About Bishop Trevor
Trevor Willmott was commissioned as the Bishop of Basingstoke at a service in Winchester Cathedral on 11 May 2002. It followed a service of installation at Southwark Cathedral and an official welcome at the Diocesan Synod.
He was welcomed with his wife Margaret and daughter Elizabeth into the Diocese of Winchester where he took on the role of a suffragan Bishop, supporting the work of the Diocesan Bishop, the Bishop of Winchester, and having particular pastoral responsibility for the north of the Diocese. He had previously been Archdeacon of Durham and Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral Church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin in Durham.
Bishop Trevor has many national church responsibilities and was elected to the Upper House of the Convocation in the Province of Canterbury in 2005 and chairs the Business Committee of the Church of England's General Synod.
He speaks extensively on criminal justice reform and social justice issues.
He studied for the ordained ministry at Westcott House, Cambridge, after taking his first degree St Peter's College, Oxford. He served his first curacy at St George's, Norton in St Alban's Diocese from 1974 to 1977. From 1978 to 1979 he was assistant Chaplain of Oslo with Trondheim in the Diocese of Europe and from 1979 until 1983 Chaplain of Naples with Capri, Bari and Sorrrento in the Diocese of Europe, and Officiating Chaplain to H.M. and American Forces in Southern Europe. In 1983 he become Rector of Ecton and Warden of the Peterborough Diocesan Retreat House until 1989. From 1986 to 1997 he was Diocesan Director of Ordinands and Diocesan Director of Post Ordination Training. He was made Canon Residentiary and Precentor of Peterborough Cathedral in 1989. Since 1997 he has been Archdeacon of Durham and Canon Residentiary of Durham Cathedral.
His interests include travel, cooking, gardening, sport and music.
Extract from the commissioning service in 2002
The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt, in his sermon at the commissioning, said: "I welcome you among us as a Bishop, as one charged, as I understand the particular ministry committed to us, to attend to and to encourage the Church’s faithfulness to Christ, its focusedness, its effectiveness as a witness to his claim upon every person’s love and obedience. So I want to point you especially to the verse with which I began, while also noting that the first person plural, the 'we' with which Paul begins, includes us all: 'We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.'(1 Cor. 2:12).
"We have received.." includes every one of us, and refers to the day of our baptism and confirmation; you, Trevor, will be baptising and confirming among the church in Eastrop in Basingstoke tomorrow morning, ministering “the Spirit that is from God”. For those of us who are ordained it refers, too, to our ordination – for you, Trevor, it speaks most recently of last Wednesday in Southwark. You, we all, have received what Paul in a similar passage calls a spirit 'not of timidity, of hanging back, but of power and of love and of self-discipline...so that we may understand, recognise as real, the gifts bestowed on us by God.'
"He means by this the belief, the trust, that God is present among us, powerful to change and renew and develop us into the character, and the following and the effectiveness of Jesus; he means worship, and praying; and the Scriptures, the Sacraments and that “being-together-with-Christ” that is the Church; he means the Christ-like life of holiness and service, of suffering and of joy; he means new Christians, and people of all ages returning to a living faith – and in this Diocese, for our 'understanding' all this how wonderfully our Partner Dioceses are among 'the gifts bestowed on us by God'.
"St Paul ends what was read tonight with an astounding statement, but one that follows naturally from what he has just been saying: 'We have the mind of Christ'; because we have 'received the Spirit that is from God', and as we constantly, expectantly, trustingly seek to return to him in worship and in obedience. You are among us, Trevor, as one commissioned to encourage and to challenge us to this above all, that God’s world may return to him."