Urina Ruth Churchill was a United Church missionary and deaconess. She was born on April 6, 1900 in Petrolia, Ontario to David and Agnes Churchill. She graduated from the London Normal School in 1919 and taught in rural elementary schools around Petrolia until 1929.
Churchill left teaching to attend the United Church Training School in Toronto, from which she graduated in 1930. Following this, she began a career as a missionary of the United Church's Women's Missionary Society which included commissions in Ontario and Quebec: Church of All Nations (Montreal), 1930-1936, 1956-1959; All People's Church (Sault Ste. Marie), 1937-1940; All People's Church (Kirkland Lake), 1940-1943; St. Columba House (Montreal), 1944-1949; and the Montreal City Mission, 1960-1963.
Churchill received further training and education, completing a second year at the United Church Training School in 1936, and attending the Hartford School of Religious Education, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Religious Education in 1944. She returned to teaching elementary school between 1949 and 1956, when she was living in Petrolia to care for her mother. In 1960 she took a refresher course at Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee.
On June 7, 1962, Churchill was set apart as a deaconess by the Montreal-Ottawa Conference. Under the authority of the Board of Home Missions, she was transferred from Montreal to Winnipeg, where she was a hospital and nursing home visitor from 1963-1967. She moved to Hamilton to work with the Binkley United Church, and formally retired in 1969.
Ruth Churchill died on April 5, 1993 in Beamsville, Ontario at the age of 93.