SUSAN Richardson was what the Methodists call a minister in local appointment, so local that every service she led involved a 100 mile round trip along the Great North Road. She was the girl next door for all that, or if not exactly next door then a few doors down the street, though on Sunday evening, folk from many a mile filled Thornley chapel to wish her a fond farewell.

Whatever the interpretation of the biblical bit about a prophet not being without honour save in his own country and in his own house, it clearly didn't apply to Susan Richardson. Around Thornley they love her to bits.

The column had been similarly impressed when last we'd met. "If Methodism's self-effacing firmament allows stars, we predict that this lady will shine brightly," we wrote after a visit to Kelloe chapel in 2002.

Thornley's a former pit village in east Durham, the sort of place where a collier might have professed himself scumfished in the Sabbath swelter, the sort of night where the chairman could have announced that gentlemen might remove their jackets (if not necessarily smoke).

The reckless removed their jackets, anyway.

Susan was born in Thornley, baptised there, watched the semi-swish new chapel being built as she walked to school in the 60s, vaguely recalls the opening.

It was there that both her parents were organists and that she also learned to play the organ - "it was maybe what kept me in church during those teenage years" - where she married David Richardson when she was 18, where she first helped lead worship, first preached and where she asked for their support in her vision to become a minister.

After ordination three years ago she became a Thornley circuit minister with special responsibility for Fishburn and for Haswell.

She'd also been circuit secretary, still grateful to Jack Gilmore, her predecessor, for advice on how to minute a particularly longwinded debate. "Much discussion followed."

It wasn't at Thornley Methodist Church, however, but at Sunderland football ground - Billy Graham's Mission England, 1984 - that her life really changed.

"It was a conversion experience, a Road to Damascus job in the sense that I believed in the church and in the Bible already, but after Roker Park, I didn't just believe in my head, I believed with my heart.

"I don't really know what happened. I suppose it was a bit like John Wesley feeling his heart strangely warmed. I felt the call to preach."

After marriage she'd moved a couple of miles to Trimdon, become full time mother to two boys, helped David in his television and electrical business. Finally qualified as a Methodist local preacher, she then heard a call to the ministry - "local" in the sense that most Methodist ministers are itinerant, expected (within reason) to go where they're told.

When David Richardson was also ordained and stationed to Boroughbridge in the Ripon circuit, however, the friendly neighbourhood minister moved down to be with him. From this month, her own ministry will be in the Ripon circuit, too.

"This is the only circuit I've ever really known," she told Sunday's congregation. "For want of a better word it has been a home grown ministry."

It had also, officially, been part time. "We don't seem to have got that bit quite right," added Susan.

The Rev Dr Kevin Ridd, the circuit superintendent, spoke of "mixed emotions" and "reluctant goodbyes", so it's probably not the time to add that Dr Ridd keeps half a dozen snakes ("boas and pythons") in the spare bedroom of the manse and that there's a bearded dragon up there, too.

A bearded dragon is a lizard, of course, and from time to time all of them come out to play with the church youth groups. "Fear of snakes is an adult perception," said Dr Ridd, genially.

One of the readings was about the 75-year-old Abraham, told by God to up sticks and out of it. Susan admitted that her own decision hadn't been easy. She'd loved the work, she said, loved the people, really got to know George the funeral director from Sherburn Hill Co-op, even got a Christmas card from the Co-op these days.

Thornley's decision to back her had been risky for them, she said. "I only hope that with hindsight, you believe it was a risk worth taking and that you will have the courage to take even greater risks for the Gospel."

Susan Jaleel from Darlington, who gave the address, had been t'other Susan's "mentor" as a probationary preacher, had taught her the theology of the Hoover - "God is in the daily things" - and always to start a sermon with a personal reference.

"When I was a child we always went on holiday in the second week of August to the same Blackpool guest house where my parents had spent their honeymoon," began Mrs Jaleel, a Lancashire lass originally.

They knew the guest house, knew the owners, knew the menu. They did the same things on the same days and returned the following August for more.

"The legacy is that I'm only happy to live somewhere that is familiar to me. I am definitely not an adventurer.

"We don't like change. Change is trauma. Some people don't even like sitting on a different seat in church."

Now, however, it was time for the Rev Susan Richardson to hit the Great North Road for the last time.

Fishburn church secretary Rita Fulton, wearing her "Whitsuntide" hat - "the Ascot hat's in the wardrobe" - spoke warmly of her ministry. "We're a canny little company and Susan was born and bred here, she's one of us. She's really helped our chapel folk."

Though a part of her will always be in Thornley, Susan hopes soon to join the itinerant ministry, too. Local lass makes off.

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