Rev. Ken Turley was born on Valentine’s Day, 1949 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Rev. Calvin and Marilyn Turley, and raised in Bellevue just outside of Seattle, WA. At the age of nine he began playing the violin in the school music program and though he continued to play, moving to cello and then string bass, he was far more interested in football and basketball. In 1967 he left home to attend Central Washington State College where discovered the guitar and Rock’n’Roll. A year and half later he transferred to Seattle Community College. After being granted Conscientious Objector status to the Vietnam War he left school and headed for San Francisco. There he fulfilled two years of alternate service working for a year and a half at a day care center for physically and mentally handicapped and then for another three years with Mother Goose, Inc. a non-profit social service organization that performed and taught music, art, dance and drama to kids confined in various kinds of institutions including hospitals, reform schools, drug halfway houses, homes for unwed mothers and schools for autistic, emotionally and physically handicapped children. During this time he took in the flourishing local music scene and performed in local coffee houses with a series of his own folk and rock groups.

In 1973 Ken, three friends, a dog and all their instruments set off across country in a VW van playing at coffee houses and bars and staying with new-made friends. They made it to Nova Scotia where the van broke down and Ken learned car mechanics first hand rebuilding the engine by reading a book. The group broke up and Ken and one other friend made their way back through the South returning to San Francisco and then back up to Seattle. There he received his undergraduate degree in music attending Seattle Pacific University, the University of Washington and finally graduating from the Evergreen State College in Olympia. For several years he taught guitar and bass, worked for a recycling collective, arranged music for and performed classical guitar solo and with a flautist. Later he played electric guitar in a jazz and rhythm and blues band around the Seattle area.

Tiring of the bar scene and having played in two productions of Godspell, he saw the possibilities for and the need of modern music with a sacred message. So he traveled to Boston to study music and theology, graduated from the Swedenborg School of Religion in 1985 and was ordained a Swedenborgian Minister. While at the seminary, he met Laurie Snyder, and they were married in 1984.

Ken’s first position was in Massachusetts, with his time split between Director of the Blairhaven Spiritual Retreat Center in Duxbury and serving as pastor of the Elmwood New Church in East Bridgewater. During this time he composed, performed and recorded “A Time For Birth”, music for new parents and a rock oratorio based on the book of Revelation from the Bible. Together with Laurie they have produced a total of seven CDs. Their music can be accessed at appleblossommusic@yahoo.com or at the following websites: www.turleymusic.com , www.jappleseed.org or www.klaritymusic.com

In 1989 he accepted a call to the Swedenborgian Church in Portland, ME where he served seven years. Since 1996 he has been the full-time pastor of the Church of the New Jerusalem in Fryeburg, ME. He lives there with Laurie, his two children Emily and Ethan, and continues as pastor for the church, involved in community affairs and pursuing a deeper spirituality in all aspects of life.