At my old church, we used to run a summer Holiday Club for local children, where we did usual sort of Sunday group stuff over a whole week! Of course, the highlight was the daily drama, where (in theory) the teaching from the day would be explored and we would travel together on a spiritual journey of learning over the week. But it was also a whole lot of fun, with silly jokes, daft costumes, and a real pantomime feel. One year in particular stands out in my memory, which was when the Club was called Kingdom Quest, and the daily drama was loosely inspired by Spamalot. That year I was able to go along for the whole week, and got cast in the drama as the Black Knight. There is actually video evidence in existence, but I’m not about to make that public! Anyway, one of the songs the Black Knight sings is about being “All Alone”, and how he is travelling a “long and winding road.” While I haven’t travelled “all alone” (far from it), the road to ordained ministry certainly has been long and winding.
I first felt what I now recognise as a call to ordained ministry in the mid 1990’s, when I was worshipping at Holy Trinity Brompton in London. This was around the time of the so-called “Toronto Blessing”, and I was prayed for to be filled with the Holy Spirit. As I was prayed for, I felt a sense of anointing that God was calling me to minister to His people, to equip the saints (from Ephesians 5, a verse that has stayed me along the whole journey, and is one of my “life verses“, a concept I’ve blogged about in the past on my other site). And this was to be within His church, as my occupation. But just as clearly was the sense of “… but not yet”. At the time I understood it by analogy – if I was going to be a football coach, I needed to first of all be a player of the game myself. If I was to disciple people to be Jesus in the 9 to 5 office environment, I needed to have lived that life first. Now please don’t get me wrong – I’m just talking about my own personal sense of calling, and how I understood the “not yet”. I’m not trying to establish a general principle for church based ministry!
I’m also not trying to set myself up as a sort of super-Christian or guru. In fact it’s more or less the opposite – I don’t know if you’ve seen the leadership diagrams where there’s a pyramid, with the very apex representing the overall leader, supported by the all the minions below? I would say that Christian leadership – and ordained ministry in particular – is more like an upside-down pyramid. The vicar is right down there at the bottom of the pile, the least important person in the overall scheme, whose job it is to serve and support the vast majority of the church who are out in the world doing the work of the Kingdom. Others have a different view of the church and of ordained ministry, but I personally find this view helpful.
I suppose ever since that point all those years ago I’ve been working towards this, and trying to discern when the time was right to throw my lot in completely (and am still working on that!) But I have always been mindful of the direction of travel, and made choices about where to spend time and energy based on this sense of calling. So while I have only been an ordained minister for a few months, I would say that I’ve been in ministry for 20+ years. And actually much as I dislike the nomenclature of “priest”, I have come to see that (musical) worship leading – which I have done for the majority of those 20 years – is a very close cousin of the “priestly” ministry.
I genuinely do not know where this road leads – the past 4 or 5 years have been very much one step at a time. Approaching the Diocese. Going to a Panel. Studying at St Hild. Being a self-supporting (horrible phrase) curate. We’re at St Mark’s for another 3 years at least, and perhaps by the time I’m signed off God will have revealed the next step to us!