Having received the gift of faith myself I am keen to find ways to reach out to others
Becky Reeve: ordained deacon in June 2021 - to be ordained priest in July 2022
I am looking forward to being ordained in June and starting my curacy at St Augustine’s, Derby.
It has been a long path to this point - I came to faith on Christmas Eve 2002, having grown up in a non-religious family, and received my sense of call to ministry at the same time as my call to faith.
I didn’t really understand how churches worked though, so I thought I could just fill in a job application form to be a priest like for any other job… little did I know.
I started attending a free church in 2003, but after a couple of years felt drawn to Anglicanism, and I knew as soon as I started attending an Anglican church that I had found my home.
My discernment has been long and varied, and has involved living in a number of communities while considering the religious life as well as 4 moves of area and 4 interregnums, all of which helped to slow things down.
Eventually though I was recommended for training and have been lucky to spend the last two years in full-time training at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, living alongside a community of monks.
I grew up in Sutton Coldfield, on the edge of Birmingham, but went to university in London, and then stayed there for the next 19 years.
When I met my husband, Patrick, I moved down to the South Coast, where I have been for the last 10 years. Patrick has continued to live and work down there while I have been studying in Yorkshire, so we have both got to know the M1 pretty well.
Before becoming an ordinand I worked as a primary school teacher, 6th form college lecturer in English and Classical Civilisation, tutor for marginalised young people and school SENCO.
I have also spent time living in communities supporting young adults with learning difficulties and working with street homeless people.
Walking pilgrimages are a passion for me: I walked the St Martins in the Fields pilgrimage from London to Canterbury every year from 2008 until Covid struck, and Patrick and I organise regular reunion walks for this pilgrimage.
In fact, Patrick and I actually met on a walking pilgrimage to St David’s in Wales.
We are also part of other pilgrimage groups and we completed the Camino de Santiago just before I started training which was a fantastic experience.
My faith isn’t easy to label, and draws on a number of aspects of Christian traditions, from both ‘wings’ of the Church of England as well as from Orthodox Christianity and the Emerging Church. I am more interested in the fruits of peoples’ faith than the part of the Church they identify with, and find that for my faith life to be most alive I need to keep both prayer and working towards the Kingdom in relationship.
Having received the gift of faith myself I am keen to find ways to reach out to others.
When I was interviewed about being a curate in Derby diocese I had to admit that I didn’t have a connection to Derby, although I am a Midlander.
It was only after I had agreed my curacy at St Augustine that I found out from my Father that my great grandfather had not only been born in Derby, but in the same parish that I will be based in!
His father was an itinerant stonemason who worked on churches, and who moved into the parish just as the church was being built, so it is highly possible that my great-great grandfather helped to build the church where I will be a curate!
Favourite Bible Passages: Mark 10: 46-52/ Isaiah 61:1-3
Favourite Hymn: I heard the voice of Jesus say
Favourite motto: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are
Favourite religious leader: Desmond Tutu
