Revd Damian Miles was welcomed to St Mary's Thorpe and to Runnymede Deanery at his Induction Service on 6th February 2011. We wish him every blessing for his service amongst us.
You can find his pen profile and his hopes and ideas for his work here in this introduction message he sent us at the end of last year:
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Dear friends in Runnymede Deanery,
I am very much looking forward to my move to St Mary’s Thorpe and being among you from early February. Bishop Christopher will be licensing me as priest in charge of St Mary’s on Sunday 6th February as part of the Sunday Eucharist, and I hope that some of you may be able to come along. I am excited about the future of St Mary’s Thorpe, a wonderful 10th century church with a rich tradition of music, liturgy and community involvement.
After University in Huddersfield I served as a Civil Servant for four years before starting studies at Westcott House, Cambridge (Fitzwilliam on the BTh degree) and was ordained in 2002 at Chichester Cathedral. I served a four year curacy at St Mary’s Church, Willingdon (near Eastbourne) before moving up to the Diocese of Guildford and St Paul’s Church, Nork which is between Epsom and Banstead. My task at Nork has been to reconnect the church with local schools and wider community networks and start the process of rebuilding the congregation, which I am pleased to say has been a real success. Now it is time for a new challenge and I am particularly looking forward to working with Thorpe Infants School and TASIS American School in Thorpe Village.
But I also come to you with the task of promoting vocations; work which I have been doing on behalf of the Diocese in the Epsom deanery and which I am pleased to say I will be continuing in Runnymede. My task as a vocations advisor is to chat with people that are asking questions about ministry – with an emphasis upon the ordained ministry of the church, hopefully pointing them in the right direction and supporting them in the early stages of their exploration of God’s call to them. One of my tasks is to promote an awareness of vocation. Did you know that in the next 10 years 40% of our clergy will retire? Unless we grow our vocations this decline in clergy numbers will leave parishes needing to share the ministry of an ordained minister in the future. So it is very important that each of our churches think very carefully about fostering vocations to ministry – full time and self supporting. Over the next few years I hope to visit each congregation to preach about vocation as we are all encouraged to think about the gifts that we have and the ways in which God calls us to use them to his glory and the mission of our churches.
With prayers for you all and every blessing for the coming Christmas season, and in anticipation of being among you in the New Year.
Revd Damian Miles.