DOWNING STREET announced this morning that the brand new Bishop of Durham is to be the Ven. Rick Simpson, currently Archdeacon of Auckland. He succeeds the Rt Revd Paul Butler, who retired in February 2024 (News, 21 July 2023), and takes the reins from the Acting Bishop, the Rt Revd Sarah Clark, Bishop of Jarrow, who was appointed Bishop of Ely last month (News, 30 January).
The announcement comes almost exactly a 12 months after the announcement that a previous nominee had withdrawn from the method (News, 17 February 2025).
Archdeacon Simpson was educated at Keble College, Oxford, and trained for ordination at Wycliffe Hall. He served his title at St Gabriel’s, Heaton, in Newcastle upon Tyne, from 1993-97, and was Priest-in-Charge of Holy Trinity, Jesmond, and St Barnabas and St Jude, Newcastle on Tyne, for nine years, until 2006.
He has since served within the diocese of Durham, as Priest-in-Charge of St Brandon’s, Brancepeth, until 2018, and from 2006-09 as director of Initial Ministerial Education (IME 4-7) for Durham and Newcastle dioceses. He took on the identical position at Lindisfarne College of Theology in 2009, and have become Archdeacon of Auckland in 2018.
Such a neighborhood appointment has been welcomed. It “places a one who already loves the people, parishes, and communities of Durham diocese and the north-east at the guts of this hopeful recent season”, Bishop Clark said. “The voice he’ll bring to the broader Church and national roles will probably be shaped by his long experiences of the challenges and joys of life and faith on this land of Cuthbert, Bede, and Hild.”
The Dean of Durham, Dr Philip Plyming, said: “[Rick] is well-known and widely respected across the diocese, and his mix of missional energy and smart leadership, each rooted in a deep sense of trust in God, are what we have now been praying for in our next Bishop. At the Cathedral, we glance forward very much to working with him and seeing God continuing to be at work on this generation.”
The Archbishop of York praised Archdeacon Simpson’s dedication over a few years. “He has a wealth of experience in supporting and enabling parish ministry,” he said.
“His deep local knowledge of the diocese will probably be an asset in his recent role as Bishop of Durham. Please join me in praying for Rick and for the diocese as he begins a recent chapter of ministry, inspiring all to grow in mission, leadership, church life, and in engaging younger generations.”
Speaking from his automobile on a whistle-stop tour of the diocese on Thursday morning, the Bishop-elect conveyed why, as someone originating from the south, he had remained within the north-east throughout his ministry, “and wouldn’t need to be anywhere else”.
He said: “It’s a phenomenal a part of the country. I’ve all the time loved the people, ever since moving up here. There’s a very good directness and ease, and, in lots of places, that sense of community. In the places where the Church is flourishing, where good things are being done in the neighborhood and the gospel is being proclaimed in ways which are relevant to people and accessible to them, it’s at the guts of neighbourhoods, and the way in which it serves them is making a difference. There are real challenges across the Church of England by way of sustainability, after all, but I don’t consider the inevitable decline story.”
More than half the parishes in Durham are in the very best 20 per cent of essentially the most deprived within the country, and one third are in the highest ten; a study of 1 deanery, initially of 2020, forecast that, by the top of the last decade, only three of the present churches would have “viable congregations” (News, 15 March 2024).
As Archdeacon, he has been closely involved with the diocese and deaneries in Durham’s Transformation vision, which received £8 million from the Strategic Development Fund, and an extra £2.6 million from the Diocesan Investment Programme. This was, he said, an advanced project, that needed to be managed with accountability, “however the purpose of it is straightforward — enabling the Church to thrive in order that it serves our communities well”.
Part of the cash is for parish regeneration — something near his heart, he said. There can be support for schools: the Bishop-elect had just come from Whitburn Academy, where he described the “amazing work of the college chaplaincy team, each throughout the school and in the broader community, explicitly based on faith. The kids were speaking about the way it made them blissful to be doing things they might see were kind and good for other people. It was an absolute joy.”
Archdeacon Simpson was a member of the Wilkinson-Jay response group on safeguarding. “Everyone I’ve worked with within the Church and in safeguarding is utterly committed to trying to repeatedly improve safeguarding. We take it totally seriously,” he said on Thursday.
“For excellent reasons, it generates deep feeling, nevertheless it is complicated, and truly finding the easiest way, which will probably be the safest to make the Church safest for people, shouldn’t be all the time obvious. It’s really necessary, as we proceed to go forward with the method that Synods have been engaged in and still are; that we’re keep attending really rigorously to the attitude and the voice of victims and survivors.
“We need also to see what’s working well within the Church already, and never to repair the things that will not be broken. Our diocese was audited by the independent auditors last 12 months. They were casting a lightweight on the things that were working well, and the individuals who were working well, with real commitment. We need to make sure we retain the nice while actually aiming at improvement.
“I’m really hopeful that Durham will see increasingly more examples of churches finding ways forward and growing,” he concluded.
For recreation, he enjoys the outside, especially wildlife photography; playing guitar; sport; movies; and novels. He is married to Rachel, they usually have ten godchildren and one cat. He will probably be installed as Bishop of Durham at Durham Cathedral in the summertime.
