the discernment process for Reader Ministry. After a year of studying for Bishop’s Certificate and two years further study through lockdown at the Queen’s Foundation I was licenced as a Reader in 2021; I genuinely thought I was where I was meant to be, I absolutely loved Reader ministry, serving my own community and church. It turns out God had other plans though! Apparently, God thought I should be ordained, and it seems lots of other people agreed.
So here I am, just about to begin my curacy with the wonderful team in Gornal, Sedgley and the Straits, I am really happy with my placement, I am a Black Country woman, and I am really excited to serve in the Black Country. I can’t wait to get out into the community, sharing the Gospel and God’s love with the community I live and work beside. I am looking forward to the challenges of parish ministry and the visibility of the collar; I hope it will open conversations, invite questions and allow me to talk to people about faith, Christ and God’s love.
Priests:
Brother Michael Brossard (Mucknell Abbey)
Being in a rather unusual setting, I knew from the beginning that my deacon year would look rather different to that of my fellow deacons ordained last year at the Cathedral. It has been a fruitful year of continuing to discover what it means to be both a professed monk and an ordained minister. As a deacon, I have been called to serve at the meeting place of altar and world, in the Church’s diakonia of the liturgy, the Gospel, and charity; and living that ministry within the monastery has deepened my sense that all Christian service flows from prayer and returns to prayer.
Saint Benedict’s insistence that nothing is to be preferred whatever to Christ, has taken on a new depth for me this year, as I have come to see more clearly that the deepest fruitfulness in ministry comes from a life rooted in worship, conversion, and the quiet listening of the heart.
I have also felt profoundly blessed by the support of my brothers and sisters, our regular friends and volunteers, and the many friends of the community further afield. I am deeply aware of having been carried by the prayer and love of others.
As I look towards priesthood and to continue to serve and minister the community and all who come to the abbey, I do so with gratitude, thankful for the call to share more fully in the sacramental ministry by which God’s people are gathered around Word and Sacrament. And if Saint Augustine could say, “For you I am the bishop, with you I am a Christian,” then I pray that I may never forget, as a monk about to be ordained priest, that any ministry at the altar must remain the service of one who is first a brother among siblings, seeking God for the life of the world.
Sue Haywood (Wordsley)
My first year of curacy has been a busy one whilst continuing to study on the Auxiliary Pathway and serving God and his people in the Team Parish of Wordsley and learning "on the job". It has been a period of continuous formation.
I have felt privileged to be present alongside people for example in leading funerals and baptisms and during the ministry that surrounds these. I have also had the pleasure of launching a Pastoral Care Scheme within the Parish, working with others to extend our care for others in God’s love. One highlight (there are too many to list) has been the joy of hosting a couple of sessions in Church with pupils from one of our local SEND Schools one on baptism and one on worship. The youngsters were really enthusiastic, inspirational and a joy to work with.
I am looking forward to being ordained as a priest with a mixture of excitement and nervousness, answering the call to ordained ministry as a priest that I felt God placed on my heart 30 years ago. I am particularly looking forward to being able to exercise sacramental worship and ministry in celebrating the Eucharist, anointing the sick and taking weddings. I am really grateful to all who have supported and encouraged me on my journey to ordination as a priest and thank God for His goodness, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Rob Holdsworth (St Stephen, Barbourne, Worcester)
It seems both only yesterday and ages ago that I was ordained deacon. That began another step, invisible to me when I retired from my old ‘day job’, but miraculously in God’s plan, and leading me to now, and to being ordained priest.
I’ve loved my time as deacon. Some of it has been spent learning afresh skills that I’d practised for some time, such as preaching and pastoral work, and I’ve continued my volunteering with Good Soil Trust where I’m reminded every week of the upside-down nature of God’s Kingdom. It’s also been a time of ‘firsts’, with the more ‘up-front’ life of being a deacon within the context of the liturgy.
I’m conscious that there’s always more to learn but I am really looking forward to the privilege of presiding at the eucharist, being more involved in pastoral visits, and taking occasional offices.
I remain very grateful to my Heavenly Father, my family, my accountability partner (who I’ve known since I was three!), my spiritual director, my Auxiliary Pathway tutors, and my home congregation and all the clergy at St Stephen’s for all their support and prayers, and for their encouragement to me to step outside my comfort zone and into life in ordination.
There is of course no equivalence, but I’m conscious that I join so many in praying those glorious words: ‘Who am I Sovereign Lord, that You should have brought me this far?’
Philippa Lowe (Great Malvern Priory)
'Are you ...'
The young man gestured towards my collar.
'Ordained? Yes, I am'
'Would you....give me a blessing?'
'Yes, of course'
I don't know who was more surprised when I answered my front door to a young door-to-door salesman on a damp, grey, February afternoon. But God was right there, illuminating, dispelling the gloom. The diaconal blessing complete, our ways parted, uplifted, smiling. Hearts singing, well, mine certainly was.
And that's what being a Deacon for the past year has meant to me. Being there, sometimes listening, sometimes praying, out loud or silently. Being the visible face of the Church at times of deep sorrow and at times of joy. Responding to God's call to ordained ministry gives an extraordinary, humbling feeling of right-ness.
A year at Great Malvern Priory with Roger Latham as an inspiring and supportive Training Incumbent and a wonderful, encouraging ministry team and congregation has guided me through so many new experiences and opportunities - baptism, preaching, leading Choral Evensong with emergency lighting during a winter powercut, over 5,000 people 'Joining the Christmas Story' with the Priory's peg doll Nativity, and the honour of leading funeral and thanksgiving services.
Being ordained as Priest and leading God's people when I preside at Holy Communion for the first time will be a profound experience, standing in the footprints of all who have gone before; 'Do this, in remembrance of me.'
I give thanks for my family, friends, the Queen's Foundation and all who have supported me on my long, and continuing, journey of faith and I pray that I, too, may take my place, as I have been called, accompanying others and sharing the Good News in Malvern and beyond.
Tobias Thornes (Rural Mission Area)
It’s been a great pleasure getting to know the Muddy Boots Rural Mission Area over the past year, and I’ve felt so very welcomed by all the congregations and parishioners I’ve met. Three benefices and 26 churches is quite a big patch so I can’t say I’ve definitely remembered everybody’s name yet – but I have at least enjoyed leading or participating in services in all but one of the churches so far. It’s been wonderful too to be part of such a supportive clergy team who have very much helped me to find my feet. From candlelit carol services featuring our very own Muddy Boots Magi, to lambing church in a farmer’s shed, I’ve got a taste for much of what rural ministry has to offer.
In the coming year, I’m looking forward to continuing to have the honour of accompanying people at some of the most poignant times of life, being able to marry couples as well as officiating at funerals and baptisms. To be able to preside at the Eucharist will be something very special and is a precious gift that I approach with trepidation as well as expectation. I should have plenty of practice at this within the first few months as a priest because my Training Incumbent will soon be going on sabbatical! I’m also very much looking forward to continuing the Eco Church projects that I have initiated as a deacon, and to sharing further the Good News of God’s love for all creation. And who knows? I may even get to a service at that final, festival church!
Jon Turner (Saltway Team, Droitwich)
Well, what a year it's been. So much has happened in my first year of curacy: including school assemblies, leading services, and preaching. I've had significant exposure to the occasional offices and seen how the Church is there for people at times of both need and celebration. It's been fun to navigate different seasons of the year, each with its own particular demands and joys - Christmas was particularly memorable because of the interaction with so many different people at various events. In the last year, I've also had the privilege of serving as a Trustee for a local alms housing association, and I've been able to lead numerous services in local care, and residential homes. I've witnessed how the Church connects to the wider civil society, and it's been a pleasure to work alongside community organisations and other churches to serve the local community.
Furthermore, it has been wonderful to have the support of my Training Incumbent and diocese over the past twelve months. The diocese's Initial Ministerial Education training program has offered regular training and provided me with peer support from other curates. However, the main highlight of my diaconal year has been the blessing of meeting so many new people. I'm thankful for everyone who has helped support me along the way, with particular thanks going to my wife Heidi and our children, who have had to sacrifice me not being around as much as before. I'm now looking forward to Priesthood and the new opportunities this next season of ministry will afford.
