Orkney charge does not seem like work for married ministers

Studying for the ministry had one very unforeseen consequence for Kerr Wintersgill and Moira Taylor-Wintersgill.

Both admit that they had their doubts that ministry was for them. Glaswegian Kerr wondered how someone who failed his English Higher twice could commit to writing sermons every week, while for Edinburgh's Moira, commitments and a concern that she did not know enough and was not "good" enough were initial stumbling blocks.

But they certainly weren't expecting to meet a future spouse when they attended a national conference for ministry candidates in St Andrews.

"After that, we chatted on Facebook and we felt fairly quickly that God had brought us together," Moira said.

"It changed the direction of our ministry because neither of us expected to be anything other than a minister on our own."

However, Moira had already received an inkling that this might be what God had in store for her. While living at Duns in the Borders, she had a strange experience while hanging out the washing.

"I felt God say: ‘You are going to be a minister and a minister's wife.' At that point my husband didn't believe, so I thought that perhaps at some point he would come to faith and go into ministry, never imagining that I was going to meet Kerr!" she said.

A preaching partnership

Now partners professionally as well as in life, Kerr and Moira are joint ministers of Milestone Community Church and Stromness Parish Church on Orkney's Mainland.

"That has been hard for some people to get their head round," Kerr acknowledged.

"Even the fact of a couple being in ministry together is difficult. I had someone say: ‘Every minister says they are in partnership with their spouse.' But we really are a partnership!"

The move to the island parish seems to have been another of God's surprises for the couple.

For Moira, who worked as a parish assistant at Broomhouse in Edinburgh before studying theology at the city's New College, the expected move would have been a parish in a priority urban area, while Kerr's expectation as a then single man was to work in one parish for a few years and then move on to somewhere else in need of a minister.

However, they know they made the right decision in coming to Orkney.

"We both feel called to Orkney and certainly don't feel that we are going to be leaving it any time soon," Kerr said.

"We have both fallen in love with the place, its scenery and the people."

Moira added: "The people are so canny and warm, and it's the kind of scenery that speaks to my soul with its huge seas and the big skies. It stops me in my tracks every day."

Orkney is also a place which offers the couple the opportunity to develop their own style of people-centred ministry with Moira identified as the creative ideas person in the partnership and Kerr the more practical with his IT skills and ability to encourage others.

"We have got different styles of preaching and different strengths and weaknesses, but we have a similar approach to what ministry is. That's why it works," Moira said.

"Kerr is a great leader. He has an amazing ability to maintain his energy and maintain his composure and be very, very fair and be very solution focussed."

A place where people are comfortable

As for that shared approach to ministry, Kerr sums it up as: "For me, it's a lot to do with relationships. It's about being a community. Before you can preach the Gospel, you have to have a relationship with folk.

"Moira's lovely take on it is that the sanctuary should be God's living room where people are comfortable just to come as they are, they don't have to put on a mask."

Their two current parishes – with two more set to be added, covering all of Orkney's West Mainland – are quite different.

Milestone Church in Dounby is a new build church serving the parishes of Birsay, Harray and Sandwick in the north of the island and with a diverse congregation representing a wide range of religious backgrounds from Quaker to Anglican.

The Stromness congregation in Orkney's second largest town is more traditional, but one that has had to deal with the retiral of their previous minister, the sale of their manse and the proposed closure of their church.

As Kerr says, it is an interesting experience taking on a new church after now feeling established at Milestone after 18 months in the post, but they are already working on a number of new initiatives, including working more closely with other denominations and tweaking service times so both can preach together at the two churches each week.

Orkney, where the couple are also chaplains to the 58-mile St Magnus Pilgrimage way from Birsay to Kirkwall, may not have been somewhere they expected to end up, but it is a move that they both love.

"I don't feel as if I am doing a job. It is such an amazing privilege to do this," Moira said.

"From doing messy Church and moving from that to taking a stillness service in Stomness, then back to choir practice in Milestone, then an Alpha Course, it's an absolute dream to be doing all these different things with all these different people."

Read more about Kerr and Moira in our regular Talking Ministry feature.