A FORMER headteacher is among six candidates to enter the priesthood during a service at Worcester Cathedral.
Richard Wood will be serving in the Worcester Southeast Team after being among those ordained as Deacon to serve in parishes across the Diocese.
He is among the candidates have completed their first year and they are now able to preside at the Holy Communion.
A further nine candidates were ordained as Priests and are entering their first year of training as a curate.
“I come to ordination with a deep sense of God’s loving purpose towards people. I grew up in a Christian family, making a firm decision myself to follow Jesus Christ in my early teens,” he said.
“I sang in Cathedral choirs and led worship in a Pentecostal church on a journey of faith which led me to settle with my family at All Saints church in Worcester for many years.
“I am married to Poov, who has made her own fascinating journey from Hindusim to Christianity. We have three children who are carving out their own paths and are mostly grown up.
Richard added: “Formerly a headteacher and business owner, I have been shaped by diverse experiences of life from archaeology and environmental science to mountain leadership and boat building to singing and guitar, to name a few.
“For me, the Church of England is the place to help people along their personal spiritual journey feel comfortable to explore and question.
“Many more people than we know, I think, want to genuinely encounter God and it is the task of the church to help them in this.”
Jamie Klair was ordained alongside him and will be serving at All Saints with St Helens in Worcester.
“I am a newcomer to the diocese – I was born and raised in Surrey. I came to faith at the New Wine summer festival and was confirmed as a teenager,” he said.
“I have spent the last two years of my formation in Oxford and arrive with a young family to serve as a curate at All Saints Worcester.”
Rachel Colthurt was ordained as priest to serve the Severnside Parishes and said early advice from a tutor to ‘get amongst people’ had been a total honour for her.
“Whether it’s been at a church service, school assembly, hospital bedside, toddler group, nursing home or even the garden centre – no two days are the same – I have had the huge privilege of encountering some incredible people who have allowed me to ‘do life’ with them,” she said.
“They have entrusted something of themselves and their story to me and let me journey with them as they have navigated their highs and lows.”
“There’s no doubt that it’s been a year which has been both challenging and stretching in so many ways – not least getting used to doing my supermarket shop in a dog collar.”
Other members of the clergy to be ordained as priests include Adam Wharton, who serves at Malvern College and Great Malvern Priory, Paul Wilcox, who serves in the West Worcester Beacon Group and James Williams who serves in Malvern Link with Cowleigh.
The ordination services were led by the Bishop of Worcester, Dr John Inge or the Bishop of Dudley, Martin Gorick.
