Coming to a Church very near you!

Coming to a Church near you!

If you have watched the Hotel Inspector on TV, then you will know how the hotel inspector Alex Polizzi is on a mission to salvage some of Britain’s worst-run hotels and B&Bs. Well, we have invited Fr Trevor Thurston-Smith to be our Church Inspector to come and take a closer look at our three churches in the Kirton Group, to assess our ministry of welcome, the quality of our Sunday worship, our PCC management style and to ask how could we improve our kerb appeal to people looking for a Church. What is our occupancy rate? How is our signage? Do we give attention to detail? How is our menu?

Fr Trevor will be making appearances at all three of our churches in 2019 just like the Hotel Inspector,I wonder what he will find?

A native of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Trevor worked as a Civil Servant for a number of years before training for ordination at Chichester Theological College. He was ordained deacon in 1986, and priested in 1987, both at Sheffield Cathedral, and he served curacies at St Mary and St Nicolas, Rawmarsh, Rotherham and later at St John the Divine, Horninglow, Burton-on-Trent, in the Diocese of Lichfield.

Trevor left full-time parochial ministry for a number of years and worked for Social Services in Derby and then as a project worker in a rehabilitation hostel for people with mental health problems. He was then seconded to a charity affiliated to ‘Shelter’ offering support to homeless people and working with local housing providers in developing specialist supported housing for people recovering from mental ill-health. He later worked for the Methodist charity MHA Care Group as a Regional Community Projects Manager, overseeing a number of schemes providing low-level support and befriending to isolated older people and developing specialist community- based services for older people living with dementia.

Whilst in Derby, Trevor also ministered on a voluntary basis to people living with HIV, and in 2005 he moved to Leicester to take up the post of Bishop’s Chaplain for people affected by HIV and Director of the Charity ‘Faith in People with HIV’. Always needing a strong parish base to use as a ‘springboard’ for his ministry, it was at this time that Trevor began to worship at St Thomas’ South Wigston and became ‘Honorary Curate’ there for a number of years before returning to full-time parish work as Priest-in-Charge of Broughton Astley and Croft with Stoney Stanton. He became Rector of the newly-created Benefice of Wigston in June 2014.

Originally evangelically converted, but a definite Anglo-Catholic at heart, Trevor now describes himself as a ‘Charismatic Catholic’ and values and respects all traditions within the Church of England. He has an interest in contemplative spirituality and is a member of the Sodality of Mary Mother of Priests (a dispersed community of priests living under a common rule) and a Priest Associate of the Holy House of Walsingham. He is an enthusiastic believer in the ministry of healing in its broadest sense and is a member of the diocesan deliverance ministry team which deals with concerns about the paranormal.