Revd Canon Sylvia Griffiths

I was born in Hackney in London in 1950, the fourth of five children. If the wind was blowing in the right direction, you could just hear the sound of Bow Bells and I am therefore a Cockney. I set my heart on a teaching career at the age of 6 and so after A- levels, I trained to teach Religious Education and Physical Education, at secondary level.

I taught for 4 years, firstly in a big (and very rough) Comprehensive School and then in a Girls Grammar School which merged with a Boys Grammar and became a Sixth Form College.

God had always been a very important part of my life. My upbringing in a Christian home and my childhood which revolved around the church my family attended, gave me some solid foundations. But it was in my teenage years that I made the decision to become a Christian. As I have journeyed on in the Christian life, I have learned more and more about this amazing God we follow and of his passionate love for us – and yet there is always so much more to discover!

It was during my teaching years that I felt a call to full-time Christian work and came to St John’s College in Nottingham to take a course in Pastoral Counselling. My parish placement was at St Margaret’s at Aspley and at the end of the year, I was invited to stay on the Parish staff as a full-time children and youth worker. During this time, I wrote for Scripture Union’s Daily Bible Reading notes and their Sunday School teacher’s magazines. Five years later I was asked to pioneer a new way forward in their work and I was appointed as the first Local Worker, working in schools and churches across Nottinghamshire. I also did some teaching in Nottingham Prison.

 The possibility of ordination was increasingly in my mind and so, after the usual selection process, I returned to St. John’s College for a further year and was then ordained Deaconess in 198, Deacon in 1987 and Priest in 1994. My curacy was at St Mark’s, Woodthorpe from where I went as Team Vicar at Bestwood and later Team Rector of the same parish, with responsibility for 6 churches and a team of up to 10.

So eventually to St Martin’s, Sherwood, where I have led this congregation for over 11 years. In these years, the church has seen many changes, but as I think of the congregation today, above all, I believe that there is a real heart to know God, to follow him and to serve him through one another and in the community in which we are set. It is therefore with a real sense of excitement that I look forward to all that God has planned for us in the future.