What is expected of me?

Bear with me on this one - I need to tell an anecdote but it does get to a point eventually!

I had a weird day yesterday (Sunday 10th June 2018). I got up to go to the cathedral to acolyte and I already knew something was wrong. On Friday we had our summer party, and though I did not drink or stay up particularly late, I still had a long day (including taking two classes at placement) and an energetic party. Then on Saturday I got up at 4.45am to catch a train to Cambridge, where I spent a full day reflecting on my trip to Johannesburg in September before getting the return train to Durham, getting back, cooking/eating, and going to bed.

So I already knew Sunday, yesterday, was going to be a bit of a struggle. I was tired, but to start with I only had that odd ache that's not actually painful in my head and face, if you know what I mean. I arrived at the cathedral, and the others in the serving team came in one by one, and we ended up in a different configuration to the plan - I was altar server rather than acolyte, and I was to administer the chalice for the first time.

But my theatre background did me some credit, being able to roll with these punches. But I got a much bigger 'punch' when one of the team came in, sat down, and opened with "You are always so rude". Startled, I asked for clarification, and thus began a strange conversation that I did not really have the spoons for (if you don't know this phrase, see this explanation) but I got through anyway.

It was about my conduct towards this lady, namely not noticing her, such as not responding to her 'Good morning' to the group when she entered, and other times that she listed off when she had seen me at college or in town and I 'had ignored' her. Now, I had met her only once before as far as I could remember, so I tried to point this out - is it not a reasonable thing that I did not notice her when my brain doesn't know her face well enough to recognise it in contexts where it is unexpected? That didn't wash though.

She then tied it to ministry, checking if I was an ordinand at all. At this, I got super nervous. She was tapping into one of my self-doubts that I've have since I decided to become a stage manager, let alone a priest - I have always struggled with a) recognising people and b) being observant, which leads to situations like this where people think I'm 'an arrogant snob' ignoring them, or that I don't care to remember them. Particularly, people expect a priest to be the exact opposite, and this lady expressed real concern that I wasn't the type of person who should be becoming a priest at all.

I defended myself to a certain extent, reassured her that I would never have snubbed her on purpose and it had never been personal (I genuinely don't remember ever seeing her outside the cathedral! Make of that what you will), and thanked her for her feedback which I made sure she knew I appreciated. But I was mortified that I had upset her with my behaviour, intentional or not.

Reeling, I lined up with my candle in formation and by the time we sat down for the reading, I had a nasty headache. I tried to concentrate in the service but I was shaken, seriously disturbed, with all sorts of thoughts swirling like sand stirred on a river bed in my mind. But by communion, I was distracted from my crisis of vocation by increased pain - after the distribution I was almost panting and I realised this was the onset of a migraine, which I have experienced only 3 or 4 times previously.

We got up at the final blessing and I could not stop tears leaking as I gritted my teeth to finish the service. I made it up the aisle, and out into the vestry, and after some curt goodbyes, stumbled home, took some codeine and buried myself in bed, relived from the intolerable pain and falling heavily asleep. I woke hours later, and had a peaceful afternoon and evening.

But as I returned to bed at a more traditional time last night, I was beset with the doubts of the morning. I had resolved in my woozy state in the service that I surely needed to turn my life to be less self-centred and more focussed on others, but how can one become more observant, and better at recognising people? Is that something I have control over, something it is even possible for me to improve?

Being recommended for training gave me a boost of self-confidence, but really, being an ordinand hasn't allayed any of my doubts about my suitability. And I think this encounter shows the high level of expectation laity put on clergy (I actually wrote mine here) and the personal investment even a fleeting relationship leads to. Even of an ordinand, who from my perspective is still laity and a work-in-progress, the capacity to live to this higher standard is expected.

I don't dispute this, I suppose I just had not truly absorbed it, that I am basically already an echelon of clergy. That's weird to digest when I'm not getting ordained until 2020. How much do I give myself some slack and how much do I hold myself to account here?

This is part of a greater discussion about feedback and by whose authority, whose standard should I be held up against, and it's complicated. It's hard to find the balance of judgement of what to take onboard and what to hear with a pinch of salt. Where do I go from here? Do I reassure myself that I am doing the best I can or knuckle down to try and change my behaviour to fit in with this lady's expectations of clergy? How do I reconcile the knowledge that I am called as I am with the gifts that I have to offer, with the understanding that discernment and training is a process of learning/gaining knowledge and skills, both of my innate gifts, and of others that aren't as natural that I need as a priest?

How much of priesthood is shared, and how much is unique I suppose is my question. Who gets to tell me 'a priest should be like this' when I am discerning what kind of priest I will be, and if I am not meeting people's expectations as an ordinand, how much of a warning bell is that for my focus in improving myself for future ministry?

I am grateful for this feedback, for another perspective of my behaviour, and for a glimpse at one of the pressures clergy are under. But it has set me spinning. So all I can say at the moment is - God help me.

Towards Ordained Ministry course: Session Two

This post details my experience of Session Two of the Towards Ordained Ministry course. See my previous post about session one to find out what the TOM course is.

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I googled the speaker before this event, the Rector of St Bride's Fleet St, and I was looking forward to hearing from her as she seemed pretty awesome. Plus getting our teeth into the topic 'The Bible' from a priest's perspective was quite a fun prospect.

I wasn’t disappointed. She tackled what could have been quite a controversial topic very well, imparting wisdom without opinion in a very down to earth manner.

There were lots of anecdotes and five minute pauses for us to turn to our neighbours and discuss something before feeding back to the group.

Intro

She laid her cards down from the beginning, encouraging that diversity is good for our understanding, and we all need to engage with the Bible for ourselves. She also told us a little about herself and her church, including the titbit that the first newspaper was founded by a woman.

Her story

When she got into it, she started by taking us through the place scripture has had in her own journey. It started with Anglo-Catholic Sunday school and RE lessons being simply Bible stories, using the KJV, the version that is “like, what God actually said”, which of course was tough to read, especially without help. She “didn’t know how to read” the Bible.

She eventually went to evangelical bible studies “because they did them better.” Then in her first year of theological college, the academic biblical study was “dislocating” and exploded her assumptions of scripture and informed her use of it in worship. She said she was “so grateful to go through that process”, and though she had to rethink a lot, it “all came back together”, meaning the initial loss turned into a profound understanding of scripture.

“Critical engagement” is key, because the power of scripture is in its “complexity” so ask the hard questions! And don’t skirt round the difficult bits.

“Living Word of God”

At this point she gave three examples of how scripture can be to us the ‘living word’.

One, having a “verse collide with your life” which can do things like make you realise your own emotion, and “unlock a situation”, effecting the external circumstances.

Two, reading something can give new perspective to overcome an internal struggle or a new direction after the resolution of an internal struggle.

Three, for 29 years she had to give between 4 and 7 addresses a week, and only extremely rarely did not speak to the lectionary texts. Of course she came across the same texts over and over, but they “always spoke to me in new ways”, and the texts she had to work, pray and engage with most led to “cracking” sermons.

The Bible is “gloriously subversive”, like the fact that it tells us it’s always the least suitable, the least capable person who is chosen to do God’s work - the ancient Abram, the argumentative and stammering Moses, the persecuting Pharisee Paul. When she went on a tour of Paul’s route through Greece, it “hit me like a ton of bricks” that his experience had, at the time, felt like a failure, and only God could see the big picture that we now see, of the success story.

The subversive-ness is in the call to humanity in all our brokenness and frailty, and that like Paul we should rejoice even if all we see currently is bad – we follow the crucified Christ, so we know that suffering is part of ultimate success. The Bible shows us we  have to think differently about what results look like”.

“Scripture is baffling”

Here she briefly touched on the stuff a lot of us don’t like, such as God obliterating whole nations in the OT, or being told we must hate our families and no one is good, in the NT. Her advice on how to engage was to inhabit the challenging texts in our prayer life, which might shed some light; and she reiterated that academic engagement can inform scripture in liturgy.

Interpretation

Following on from that, she did point out that the Bible does need to be interpreted, because when reading it, we’re “juggling” lots of factors, and it can have a big impact – just look at women’s ministry. But we can’t be blinded by the divisions over scripture that are currently fashionable, because they have changed radically over time.

For example, in the 1590s, weddings rings were a passionate issue of contention because they weren’t in the Bible. She’s a very keen fan of Richard Hooker, often cited as the author of Anglican morality, and alongside Cranmer and BCP, is the closest we have to a founding father – point being when he was writing his defence of Anglicanism, it included a huge amount on the use of wedding rings.

Another debate ran around the use of anaesthesia in childbirth, as ‘the Bible clearly states’ that the pain is our punishment handed own from Eve. You see, the engagement with scripture is not and will not ever be static.

But that begs the question, who do you decide to listen to? Who has the authority to interpret the Bible? It is personal and one must have a direct relationship with it, but there is a risk that we aren’t always well-balanced and it’s not always the Spirit that inspires interpretation! It is crucial to experience scripture in community and share and listen to reflections with others.

What is it

In a rather backwards way, she ended with how to define the Bible. It’s has two parts and an apocrypha, it’s made up of many genres, it’s the story of a promise and its fulfilment, written by many authors over a period of more than 1000 years.

We need a balance of acknowledging the process of a “fluid collection” of scrolls being shaped into the book we now have vs the reality that we acknowledge it as the Word.

It’s also a “very, very dangerous” book, look at poor Tyndale and result of his translation into English.

Looking at the Gospels in particular – we need them all!:

Matthew – set pieces, Messianic, polished

Mark – reader does the work, rough edges

Luke – tabloid, about people, engaging, Holy Spirit, the poor

John – like stained glass– need to see it from inside, mysticism, Christ’s divinity

The actual question

Finally she turned to the vow that was the title given to her for this talk, from the Ordinal – “Do you accept the holy Scriptures as revealing all things necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?” Going back to her favourite author Hooker, the Anglican understanding is not Catholic, who believe it is “not enough” for salvation, nor Puritan, who believe that it is the only source of guidance for everything not just salvation.

Its authority for an individual must come in two stages; first, one must simply trust, based on one’s heritage of tradition that acknowledges its authority; and then second, one must pray and study to discover its innate authority for oneself.

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The previous session was 

- Authority - Do you accept the discipline of this Church and give due respect to those in authority?

Future sessions will be:

- Doctrine - [I will miss this one] Do you believe the doctrine of the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it, and in your ministry will you expound and teach it?

- Ministry - Will you be a faithful servant in the household of God, after the example of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve?

- Spirituality - Will you be diligent in prayer, in reading holy Scripture, and in all studies that will deepen your faith, and fit you to bear witness to the truth of the Gospel?

- Mission - Will you lead Christ’s people in proclaiming his glorious gospel, so that the good news of salvation may be heard in every place?

Towards Ordained Ministry course: Session One

A few nights ago I went to the first session of the London Diocese’s ‘Towards Ordained Ministry’ course. DDOs and college chaplains in the diocese refer candidates and potential candidates to this every year; it is another tool within the resources for discernment, but it lies in that in-between world of not quite being BAP prep but also being more intentional and sure than initial exploration events. Talks are based on the vows in the Ordinal in the context of ‘Pursuing your Vocation in the Diocese of London’.

This is how they put it:

“Here is a great opportunity

-to explore and learn more of your vocation to the ordained ministry

-to get to know others from different traditions than your own

-to hear speakers who themselves have been along this road

-to share in discussion and prayer”

I’ve got to be honest, it’s the first time I’ve felt positive about the Diocese’ vocation resources; it’s such a shame that they don’t manage to support people earlier in the process as well as this course supports people who are further along.

Anyway, the first session was a corker. The theme was Authority, based on the vow to “accept the discipline of this Church and give due respect to those in authority” and we were honoured to be addressed by The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dr Richard Chartres, outgoing Bishop of London.

All my experiences of Bishop Richard – my confirmation, a drinks reception at his residence, several Easter Vigil services at St Paul’s – have confirmed his reputation as a wise and caring yet competent man, and this session was no exception. It was a privilege to hear him speak, with eloquence, wisdom and humility, and a smattering of humour, as well as get a chance to talk to him in the relaxed mingling beforehand. He asked where I had come from and when I said St Martin’s, his follow-up was “Ah, which part of the empire?” which shows you a little of our reputation within the city.

I knew one other pastoral assistant there, from our Area PA support group, and he and I chatted with three girls sitting next to us, two from slightly higher churches and one from a very much lower church.

He spoke for about an hour, so I’m going to just summarise my notes, but I didn’t write everything down, just the things that struck me, though hopefully I’ll be able to convey a flavour of his talk.

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In his introduction, he talked of balancing a need to ‘listen profoundly to colleagues’ whilst also being aware of the danger that ‘heavy structure’ (like endless committees) can be a huge ‘energy drainer’.

1.

His talk was then structured in three parts. The first was the root of being ‘one holy, catholic, and apostolic church’, and the importance of the Church of England’s identity as part of its authority. We have never denied that there are other parts of the ‘1HCAC’ and often, if not quite adapted to, at least encouraged local expression of faith (subtext being: remember we’re not Catholics, homogenising and exclusivist).

Ecumenism is now framed in a context of looking forward to the ‘great and coming’ church of the Kingdom, but the CofE has the privilege of being able to reach in any direction and touch the whole spectrum of ‘church’.

One of my favourite points he made was that the clergy must not just be collaborative, but instead ‘conjunctive’, not just making joint-efforts but genuinely joining and combining. Because we are fundamentally and intentionally not sectarian, we must look for allies in the mission on the ‘shared passion’ simply for the Lord Jesus Christ.

2.

An ‘assent on worship’. This was an interesting section which touched on the fundamental difference between Christian and Muslim understandings of God. Whilst in Islam they submit to a Supreme Will, Christians reach out to an Almighty Love. The key is the transforming truth of the Trinity, for our communion is not static but dynamic, as God’s true nature is. From ‘Adam where are you?’ through ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ through ‘Mary!’ to the climax of the Incarnation itself, it is into dynamic relationship that we are called. Bishop Richard advocated the BCP as a ‘balanced and simple diet of scripture-based worship’...

3.

…which led nicely into the authority of scripture and the creeds. A wonderful phrase he used about

scripture was the importance of ‘hearing the whole symphony’ rather than extracting ‘bleeding gobbets’ to rely on and 'bash each other over the head' with. ‘Spacious inhabiting of scripture’ is important, within a ‘community of interpretation’. Crucially this includes the writers of the Creeds, that though long-dead, using the Creeds is a way of reading scripture not just with our contemporaries but also our predecessors, who deserve as much respectful deep listening as anyone alive now.

This leads us into being able to, as Common Worship puts it ‘proclaim [the faith] afresh in each generation’. Bishop Richard emphasised the importance of having a presence on modern platforms, and inhabiting the ‘territory of the 92%’ ie. the population of London that does not engage in Christianity. He advocated creativity as crucial to success in this.

After his talk, there was a time for questions. The first was ‘When did you discover your vocation?’ and his immediate response was ‘After I was ordained’. He explained that it was only once he was a deacon working in a parish that he found his vocation in doing the ‘ordinary work and being admitted to the tragedy behind every face’. He also pointed out that it was necessary to have healthy distance between the role and your own person – do not assimilate.

He also returned to ecumenism, which he said works when we look to the whole community and as conjunctive allies, looking in that same direction together. He warned of the trouble in the future (that we will inherit as the next generation of clergy) and condemned schism as ‘obstinately metaphysical’ especially in the context that for the under 30s, church is becoming ‘post-denominational’. He went on to lament the ‘ignorance of Christian grammar’ in the country.

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Future sessions will be:

- The Bible - Do you accept the holy Scriptures as revealing all things necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?

- Doctrine - Do you believe the doctrine of the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it, and in your ministry will you expound and teach it?

- Ministry - Will you be a faithful servant in the household of God, after the example of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve?

- Spirituality - Will you be diligent in prayer, in reading holy Scripture, and in all studies that will deepen your faith, and fit you to bear witness to the truth of the Gospel?

- Mission - Will you lead Christ’s people in proclaiming his glorious gospel, so that the good news of salvation may be heard in every place?