John Vincent. Priest in Charge.
John grew up in London and read Religion and Ethics at St David’s Lampeter. On leaving university, he worked at St Christopher’s Hospice, Sydenham, and then trained for the priesthood at Chichester Theological College. John worked as a priest in The Diocese of London for 16 years, serving parishes in West London and was communications adviser for The Bishop of Kensington. In 2003, he commissioned into the British Army as a Chaplain and for the following 18 years, lived in Germany, Cyprus and many locations across the UK and completed operational tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. John came to St Martin’s in October 2021. John has an interest in bereavement, particularly within the military community which was the subject of his Masters dissertation, and continues a link with the military community as chaplain to The National Professionals branch of The Royal British Legion. Other interests include Jazz, writing and recording music, rescue greyhounds and real ale. He is married to Karen and has two grown up children, Martha and Wills.
Sarah Kilbey MBE
Sarah was born in Hertfordshire and trained as a primary school teacher, teaching for just one year before her marriage to Brian, a scientist, and moving to Scotland in 1960. They have 3 daughters and an adopted son. In 1970 she enrolled as a mature student at Edinburgh University graduating with an MA in Politics in 1975. In 1983 she began the Edinburgh Diocese’ 3 year Training for Ministry course, although ordination was not on her agenda! At the same time she began training as a lipreading teacher on the Manchester Course, there being no qualified teachers of lipreading in Scotland at the time. After qualifying, she became Lothian Region’s Organiser for lipreading and began building a region-wide service of classes. She was also engaged with 3 others in developing and teaching a Scottish Course to train more lipreading teachers for Scotland. She also trained as a deaf awareness Consultant and taught many professional groups how to comply with the new Disability Discrimination Act, before retiring from these roles in 2000.
Although ordination had not been on her agenda, to her surprise she was Deaconed at St Columba-by-the-Castle in 1994 and Priested at St Martin’s in 1997 where she has served ever since. The Bishop of Edinburgh invited her to be his Chaplain with deafened and hard of hearing people in 1997. Sarah has a profound hearing loss herself.
Stuart Robertson
Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. He studied Russian and Spanish at Glasgow University and then went on to lecture in Russian at York University. He trained for church ministry at St John’s Nottingham and after ordination, served his title as a curate in Liverpool. Stuart has worked in chaplaincies across Europe and Russia including ST Petersburg as an Honorary Assistant Chaplain, and an associate Chaplain in Barcelona. He worked in The Diocese of Edinburgh for 12 years, retiring from full time ministry in 2005. Since retiring, Stuart has maintained his links with Europe, working in Ukraine as a chaplain in Kiev