Bethany looks forward to a sparkling future in St Andrews

Former chemist Bethany Pringle has found a church with the elements she wanted in St Andrews New Kirk.

Though Bethany, who was ordained and inducted as a team minister in the Fife congregation last weekend, knows the town well as her husband Dan studied there, St Andrews was not somewhere they had considered. Then she read the parish profile.

Bethany said: "I felt called to somewhere I would be busy and where I could be involved with different generations. Reading the parish profile and about St Andrews, which has the people who live here all the time, but also students and tourists and new houses being built, I could see all these different opportunities.

"It just made me excited. I had been looking for a church that sparkled, and this felt like the one that sparkled."

Born in England but living in Scotland for well over 20 years, Bethany's first experience of the Church of Scotland came when she joined her parents in worship at the local kirk in their village.

That led on to joining and volunteering for youth groups and being part of the National Youth Assembly, and even considering theology as a possible option for university.

"I was interested in two subjects, chemistry and theology, but I did chemistry because I thought the only thing that people do with theology is become a minister and I didn't want to be a minister," she admitted.

However, a work placement in Leicester in the penultimate year of her course changed her mind.

"The university expected you to come back saying: ‘This is what I want to do with my life.' I came back saying: ‘I think I am being called to ministry,'" she said.

The catalyst was a conversation with the vicar at the Leicester church she attended when she revealed her ambition to study theology in the future.

After the vicar observed that was the road that led to ordination, something clicked in Bethany's mind.

"I finished my degree and worked in chemistry for a couple of years, but that feeling was always there."

When she did start exploring the path to ministry, Bethany expected to be turned down and told to come back in a few years, but that never happened.

"I finally had to admit God had opened all these doors, and I might have to pay attention," she said.

But it looked as though a door had closed on her when she was preparing to go forward for assessment in March 2020 just as Covid hit.

"I thought it wasn't going to happen that year, but then things went online, so again something I thought was going to be a closed door became another open door," she added.

An added challenge

There were more positive interruptions with the arrival of her two sons, now aged five and one.

"I decided ministry training wasn't hard enough!" she laughed.

Her theology degree at New College in Edinburgh was followed by placements at Callander, Dunfermline Abbey, Stirling North and St Mark's Stirling and her probation church, Grangemouth Parkview.

"They were very different types of church. Callander was very rural, Dunfermline was an Abbey right in the city centre with a gathered congregation, while Stirling North is very family-oriented. I had a good mix."

One experience she did not have was team ministry, which she now finds herself a part of at St Andrew's New Kirk. She will work alongside Rev Graeme Beebee, who was previously minister at Cameron and St Leonard's Church, which has now entered a union with St Mark's Church to become St Andrew's New Kirk.

Although separated by decades of experience, Bethany and Graeme share similar ideas about ministry and mission and helping others use their gifts.

"We are talking the same language, and we have not even chosen each other to be teammates," she said.

"There are a lot of things to look forward to, such as walking alongside and being present with people. On placements, you are there for just a little while, so I am looking forward to being able to develop deeper relationships and find out what God is doing in St Andrews and get involved.

"There are also the things that called me here in the first place: the opportunities to work with students or new people coming in, and people who have been here their whole lives. The missional opportunities are quite exciting."

Joining Bethany, Dan and the children in celebrating her induction and the move from Larbert to Fife for this new chapter were friends and family, including a busload from her probation church in Grangemouth.

"It has been lovely to see people making that effort, some of them driving for a couple of hours to get here, even with the weather forecast," she said.

"It's been humbling."